itcoin may be a useful way to send and receive money, but all this financial liberation doesn’t come for free. The community of miners who create bitcoins is using vast quantities of electrical power in the process. The process has led some experts to suggest that bitcoin isn’t very environmentally friendly.
At this rate, the bitcoin network runs at 342934450 watts, which equates to around 343 megawatts. Calculations based on EIA data reveal that the average US household consumes about 1.2 kilowatts of power, meaning that 343 megawatts would be enough to power 285,833 US homes at the time of writing, that's quite a lot of energy.