Apolline Blandin (Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance) – Estimating Bitcoin’s energy footprint (EP.85)

Apolline Blandin, cryptocurrency research lead at the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, joins the show. In this episode: 

  • The Cambridge AltFin research agenda
  • The motivation behind the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
  • How they determine Bitcoin’s electricity consumption
  • How Bitcoin’s energy usage can be understood in context
  • The genesis of their new geographical mining estimates
  • Why high granularity estimates of mining location are so important to determine its energy mix
  • How and why Bitcoin hashpower migrates on a seasonal basis
  • Why there is so much spare hydro capacity in Sichuan and Yunnan
  • Surprising country-level findings
  • The most defensible academic approaches Apolline has seen so far
  • Why the per-transaction cost estimates of Bitcoin are misleading
  • The prospects for wind, solar, and natural gas for bitcoin mining

Check out this episode!