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Canadians have used an enormous amount of electricity for Bitcoin mining this year, placing additional strain on the country’s power grid.
A recent study on the cryptocurrency’s global energy consumption found that the amount of power required to mine one Bitcoin has doubled since April’s halving event, when the reward for one block went from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC.
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In Canada, about 4,048 gigawatt hours of electricity has been consumed by Bitcoin mining oerations since the start of 2024 according to a report by MarketsChain using data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
This amounts to an expenditure of $424.2 million, based on the average electricity rate of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour as of May, the report said.
“According to our calculations, this amount of energy could charge every electric vehicle in Canada 160.42 times or power 363,566 households for a year, accounting for 2.19 per cent of all 16.6 million Canadian households,” MarketsChain senior data analyst Ben Goldstein said.
Of the 125,550 Bitcoins mined globally in 2024, Canadian mining facilities are responsible for 8,135.69, or 6.48 per cent share of global production, the study said.
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This makes Canada the world’s fourth-largest Bitcoin mining hub, right behind the United States, China and Kazakhstan.
The study’s authors estimate that since the halving event on April 20, the average amount of electricity required to mine one Bitcoin doubled from 407,059 kWh to 850,219 kWh, while the cost rose from $42,656.06 to $89,095.14.
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