Is Bitcoin consuming too much energy? New report says banking system consumes twice as much energy as Bitcoin

Tesla CEO and world's richest man Elon Musk has recently criticized Bitcoin's huge energy consumption. Even Tesla has suspended Bitcoin payments, causing the cryptocurrency market to fall continuously. Does Bitcoin really consume huge amounts of energy and cause serious environmental problems?

The banking system consumes more than twice as much energy as Bitcoin, according to a new report. The report’s authors analyzed Bitcoin’s energy usage and compared it to the banking and gold industries.

The banking system consumes more energy than Bitcoin

Galaxy Digital released a report last week titled “On Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption: A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Problem.” The authors said: “This report uses a quantitative approach to compare Bitcoin’s energy usage with that of other industries.”

In the report, energy consumption is compared between the banking system, gold and Bitcoin.

According to the report, the Bitcoin network consumes an estimated 113.89 TWh/year in total. This estimate includes mining machine demand, mining machine power consumption, mining pool power consumption, and node power consumption.

The report estimates that the gold industry uses approximately 240.61 TWh per year, which is still less than the energy consumed by the banking system.

The report authors noted that “the four key areas of electricity consumption relevant to the wider banking system are bank data centres, bank branches, ATMs and the card network’s data centres.”

They write:

We estimate that the banking system uses 263.72 TWh of energy per year.

This means that the banking system consumes more than twice as much energy as Bitcoin.

Finally, the report highlights the features of Bitcoin that can provide financial freedom to people around the world. Galaxy Digital believes in the future of Bitcoin and the wider ecosystem. Furthermore, “the Bitcoin network can create a perfect use case for intermittent and excess energy, benefiting the energy industry. Moreover, the Bitcoin network can only scale further if the network adopts permission.”

The report authors emphasize that “energy utilization is not necessarily a bad thing,” noting that “humanity will continue to seek out new technologies that require more energy and that challenge the status quo. Bitcoin is another example.” They then revisit their original question:

Is the Bitcoin network’s electricity consumption acceptable? Our answer is a resounding yes.