Hello and welcome to this week's Overbit's Weekly Round Up. In our first article, we learn that the president of Belarus purportedly wants his government to mine cryptocurrency using spare power infrastructure.
According to Cointelegraph, citing Russian media, President Lukashenko stated that his country has enough energy resources to power the electricity-intensive activity and has pushed his government to mine cryptocurrencies on the country's defunct industrial sites.
Lukashenko said his country has enough energy resources to power the electricity-intensive activity China famously banned in June. The 66-year-old leader pointed to already existing locations that Belarusians could use to mine digital assets during the August 27 opening of the Petrikovsky mining and processing plant.
Lukashenko's urge comes when bitcoin mining has attracted global criticism for its harmful environmental impact; nonetheless, Lukashenko, who became president in 1994, has long supported cryptocurrency mining. As the worldwide price of Bitcoin rises, we should see more and more nations joining the mining craze.
Heading into our next story of the week, we will dive in on the cost of Bitcoin mining as laid out with a recent report by Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.
According to the Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, one Bitcoin transaction takes 1,544 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately 53 days of power for the average US household.
To put it in monetary terms, the average cost per kWh in the United States is 13 cents, which means a Bitcoin transaction would create more than $200 in energy costs, and Bitcoin mining uses more energy than Argentina overall, according to a February estimate from Cambridge University.
With 121.36 terawatt-hours of energy use, Crypto mining would rank among the top 30 countries in terms of energy consumption. As mining rigs require more energy, surrounding power plants must provide more electricity to compensate, increasing the possibility of using fossil fuels.
According to the University of Cambridge's 3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study, 70% of miners base their decision on which coin to mine on the daily reward amount, with energy consumption accounting for only 30% of their decision, but access to renewable energy at a low cost attracts crypto miners.
Elon Musk stated in May that he spoke with North American miners, and they agreed to utilise renewable energy sources. However, on June 13, he tweeted that Tesla would enable Bitcoin transactions again if "acceptable clean energy utilisation," which he estimated as about 50%.
The operators of Ethereum, the second-most-popular blockchain after Bitcoin, are taking steps to reduce the amount of energy consumed by its miners, with Ethereum 2.0 set to be completed this year or in 2022.
The mining outlook of crypto globally will continue to be a hot topic of discussion, and Overbit is here to provide you with the latest breaking news.