The US Department Of Energy Plans To Re-evaluate The Use Of Bitcoin Mining Electricity

Illustration of Bitcoin mining rigs (photo: bing ai)

JAKARTA - The US Department of Energy's statistics agency may be making a new survey of the use of bitcoin mining electricity, which will involve a longer approval process, after canceling its request for emergency data following a lawsuit filed by crypto miners, according to court records filed on Friday, March 1.

To pursue a new survey tracing the use of US crypto mining power, the Energy Information Administration of the Energy Department must allow a 60-day comment period, according to agreements between government agencies and Riot Platforms and the Texas Blockchain Council, which are suing to block early data collection efforts.

It is not clear how long the launch of the new survey will take.

Bitcoin mining requires a large amount of electrical energy as the Bitcoin mining process involves intensive and complex computing. There are several reasons why Bitcoin mines require large electrical energy.

Bitcoin mining involves a transaction verification process on blockchain networks. Miners use a special computer called "rig" to solve complex mathematical puzzles. This process requires large computing power and high energy consumption.

The more miners participating in the Bitcoin network, the greater the competition to acquire Bitcoin as a block reward. This encourages miners to increase their computing power by using more hardware, which in turn increases energy consumption.

The Bitcoin protocol is designed to automatically adjust mining difficulties every few weeks to ensure that the new blocks are mined for about every 10 minutes. As the number of miners and network computing power increases, mining difficulties also increase, requiring more energy to solve increasingly complicated mathematical puzzles.

High computing power is needed to maintain the security of the Bitcoin network. By ensuring that miners must emit energy and resources to mine Bitcoin, this helps prevent attacks on the network and maintain system integrity.

As a result, Bitcoin mines require a large amount of electrical energy to support their computationally intensive operations.