Amid all the contention of the last few days, sparked by Elon Musk's virtue-signaling, the noise-to-signal ratio around the crypto market's energy use has gone to '11' on the Spinal Tap amplifier of social justice.

However, those darn 'facts' and 'science' keep getting in the way of the 'bitcoin = bad guy destroying the earth' narrative and new research by crypto firm Galaxy Digital (founded by former hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz) has shown that both the traditional banking system and the gold industry consume much more energy than the bitcoin network.

According to the report, compiled by Galaxy's mining arm, bitcoin's annual electricity consumption stands at 113.89 TWh (terawatt-hours). That includes energy for miner demand, miner power consumption, pool power consumption, and node power consumption. The amount is at least two times lower than the total energy consumed by the banking system, which is estimated to reach 263.72 TWh per year globally.