How much energy does cryptocurrency mining consume in the United States?
In a recent analysis, Energy Information Administration The Electricity Industry Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency trading consumes more than 2% of the country's electricity.
And, as Ars Technica pointed out in a report on Friday (February 2), this Another state to the national power grid.
While some mining is done on a small scale on home computers, most cryptocurrency mining is done on a large scale, with most of the costs going to electricity, the report said, which is driving miners to move to places with cheaper electricity.
According to the EIA, much cryptocurrency mining has shifted to the United States, where lower energy prices have become a policy priority. China's crackdown About the digital assets sector.
Meanwhile, the Ars Technica report also cited its own estimates by the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, which found that the United States accounted for 38% of bitcoin mining at the start of 2020, up from just over 3% two years prior.
According to a study by the Cambridge Center, bitcoin mining currently uses as much electricity as the state of Utah, a conservative estimate, but a higher figure could be as much as the entire electricity consumed by the state of Washington.
Such information led the White House to propose a Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) excise tax last year, which would impose a tax on cryptocurrency mining companies equal to 30% of their gross receipts. The cost of electricity they use.
“Currently, cryptocurrency mining companies do not have to pay the full costs they impose on others in the form of local pollution, higher energy prices, and climate impacts from increased greenhouse gas emissions,” it said. White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) wrote in a blog post.
The CEA argues that, in contrast to other energy-intensive industries, “cryptocurrency mining does not generate the local and national economic benefits typically associated with enterprises that use comparable amounts of electricity.”
In response, the Chamber of Digital Commerce urged lawmakers to focus on working with the industry on ways to allow the industry to grow while reducing energy consumption, rather than penalizing crypto miners.
