A study presented by the Panda Analytics platform found that the cost of mining the leading cryptocurrency is estimated at $ 4.3 billion, while the average market value of gold mining per year exceeds $ 87 billion.
The gold mining industry requires 92 million barrels of oil annually in the form of diesel fuel to keep it running. This is about $ 6 billion.
Given that global oil consumption is at 34 billion barrels in 12 months, gold production requires 0.27% of this volume. And Bitcoin mining requires 0.07% of the world's electricity consumption per year.
Panda Analytics analyst Vladimir Jelivashich believes that comparing the energy consumption of BTC and, for example, countries like Ecuador, is a rather meaningless state. Bitcoin has nothing to do with the characteristics of states. But comparing gold and cryptocurrency is logical.
As follows from the 2017 report of the Barrick Gold Corporation, the extraction of an ounce of the precious metal cost about $ 794. An average of about 88 billion ounces are mined each year, costing $ 70 billion.
However, experts believe that the gold mining company is developing one of the most budgetary deposits. Therefore, we can assume that the cost of gold mining is on average 25% higher, and global costs are at the level of 87.3 billion, which is 20 times more than similar indicators of Bitcoin.
American economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman recently changed his mind about cryptocurrencies, stating that bitcoin is "more useful than gold."
The scientist was once quite critical of the first cryptocurrency. He stated that BTC interferes with the development of the monetary system, throwing it "300 years ago." This naturally could not but provoke a serious surge of discontent and criticism from the cryptocurrency community. But, after some time, Krugman said that in the future, the first cryptocurrency will turn "into something really worthwhile."
"Gold is dead ... Bitcoin is more promising than gold," said the economist.
As a confirmation of the scientist's words, earlier BTC trading volumes exceeded the volumes of the OTC gold market. In 2018, the OTC gold market reached $ 446 billion, while the bitcoin market is estimated at $ 1.38 trillion this year.
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