Bitcoin Still Guzzles Power But Can Be Greener: Crypto IRL

Cables connected to a mining rig at the Minto cryptocurrency mining center in Nadvoitsy, Russia, on Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. Bitcoin extended its five-week slide from an all-time high with risk sentiment across global financial markets dwindling. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

Tim Stenovec, Bloomberg News

Oct 13, 2022

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(Bloomberg) -- The CEO of one crypto mining company says Bitcoin’s staggering energy consumption is a feature, not a bug. And despite Ethereum’s recent shift from “proof-of-work” to “proof-of-stake,” which will greatly reduce the blockchain’s power consumption, there’s no plan for such a move coming for Bitcoin.

“There is no CEO of Bitcoin,” Zach Bradford, chief executive of publicly traded Bitcoin miner CleanSpark, told Katie Greifeld and me in the third episode of the Bloomberg QuickTake series “Crypto IRL.” “It’s fully decentralized, and really proof of work is really the only good way to truly secure a blockchain without an overseer.”

Digiconimist founder Alex De Vries, a researcher who studies the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, is also featured in the episode. 

Watch “Crypto IRL” on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. New York time on Bloomberg Quicktake, and Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on Bloomberg TV. And it’s always streaming at https://www.bloomberg.com/qt/series/crypto-irl.

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