How much power does Bitcoin "mine" consume?

At the end of 221, a criminal gang in Mudanjiang wanted to make money by mining with virtual currency, so they rented garages in several communities and bought more than 6 sets of "mining" equipment. However, after excavation, it was discovered that the "mining" equipment consumed too much electricity, so they made a mistake and bought transformers, high-voltage cables and other equipment, stealing national electric energy by overlapping communities to save power consumption costs. But it didn't take three months to be caught by my police. Confiscated all mining equipment and illegal income, and will face a large fine and criminal responsibility.

My first feeling after reading this news is that I want to laugh. This example really explains what "ignorance is fearless". Are these guys really poor and crazy? They don't do a market survey to calculate the cost before starting any project. The most interesting thing is to steal the electricity from the community to power the mining machine. Do you know that this mining machine consumes more electricity? How can this electric tiger not be found!

Let's talk about the group figures first. As of May 1th, 221, the annual power consumption of global bitcoin mining is about 149.37 TWh (1 TWh is 1 billion kWh), which has surpassed the national power consumption of Malaysia, Ukraine and Sweden, and is very close to Vietnam, which ranks 25th in power consumption. If you are not too sensitive to this figure, let's make such a detailed account next.

according to the most basic mining machine, the power consumption per hour is about 2 degrees, because the mining machine runs 24 hours a day all year round. Let's calculate, 2*24*3=144, that is, a mining machine normally consumes 144 kWh in January! And our normal household electricity consumption is between 2-3 degrees a month, and the electricity consumption of a mining machine in January is equivalent to the electricity consumption of ordinary households in the past six months. This is just the electricity consumption of an ordinary small mining machine. What if we have multiple mining machines stacked to build a mine?

Usually, a mine is made up of a number of mining machines densely arranged, ranging from dozens to tens of thousands. This leads to the release of a lot of heat when the mining machine is running, which requires adding a lot of heat dissipation and ventilation equipment to the mine. The power of a large fan with three items is about 1 -2 watts, and some network equipment and monitoring equipment are needed in the mine. These electricity consumption should be counted, which is a very amazing figure.

According to news reports, an enterprise engaged in "data business" in a western province will pay only 25, yuan in tax in 22, but the average monthly power consumption is as high as 25 million kWh! In the first four months of this year, the tax payment was only 9, yuan, but the average monthly power consumption was as high as 45 million kWh, and the converted energy consumption was about 15, tons of standard coal. After investigation, it was found that this enterprise is actually a "mine". Such a big power loss, but the actual contribution to society is very small. In addition, you may not know that 6% of the most important mines in the world are located in China, so many experts say that this is not a mining business at all, but "digging holes" for our children and grandchildren!

Fortunately, the state has discovered this situation in time, and in the meeting of the the State Council Financial Stability and Development Committee last May, it was explicitly proposed to crack down on bitcoin mining and trading. As a result, large domestic mines have turned overseas, and the remaining small mines have also turned from the ground to the underground. It is believed that these mining industries, which destroy the ecology and waste electric energy, will have nothing to hide under the heavy-handed rectification of the country.