Scientists say network latency in Bitcoin mining is causing massive energy wastage – equivalent annually to the total generating capacity of Switzerland’s entire hydroelectric system. This energy waste results from inefficiencies in the mining process and increased competition among Bitcoin miners.
In a new study published May 26 in the journal PNAS NexusThe researchers’ goal was to provide a theoretical model to measure patterns within the network that powers Bitcoin’s distributed ledger system.
But they also calculated that in 2025, about 16,000 MWh was wasted from redundant Bitcoin mining efforts, where competing mining efforts use massive amounts of computational power to yield the same units of Bitcoin. This is approximately equal to the total generating capacity of Switzerland’s 701 hydropower plants, According to data from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
It is important to note that this figure differs from the total energy consumed by Bitcoin mining activity, Researchers have estimated To stand at an annual level of 138 terawatt-hours by June 2024. This exceeds the annual energy consumption of many developed countries including norway And Netherlands.
energy consuming crypto
Concerns over the environmental impact of Bitcoin and other proof-of-work blockchain technologies have grown in recent years.
For example, in 2021, the water use of Bitcoin mining, primarily for liquid-cooled computer equipment, is equivalent to more than the household water use of 300 million people in rural sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2023 united nations report.
Bitcoin is based on a distributed ledger system, called blockchain, which operates on a “proof-of-work” model. To generate a new unit of digital currency, computing power must be used to solve a digital puzzle. In theory, the first entity to successfully “solve” the problem adds a new “block” of transactions to the ongoing chain and is awarded a set amount of Bitcoin in return.
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However, due to the explosion of interest in Bitcoin as a financial tradable asset, the competition to be the first to complete a block and claim the prize has become incredibly fierce. The solution to the puzzle is based on computational power, with specialized hardware providing a greater advantage in speed. This has led commercial entities to invest in the creation of specialized data centers dedicated to such mining operations.
Because the race to be the first to receive a block is so competitive, the difference between first and second place can be a fraction of a second. This often results in “accidental forks” – where two competing blocks are registered at approximately the same time.
In this scenario, the block with the longest chain of subsequent blocks built on top of it would eventually become a verified and legitimate part of the blockchain – earning its miners a Bitcoin reward – while the competing block would be seen as invalid and worth nothing.
The energy required to solve the proof of work and generate these “orphan blocks” – as well as any subsequent blocks built on top of them before a winner is decided – is ultimately wasted.
An engineer stands next to a Bitcoin mine.
(Image credit: PixeloneStocker via Getty Images)
“Despite their hallmarks of a distributed network, accidental forks are the inability of the Bitcoin protocol to maintain a certain level of security that wastes computational resources (and thus energy), which increases the cost of network operations and has an environmental impact,” the researchers wrote in the study.
according to Crypto Carbon Rating Institute (CCRI)A cryptocurrency analysis firm, Bitcoin is by far the most dominant cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of over $1.1 trillion – which is 80% more than the next most popular currency, Ethereum. However, instead of proof-of-work, Ethereum uses a different form of consensus mechanism to establish block authorship, called “proof-of-stake”, which is significantly less computationally intensive.
While cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin also use proof-of-work methods, Bitcoin is almost twice as large as its next closest competitor in this category, making it orders of magnitude more power-hungry.
who rules the pool
While previous models to analyze fork rates assumed all miners in the network were equal, this study considered elements such as network latency and geographic distribution, aiming to provide a “null model” – a baseline that can be used as a starting point to inform future analyses.
The model also allowed researchers to quantify other notable trends, such as the distribution of “mining pools” – consortia in which mining operators pool their efforts to maximize their potential success. They identified a decline in Chinese mining pool dominance from 2022 following the country’s ban on Bitcoin mining, while also finding a high level of consolidation at the upper echelons of the Bitcoin mining industry.
The report found that only three mining pools produce more than 50% of new Bitcoin blocks. This is a problem because there is a risk of a “51% attack”, whereby unscrupulous miners enter fraudulent information into the blockchain by ensuring that they always produce the longest chain and, therefore, appear valid.
This level of consolidation distorts the market for processing fees that Bitcoin users pay to have their transactions included in the next block, the researchers said, and thus may allow miners to arbitrarily delay the inclusion of specific transactions.
Barucca, P., Campazzola, C., and Xu, J. (2026). How the interplay between power concentration, competition, and diffusion affects the resource efficiency of distributed ledgers. PNAS Nexus, 5(5), page 135. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag135