Secondly, it was claimed by Smith that Bitcoin mining hogs local power resources, which deprive regular customers of electricity. Carter produced some figures that show that mining is mainly concentrated in the areas where there is actually an excess of unused energy.
Within China, the vast majority of mining occurs in four provinces only. Xinjiang, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan prove to be the most concentrated places of mining. Between these four provinces, they account for 63% of the global Bitcoin hashrate from Q4 2019 to Q2 2020.
The main reason for selecting these four areas is that they are using a combination of coal, solar, wind, and hydropower. Which will have a relatively low population density and an overabundance of energy.
According to the statistics from the Digiconomist and Cambridge University. Bitcoin mining has been estimated to consume between 89 TWh/year and 138 TWh. Suffice to say, there’s enough nonviral energy out there to run Bitcoin many times over. It’s just a matter of deploying hashrate in the right locations, which miners are doing — aggressively.
If Bitcoin mining, which is relatively portable, is concentrated in areas where electricity is unused and therefore is comparatively cheap. For example, Alex de Vries, founder of Digiconomist, mentioned in a recent article:
Carter doesn’t believe that Proof of Stake can compete in terms of security and decentralization. However,