AI could soon surpass Bitcoin mining in energy consumption, according to a new analysis that concludes artificial intelligence could use close to half of all the electricity consumed by data centers globally by the end of 2025.
Technology
AI could consume more power than Bitcoin by the end of 2025
The estimates come from Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Institute for Environmental Studies who has tracked cryptocurrencies’ electricity consumption and environmental impact in previous research and on his website Digiconomist. He published his latest commentary on AI’s growing electricity demand last week in the journal Joule.
AI already accounts for up to a fifth of the electricity that data centers use, according to de Vries-Gao. It’s a tricky number to pin down without big tech companies sharing data specifically on how much energy their AI models consume. De Vries-Gao had to make projections based on the supply chain for specialized computer chips used for AI. He and other researchers trying to understand AI’s energy consumption have found, however, that its appetite is growing despite efficiency gains — and at a fast enough clip to warrant more scrutiny.
“Oh boy, here we go.”
With alternative cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin — namely Ethereum — moving to less energy-intensive technologies, de Vries-Gao says he figured he was about to hang up his hat. And then “ChatGPT happened,” he tells The Verge. “I was like, Oh boy, here we go. This is another usually energy-intensive technology, especially in extremely competitive markets.”
There are a couple key parallels he sees. First is a mindset of “bigger is better.” “We see these big tech [companies] constantly boosting the size of their models, trying to have the very best model out there, but in the meanwhile, of course, also boosting the resource demands of those models,” he says.
That chase has led to a boom in new data centers for AI, particularly in the US, where there are more data centers than in any other country. Energy companies plan to build out new gas-fired power plants and nuclear reactors to meet growing electricity demand from AI. Sudden spikes in electricity demand can stress power grids and derail efforts to switch to cleaner sources of energy, problems similarly posed by new crypto mines that are essentially like data centers used to validate blockchain transactions.
The other parallel de Vries-Gao sees with his previous work on crypto mining is how hard it can be to suss out how much energy these technologies are actually using and their environmental impact. To be sure, many major tech companies developing AI tools have set climate goals and include their greenhouse gas emissions in annual sustainability reports. That’s how we know that both Google’s and Microsoft’s carbon footprints have grown in recent years as they focus on AI. But companies usually don’t break down the data to show what’s attributable to AI specifically.
To figure this out, de Vries-Gao used what he calls a “triangulation” technique. He turned to publicly available device details, analyst estimates, and companies’ earnings calls to estimate hardware production for AI and how much energy that hardware will likely use. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which fabricates AI chips for other companies including Nvidia and AMD, saw its production capacity for packaged chips used for AI more than double between 2023 and 2024.
After calculating how much specialized AI equipment can be produced, de Vries-Gao compared that to information about how much electricity these devices consume. Last year, they likely burned through as much electricity as de Vries-Gao’s home country of the Netherlands, he found. He expects that number to grow closer to a country as large as the UK by the end of 2025, with power demand for AI reaching 23GW.
Last week, a separate report from consulting firm ICF forecasts a 25 percent rise in electricity demand in the US by the end of the decade thanks in large part to AI, traditional data centers, and Bitcoin mining.
It’s still really hard to make blanket predictions about AI’s energy consumption and the resulting environmental impact — a point laid out clearly in a deeply reported article published in MIT Technology Review last week with support from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. A person using AI tools to promote a fundraiser might create nearly twice as much carbon pollution if their queries were answered by data centers in West Virginia than in California, as an example. Energy intensity and emissions depend on a range of factors including the types of queries made, the size of the models answering those queries, and the share of renewables and fossil fuels on the local power grid feeding the data center.
It’s a mystery that could be solved if tech companies were more transparent
It’s a mystery that could be solved if tech companies were more transparent about AI in their sustainability reporting. “The crazy amount of steps that you have to go through to be able to put any number at all on this, I think this is really absurd,” de Vries-Gao says. “It shouldn’t be this ridiculously hard. But sadly, it is.”
Looking further into the future, there’s even more uncertainty when it comes to whether energy efficiency gains will eventually flatten out electricity demand. DeepSeek made a splash earlier this year when it said that its AI model could use a fraction of the electricity that Meta’s Llama 3.1 model does — raising questions about whether tech companies really need to be such energy hogs in order to make advances in AI. The question is whether they’ll prioritize building more efficient models and abandon the “bigger is better” approach of simply throwing more data and computing power at their AI ambitions.
When Ethereum transitioned to a far more energy efficient strategy for validating transactions than Bitcoin mining, its electricity consumption suddenly dropped by 99.988 percent. Environmental advocates have pressured other blockchain networks to follow suit. But others — namely Bitcoin miners — are reluctant to abandon investments they’ve already made in existing hardware (nor give up other ideological arguments for sticking with old habits).
There’s also the risk of Jevons paradox with AI, that more efficient models will still gobble up increasing amounts of electricity because people just start to use the technology more. Either way, it’ll be hard to manage the issue without measuring it first.
Hiking is one of life’s great joys. Turning off the screens and stepping out into nature for an extended period of time, perhaps even several days, is rejuvenating. Unfortunately, as someone with two young kids and a bad back, I’m not really able to go backpacking anymore. So I often find myself trying to live vicariously through others who write about their lengthy travails along the Appalachian or the PCT. That’s what I thought I was signing up for when I picked up On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor. But it turned out to be so much more.
The prologue starts with Moor talking about his decision to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. And chapter one doesn’t stray too far from the expected subject matter either. It focuses primarily on Moor’s trip to Western Brook Pond in Newfoundland and broadly discusses the concept of wilderness.
His talents as a writer are apparent from moment one. A storm pins Moor down on a ridge:
For the better part of an hour, awash in mounting waves of tympanic rumble, I had time to reconsider the merits of hiking. Stripped of its Romantic finery, the wild ceased to inspire; only a gauzy scrim separated sublimity and horror.
This is perhaps the first hint that what you’re in for is not some travelogue or a simple memoir that uses the trail as a narrative device. Chapter two immediately solidifies this, launching a discussion of ant trails and the fine distinctions of various English words for lines of movement.
On Trails bounces around gleefully from topic to topic: Game trails, fiber optic wires, Moor’s stint as a shepherd. And all throughout, Moor seamlessly navigates shifting tones. One moment, he’s waxing poetic about the power of nature, the next, he’s spinning an anecdote about misplacing an entire flock of sheep with a comic’s sense of pacing, then turning philosophical about the damage done by colonialism.
It’s a testament to Moor’s skill that the book not only manages to be compulsively readable, but never feels disjointed as he swings wildly from exploring a proto-internet envisioned by engineer Vannevar Bush in 1945, to quoting poet Gary Snyder.
On Trails starts with a simple idea: how did the Appalachian Trail, or any hiking trail for that matter, form? And from there it branches off endlessly into a thousand different tributaries, exploring how the very concept of trails can help us understand the world.
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You’ve seen CAPTCHA checks everywhere. You click a box. You move on. No big deal. Now imagine that same box asking you to press a few keys on your keyboard. It might tell you to open a command window and paste something. It feels a little odd. Still, the page looks real.
That is exactly what scammers are counting on. A new warning from the Identity Theft Resource Center highlights a growing scam that turns a basic security check into a malware trap.
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META ACCOUNT SUSPENSION SCAM HIDES FILEFIX MALWARE
This fake CAPTCHA looks legitimate at first, but the moment it asks you to press keyboard shortcuts, it turns into a malware trap. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
How the fake CAPTCHA scam works
This scam flips a familiar process into something dangerous. Here is what happens:
- You land on a website that looks normal
- A CAPTCHA box appears, asking you to verify that you are human
- Instead of clicking images, you get instructions
- The page tells you to press Windows + R
- Then press Ctrl + V and Press Enter
At that point, the damage is already underway. Those steps open a hidden Run window on your PC. A malicious script is already copied to your clipboard. When you paste and execute it, you install malware without realizing it. No download button. No warning screen. You did it yourself.
TOP 5 SCAMS SPREADING RIGHT NOW
Many people encounter these scams during everyday browsing, often while distracted or multitasking on their devices. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
What gets installed on your computer
Security researchers say this scam often delivers StealC malware. This type of malware works quietly in the background. It looks for anything valuable and sends it to attackers. That can include:
- Saved passwords
- Browser login sessions
- Autofill data
- Cryptocurrency wallet details
Because it runs silently, many people have no idea anything is wrong until accounts start getting accessed.
Why is this trick so effective?
This scam works because it feels familiar. People trust CAPTCHA prompts. They see them on banking sites, shopping pages and login screens. That trust lowers your guard. It also avoids the usual red flags. There is no suspicious download. No pop-up warning. No obvious scam message. Instead, it gives you instructions. Simple steps. Follow them, and you bypass your own security.
A real CAPTCHA will never do this
This is the key takeaway. A legitimate CAPTCHA will never:
- Ask you to open a command window
- Tell you to use keyboard shortcuts like Windows + R
- Instruct you to paste or run commands
If you ever see that, close the page immediately.
What this means for you
This scam shows how fast online threats are evolving. You can do everything right. Avoid bad links. Ignore suspicious emails. Still, a single moment of trust can lead to a full compromise. That is why scams like this are so dangerous. They target behavior, not just technology.
HOW 1 MAN GOT SCAMMED IN SECONDS USING GOOGLE
Once the malicious command runs, attackers can quietly access sensitive data like passwords and login details without you noticing. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Ways to stay safe from fake CAPTCHA scams
Start with awareness. That alone stops most attacks. Here are practical steps that make a real difference:
1) Never follow keyboard instructions from a website
If a page tells you to open Run or paste a command, leave immediately.
2) Close the page instead of interacting
Do not try to “fix” it. Do not click anything else. Just exit.
3) Use strong antivirus software
Security tools like strong antivirus software can catch malware even if it gets installed. Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at CyberGuy.com.
4) Consider using a data removal service
Scammers often pair stolen data with information from data broker sites. A data removal service can help reduce your exposure and limit follow-up scams. Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting CyberGuy.com.
5) Keep your system updated
Updates patch vulnerabilities that malware often exploits.
6) Change passwords if you think you were exposed
Use a separate device to update your accounts and consider using a password manager to create and store strong, unique passwords for each account. Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2026 at CyberGuy.com.
7) Watch for unusual activity across your accounts
Look for login alerts, password reset emails or transactions you do not recognize.
What to do if you ran the fake CAPTCHA commands
Act quickly. Time matters here.
- Disconnect your computer from the internet
- Run a full antivirus scan
- Change passwords from another device
- Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on key accounts
The sooner you respond, the better your chances of limiting damage.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Scammers are getting smarter about how they trick people. They are not relying on obvious phishing emails anymore. They are blending into everyday online habits. That simple CAPTCHA box you have clicked hundreds of times now carries risk if it behaves differently. Trust your instincts. If something feels off, it probably is.
If a website asked you to press a few keys to prove you are human, would you hesitate or follow along without thinking? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.
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