How much electricity does Bitcoin “mining” consume?

At the end of 2021, a criminal gang in Mudanjiang wanted to make money through virtual currency mining, so it rented several community garages and purchased more than 60 "mining" equipment. However, it was discovered after digging that "mining" "The equipment consumes a lot of power, so I used my crooked brains to buy transformers, high-voltage cables and other equipment, and stole the national electricity by overlapping the residential lines in order to save electricity costs. But it didn’t take three months before my policemen, who followed the clues, caught me. All mining equipment and illegal gains will be confiscated, and you will also face a large fine and criminal liability.

My first feeling after reading this news was that I wanted to laugh. This example is a really good explanation of what "the ignorant are fearless". Are these guys really poor and crazy? Before starting a project, we do not conduct a market survey or calculate the costs first. The funniest thing is that I want to steal the electricity from the community to power the mining machine. Do you know that this mining machine consumes a lot of electricity? How could this electric tiger not be discovered?

Let’s start with a set of numbers. As of May 10, 2021, the annual power consumption of global Bitcoin mining is approximately 149.37 terawatt hours (1 terawatt hour is 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity). The figure has exceeded the electricity consumption of Malaysia, Ukraine, and Sweden, and is very close to Vietnam, which ranks 25th in electricity consumption. If you are not too sensitive to this number, let’s calculate such a detailed account next.

Our most basic mining machine consumes about 2 kilowatt hours of electricity per hour, because the mining machine runs 24 hours a day, all year round. Let’s calculate, 2*24*30=1440, that is, a mining machine consumes 1440 kilowatt hours of electricity in a month under normal circumstances! Our normal household electricity consumption is only between 200-300 kilowatt-hours per month. The electricity consumption of a mining machine in one month is equivalent to the electricity consumption of an average family for nearly half a year. This is just the power consumption of an ordinary small mining machine. What if we stack multiple mining machines to build a mining farm?

Usually a mine is composed of multiple mining machines densely arranged, ranging from dozens to tens of thousands. This causes the mining machine to release a large amount of heat when it is running, which requires adding a lot of cooling and ventilation equipment to the mine. The power of a three-piece large fan is about 1000 watts to 2000 watts. In addition, there are also other equipment in the mine. Some network equipment and monitoring equipment are required, and if these power consumption are taken into account, the number is very staggering.

According to news reports, a company engaged in "data business" in a certain western province paid taxes of only 250,000 yuan in 2020, but its average monthly electricity consumption was as high as 25 million kilowatt hours! In the first four months of this year, The tax is only 90,000 yuan, but the average monthly electricity consumption is as high as 45 million kilowatt-hours, and the converted energy consumption is about 15,000 tons of standard coal. After investigation, it was found that this company was actually a "mining farm." Such a large power loss, but the actual contribution to society is very small. In addition, you may not know that 60% of the world's major mining farms are in China. Therefore, many experts say that this is not a mining business at all, but "digging holes" for our children and grandchildren!

Fortunately, the country has discovered this situation in time, and clearly proposed to crack down on Bitcoin mining and trading at the Financial Stability and Development Committee meeting of the State Council in May last year. As a result, large domestic mines have moved overseas, and the remaining small mines have also moved from above ground to underground. I believe that under the heavy government crackdown, these mining industries that destroy the ecology and waste electricity will have no escape.