How Many Barrels of Oil Do AI Data Centers Consume on a Daily Basis?

Back in 2017, we did the math to figure out how much oil it takes to mine a single Bitcoin. The answer then was about 20 barrels of oil equivalent per coin. Today it's closer to 500. The Bitcoin network now draws somewhere between 138 and 175 terawatt-hours a year, depending on whose model you trust… Split across the roughly 164,000 coins minted annually since the last halving, that lands at around 500 barrels of oil equivalent at today’s prices per Bitcoin, and past 600 on the higher estimates. But Bitcoin is the warm-up…