98% of Mining rigs fail to verify transactions - according to analyst claims

Founder of Digiconomist - Alex de Vries - has given a damaging assessment of the amount of electricity used by Bitcoin mining in a recent interview with UK-based media outlet, The Telegraph.

According to de Vries, a single BTC transaction consumes the same quantity of electricity needed to power a British home for 59 days, 52,042 hours of streaming YouTube videos, or ~780,500 Visa sales.

The article states that the annual returns produced from Bitcoin mining are nearly $5.9 billion - with almost 4 billion mining units competing for a share of the prize worldwide. At the end of August 2019, Bitcoin miners were estimated to have created $14 billion in profits since the technology’s inception.

De Vries asserts that 98% of mining rigs will never verify a transaction, resulting in an immense and unfruitful electricity expenditure.

“They are sort of participating in a massive lottery and every 10 minutes one gets lucky and gets to produce the next block.”