By 2021, Ethereum’s energy consumption had increased, which was largely triggered by the bull market. As the market has now turned into a bear market, interest in the blockchain has waned, which is why activity on Ethereum has also declined. This leads to a decrease in the amount of energy consumed in the network.
Until 2022, the energy consumption of Ethereum had steadily increased. Over the past year, the network has experienced a huge influx due to the increase in DeFi and NFTs. The estimated energy consumption for the year increased by 50% within six months. In the third week of May, the estimated energy consumption for Ethereum had peaked at 93.98 TWh.
The fall in prices led to investors parting with Ethereum, which initially led to an increase in network activity. In the following weeks, however, energy consumption fell by 50%.
Currently, the estimated energy consumption for the Ethereum network is 51.82 TWh. This value was last seen in September 2021. Bitcoin’s energy consumption has also decreased. Data shows that the estimated energy of Bitcoin has dropped to 204,5 TWh, which is the lowest value for a year. In addition, the daily energy consumption for BTC is now 30% lower than in the previous month at around 10.57 GW.
The decline in the price of Ethereum has brought some repercussions. Not only the energy consumption has decreased, but also the profitability of the miners has recorded one.
Given that miners have to pay continuously for their operations, the price drop means that the returns have dropped, while they still have to pay the same USD value or more to carry out their mining operations.
The decrease in energy consumption also shows that miners are scaling back their mining operations due to this decrease in profitability. The same was also recorded in the BTC network, the price of which has decreased by more than 60% compared to the all-time high.
