LongHash: bitcoin’s energy consumption may be at an all-time high

Bitcoin’s workload proof (PoW) consensus system is an important factor in making this cryptocurrency — and all subsequent cryptocurrencies based on it — popular. But it is also a source of some environmental controversy, because the computing required to create the blocks and the maintenance of the network require a lot of hardware and consume a lot of power. It peaked in early or mid-july, and remains near its all-time high of 60–75 TWh per year.