Bitcoin Mining and Energy Usage
Bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific mined $812M worth of BTC in 2023
- Core Scientific became North America’s largest publicly listed crypto mining company in 2023 after mining 19,274 Bitcoin worth $812 million.
- The firm operates approximately 209,000 owned and co-located Bitcoin miners, with a total energized hash rate of 23.2 exahashes per second at its data centers in 2023.
- It delivered 480 megawatt hours to local grid partners in December 2023 and more than 131,000 megawatt-hours to local grid partners throughout 2023.
- On Jan. 27, the firm eventually relisted on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
In 2023, Core Scientific produced 19,274 Bitcoin, comprising 13,762 self-mined and 5,512 client-mined in our data centers, making us the largest listed producer of #Bitcoin in North America!
— Core Scientific (@Core_Scientific) January 31, 2024
As every miner’s performance is crucial to our success, we have teams monitoring our… pic.twitter.com/ko9Ms9kyCo
Core Scientific Announces December and Full Year 2023 Production and Operations Updates
JANUARY 5, 2024
- Operated approximately 209,000 owned and colocated bitcoin miners
- Produced 1,177 self-mined bitcoin and an estimated 449 bitcoin from colocated miners in December
- Produced a total of 13,762 self-mined bitcoin and an estimated 5,512 bitcoin from colocated miners in 2023
Bitcoin mining
Bitcoin mining is the process of solving complex computational or mathematical problems as part of performing proof-of-work, which verifies and adds new blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The mining process uses hardware and software to generate a cryptographic hash matching the transaction hash criteria.
Miners who verify transactions receive BTC as a reward for each mined block.
Currently (Jan 2024), the BTC reward per block is 6.25 BTC.
Bitcoin mining has grown into a commercial business model, given the rise in BTC prices over the years.
Many private and public firms are mining BTC using hundreds of mining machines across multiple data centers.
The United States Department of Energy is collecting data on U.S. crypto miners’ energy consumption starting next week
The Office of Management and Budget greenlit the survey on Jan. 26 after an emergency request from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) days earlier claimed Bitcoin’s price “increased roughly 50% in the last three months” would “incentivize more cryptomining activity, which in turn increases electricity consumption.”
- specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving,
- identify geographic areas of high growth, and
- quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.
Bitcoin miners consumed an estimated 121.13 terawatt-hours of electricity globally in 2023 — an all-time high from data going back to 2010, according to Cambridge University’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
In comparison, 2022 data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows the European country of Belgium consumed 93.8 terawatt-hours.
That consumption is expected to increase, with the IEA forecasting in a Jan. 25 report that crypto mining will use 160 terawatt-hours by 2026.
