Mining Gold Requires 20x the Energy of Bitcoin Mining

According to LongHash, every year, more than $87.3 billion is spent on mining gold. In contrast, less than $4.3 billion is used to mine Bitcoin.

Essentially, gold mining requires 20 times more energy and cost in comparison to Bitcoin mining, despite the narrative that has been circulating since the surge in the price of Bitcoin in early 2017 that Bitcoin is hugely impacting the environment negatively.

Isn’t Gold Worth $7.8 trillion?

Currently, the cryptocurrency market is worth $200 billion, while the entire market cap of gold is estimated to be around $8 trillion. Given the huge discrepancy in the valuation between two markets, analysts could claim that the large cost of energy required to mine gold can be justified.

However, that assumes that the sole purpose of mining Bitcoin is to enlarge the supply of the dominant cryptocurrency to ensure there exists enough BTC in circulation to meet growing demand for the asset.

With Bitcoin and every other proof-of-work…