>"It doesn’t have to be like this, researchers say." A team of researchers from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Cornell University in the U.S. and University of Surrey in the U.K. warns that if people continue to mine Bitcoin unchecked, the energy consumption associated with those activities could reach 297 Twh per year by 2024, more than the 290 TwH in electricity consumed by Italy in 2019.