SOURCE : NEW18 NEWS
Last Updated:June 08, 2025, 15:03 IST
Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath predicts energy and electrons could become trade currency in a decade due to rising data center and AI energy consumption.
What are data centers?
Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath has shared a thought-provoking idea based on research with a lingering assumption that energy and electrons might be the currency of trade in a decade. In a series of tweets, he shared the infographics explaining the research, highlighting the growing financial footprint of data centers and artificial intelligence.
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The electricity consumption in data centers is insane, with one new Data center consuming more electricity than 4 lakh electric vehicles in a year. Thus, the research says, electricity alone eats up 65 per cent of a data center’s costs – primarily for computing and cooling.
What Are Data Centers?
Data centers are large facilities that store, process, and manage digital data. They are the backbone of the internet and digital services—every time you use a website, stream a video, store files in the cloud, or make a bank transaction, chances are it passes through a data center.
US is the leader with the most number of data centers (3680), followed by Germany (424) and UK (418). India ranks seventh in the number of 262 data centers.
The more servers the data center has, the more energy it requires.
Earlier, OpenAI founder Sam Altman explained how the words like please and thank you cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
The research adds that one ChatGPT query uses 10x the electricity of a regular Google search.
Data Centers To Consume 10% Of Global Energy By 2030
The research shows that data centers’ consumption of energy is expected to grow to 10 per cent by 2030, which is 1.5 per cent of global energy.
“Just 5% of global internet searches using AI could consume enough energy to power over 1 million Indian homes for a year.”
Energy To Become Asset
Kamath’s idea is rooted in an emerging economic paradigm: as the demand for electricity grows, energy becomes a critical and tradable asset—much like money. If energy is as essential as cash in powering AI, streaming services, financial systems, and cloud operations, pricing and trading electricity akin to currency could be the next step.
This concept isn’t just futuristic—it carries real-world relevance. Companies might begin to hedge not only currency risk but also energy risk. Imagine supermarkets trading kilowatt-hours or data centers using energy derivatives in a similar fashion to forex trading. Over time, energy tokens or blockchain-based credits for electrons could emerge, giving rise to a sophisticated energy-backed financial ecosystem.
If this shift happens, economies would have to rethink everything from inflation metrics to banking, as “energy currency” could fundamentally alter how value is transferred and stored—making energy both a means and a measure of wealth.
About the Author
Varun Yadav is a Sub Editor at News18 Business Digital. He writes articles on markets, personal finance, technology, and more. He completed his post-graduation diploma in English Journalism from the Indian Inst…Read More
Varun Yadav is a Sub Editor at News18 Business Digital. He writes articles on markets, personal finance, technology, and more. He completed his post-graduation diploma in English Journalism from the Indian Inst… Read More
- First Published:
June 08, 2025, 15:03 IST
