Bitcoin Consumes 30 Times More Electricity than Tesla Cars

As Bitcoin’s price has soared, so too has the energy consumption to produce it—to the point that Bitcoin mining now guzzles more electricity than all the electric cars in the world.

In 2018, Bitcoin’s power demand is set to more than triple, consuming as much energy in a year as the entire nation of Argentina, according to a new report by Morgan Stanley(MS, +1.11%).

The bank’s analysts forecast that Bitcoin mining could use up more than 125 terawatt hours of electricity this year, a level electric vehicles globally won’t reach until 2025. Last year, Bitcoin consumed 36 terawatt hours of energy—as much as the country of Qatar, Morgan Stanley estimated in a research note published Wednesday.

By comparison, all the Tesla (TSLA, -0.67%) cars on the road (about 280,000 at the end of 2017, according to company statistics) likely used less than 1.3 terawatt hours of electricity combined for the year, a Fortune analysis found. The analysis assumed each car drove 15,000 miles—roughly the national average—at a rate of 30 kilowatt hours of electricity per 100 miles, based on the median mileage rate for Tesla Model 3 and Model S vehicles, according to figures reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That means it cost 29 times as much energy to produce Bitcoins last year as it did to power all the Tesla cars driving today.

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