Episode notes
We welcome Michel Rauchs, research affiliate and longtime contributor to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance which just released an update its Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index featuring new mining location data. Covered in this episode:
- Why Michel returned to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance
- The evolution of the CCAF's miner benchmarking efforts
- The original motivation for the Bitcoin Energy Index
- The relationship between the CCAF and Cambridge University
- How to estimate energy consumption from hashrate figures
- The meaning of the confidence interval in the electricity consumption figures
- How CCAF amassed the CBECI mining map
- Is the pool sample for the mining map representative?
- Methodological drawbacks with miner location assessment
- Why the CCAF is still reluctant to determine a carbon emissions figure for Bitcoin
- New evidence regarding the seasonal hashrate migration
- Is the Chinese crackdown going to lower the carbon intensity of the Bitcoin network?
- Is country-level granularity sufficient to determine the energy mix of mining?
- How the CCAF devised comparisons between the Bitcoin network and other consumers of energy
- Does Bitcoin get held to a different standard than other industries?
- Michel's experience talking to the press about Bitcoin energy consumption
- Has the narrative changed in the press at all?
- Michel's level of optimism regarding the decarbonization of Bitcoin mining
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