Bitcoin Price Causes Electricity Consumption to Soar

Bitcoin has been tearing up the stock charts for some reason and while more and more people are trying to get into the Bitcoin game, there are a few things that are happening because of this. First, graphics cards are pretty hard to come by and the price is staying pretty static on these as the demand is so high. Second, as more people try to mine coins, electricity use is through the roof and this could cause issues down the road. If you are paying the electric bill, you may not be making much money on coins, but the good news is that the price could break $7,000 this year.

An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year.

Source: Vice