Michel Rauchs on The Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

Interview Location: Skype
Interview Date: Monday 8th July, 2019
Company: University of Cambridge Judge Business School
Role: Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Lead

One of the most commonly used anti-Bitcoin narratives is energy consumption. Often the mainstream press will compare the energy required to secure the network to that of a small country. Many will defend this with facts about energy consumption or compare the energy used for Bitcoin to other industries. How accurate is the data used to justify securing the Bitcoin Network?

Michel Rauchs from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, recently released The Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index to address this issue and try and put Bitcoin’s power consumption into perspective. We discussed:
- Whether Bitcoin needs to be inefficient to work.
- If holding Bitcoin is using Bitcoin.
- What is Bitcoin’s carbon footprint and is it a concern?
- How much of Bitcoin’s mining power is renewable?
- If Bitcoin were to reach $1,000,000 would mining use all the available power on earth?

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Helpful Links:

Connect with Michel:
- On Twitter @mrauchs
- On LinkedIn
- On Medium
- On Michel’s Website
- At Cambridge University

Mentioned in the interview:
- Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
- Alex de Vries Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
- Mark Bevand’s Electricity consumption of Bitcoin - Blog Post
- Coinshare’s Bitcoin Mining Using Renewable Energy Report
- Dan Held - PoW is Efficient

Other relevant WBD podcasts:
- WBD116: The Quantum Threat to Bitcoin with Quantum Physicist Dr. Stepan Snigirev
- WBD109: Luke Dashjr on 300k Blocks and Full Nodes
- WBD089: Critiquing Bitcoin with Angela Walch
- WBD074: How Bitcoin Works with Matt Corallo
- WBD052: Nathaniel Whittemore on Crypto Narratives and the Ills of Modern Advertising
- WBD043: Dan Held on Bitcoin's Immaculate Conception
- WBD037: Jimmy Song on the Game Theory of Bitcoin Attacks and why Proof of Work Needs to be Expensive

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