According to data shared by Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), Bitcoin’s energy consumption has dropped to 10.65GW, down more than 25% from 15GW in April.
CCAF estimates energy consumption by collecting data from a number of mining pools and evaluating it against other public sources through several data validation techniques. At its peak last year, Bitcoin consumed an estimated 16GW of power.
The drop in consumption can be attributed to the mining hash rate, which slipped to 199.312 exahash per second for mining each block on the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin’s price has also fallen over 50% during the same period.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners are bracing for the crypto winter, having sold more BTC last month than they had mined as per data from publicly-traded miners who are required to file transaction data with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Canada-based public mining firm, Bitfarms sold 3000 BTC – nearly 50% of their holdings – last week worth about $62 million.
Jeff Lucas, CFO of Bitfarms said:
“Since January 2021, we have been funding operations and growth through various financing measures.”
He added:
“We believe that selling a portion of our BTC holdings and daily production as a source of liquidity is the best and least expensive method in the current market environment.”
In the last week, bitcoin miners have dumped over 18,000 BTC in the market. Some have even halted operations completely as the business became unviable due to falling bitcoin prices.
As a result of the mining exodus, $4 billion in miner loans are under stress, and the market is flooded with used GPUs.
If previous cycles are any indication, bitcoin power consumption could slide further.
