The most energy-intensive mining operation in the United States does not extract coal, metals or other minerals, but cryptocurrency. is the bitcoin mine of Riot Platforms, located in Texas, which consumes the same amount of electricity as the 300,000 households closest to your facilities. This is revealed by research published in ‘The New York Times‘ which warns of the enormous energy consumption of this industry, its high environmental impact and how it harms citizens.

An article that denounces how, while almost 40 people died from the cold In the Texan city of Austin in February 2021, in another part of that same state, a series of computers consumed enough electricity to supply some 6,500 homes and they did so to carry out bitcoin operations.

In total, the New York newspaper has identified 34 large-scale bitcoin mining operations in the US, which “can lead to costs, including higher electricity bills and huge pollution of carbon”. Although the cryptocurrency industry was located mainly in China, in June 2021 the North American country became a world leader and, since then, energy consumption has only grownjust like him negative impact on the environment.

So much so that the equipment dedicated to bitcoin mining in Kearney (Nebraska) consumes as much electricity as the 73,000 houses around it, while in Dalton (Georgia) this consumption is equivalent to the 97,000 homes that surround them. Even worse is the case of the aforementioned Riot Platforms mine, in Rockdale (Texas), the one that consumes the most energy in the whole countryby using in its operations the same electricity used by 300,000 homes as a whole.

The ‘NYT’ calculates in this report that, on average, each of the 34 operations identified in this article consumes at least 30,000 times more energy than the average home In U.S.A. In total, these mining centers consume more than 3,900 megawatts of electricity, that is, the same as the three million homes that are located around them.

According to data from the technology company WattTime, in the United States alone bitcoin mining consumes electricity equivalent to that generated by 3.5 million gasoline cars. Refering to pollutionTaking these 34 mines as a reference, ‘The New York Times’ also concludes that they were generating almost 16.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

An industry that raises the price of electricity

Also, the consumer price increase would be a direct consequence of the emergence of these mining industries in the country, to the point that the price of electricity has risen by 5% -that is, 1,800 million per year, according to data from the aforementioned newspaper and the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

In addition, compared to other industries, such as the manufacture of metals and plastics, which also require large amounts of electricity, pollute and raise its price, bitcoin mines create significantly fewer jobsso that they stimulate less local economic development, according to the ‘NYT’.

This newspaper also points out that there are ways to operate cryptocurrencies with less electricity use, as is the case with Ethereum, which modified its algorithm to reduce the electricity it consumes. Unlike this second most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin users defend its current algorithm as being resistant to attacks for longer and on a larger scale, which promises greater security for their assets.