Bitcoin Mining now consuming more electricity than 159 individual countries
In this map you can see all the countries that individually consume less electricity than all the mining power directed towards Bitcoin. According to an Digiconomist article Bitcoin's estimated annual electricity consumption as of today is 30.25 TWh. With its current price at an all time high the annual mining revenues are $8,586,874,673 while the estimated consumption costs are valued at $1,512,271,665. There is currently 275 KWh of electricty consumed per transaction meaning you could power 9.3 U.S households for 1 day for a single transaction. Doesn't sound as crazy now that the transaction fees of Bitcoin are becoming massive.
The estimated annual electricity consumption right now is equivalent of 0.13% of the total global electricity consumption, if all Bitcoin miners were in a country of their own they would be ranked 61st in the world.
Comparing the map above with a map that shows the percentage of population with access to electricity it does show some relevance to power consumption of miners especially in the African countries
Here is a quoted list of some more interesting facts about the electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining taken from the source:
In the past month alone, Bitcoin mining electricity consumption is estimated to have increased by 29.98%
If it keeps increasing at this rate, Bitcoin mining will consume all the world’s electricity by February 2020.
Estimated annualised global mining revenues: $7.2 billion USD (£5.4 billion)
Estimated global mining costs: $1.5 billion USD (£1.1 billion)
Number of Americans who could be powered by bitcoin mining: 2.4 million (more than the population of Houston)
Number of Britons who could be powered by bitcoin mining: 6.1 million (more than the population of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool, Bristol, Croydon, Coventry, Leicester & Nottingham combined) Or Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Bitcoin Mining consumes more electricity than 12 US states (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming)
Here's a map of global bitcoin mining consumption compared to each country's electricity consumption
Bear in mind that the more ASIC miners are created and enter the market, the higher the electricity consumption, the bitcoin mining difficulty and the more countries Bitcoin Mining overtakes
Bitcoin Mining Consumption VS European Countries
Bitcoin Mining Consumption VS U.S States
Here is a scary chart. While Bitcoin Mining currently is only consuming 0.13% of the world's electricity output, if it keeps this up and countries would not add any new power generating capacity, it would consume all of the world's electricity by February 2020.
Bitcoin mining does not seem plausible to me, I predict that it will either change algorithm once it deems to be distributed enough, although many know how monopolized the hashrate is, or people will just ditch it at some point for more energy friendly currencies who are already out in the free market.
I am upset to know as I recently invested in bitcoin mining. Nice article @acidyo
This is such an inefficient system, at a time when we need to reduce wasteful consumption. Imagine if bitcoin hits 1 mil what the power consumption will be. This is why I support a POS system, hopefully ethereum will take over and save us from wasting more energy. I must admit I do mine as well but I'm not sure how much longer I can support such a wasteful system.
Hmmm, how long before they introduce some sort of carbon tax for bitcoin mining ?
That's crazy and i think is a big big issue for bitcoin in a near future. Regards
resteemed for visibility. I'm trying to this unknown author out into the world.
I think this explains it. Sorry for the Link Drop but better explains the paradox of power vs profitability.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@pawsdog/is-bitcoin-really-decentralized-or-are-we-being-led-like-lambs-to-the-slaughter
HODL bro HODL
I'm not a HOdler.. I'm a trader... why keep a deprecating asset if I can buy it back at a lower cost. If your neighbor told he would buy your $10 widget today for $13 and you knew you could buy and identical widget from another neighbor at $7.00 tomorrow; what would you do?
I think you forgot a
Indeed they did!
@pawsdog @mejustandrew Yes they did.
And I am one of them.
Stop self-voting comments. :p
I thought the 4 cents I gave it was worth it to show the world I read your posts occasionally. It's designed to help you! LET ME HELP YOU!!!
Yeah but u self-voted after I already voted it up :p
meaning you just wanted to be on top of the comments to leech followers off me! :D
Well, that's not much of a concern for me as I think I may be a little too technical or sophisticated for your average follower... but my followers I think will trust you more if they know I'm standing behind you. You know, propping you up.
@aggroed Great idea👍🏼
Sounds like it is definitely time to switch to mine more environmentally friendly crtyptos! Adios PoW
lol I read "Acidyo's PoW" at first glance. :D
Saying it out loud makes it sound even more alike!
This is crazy. Right now the developing countries and many third world countries cannot even cater to every individual's need for electricity and there are still households with no electricity and such a grand scale use is so saddening. Maybe this is why AI and digital world is dangerous overpowering human need.
it's Shocking, i think bitcoin has so many flaws it has higher tx fees and also very very slow confirmations and now i heard it's mining consumes huge amount of electricity as well but our lovely steem has lighting fast speed and no tx fees as well and also it consumes no electricity as it is mined with proof of brain, so in my opnion steem is the No. 1 and the best cryptocurrency, thanks for sharing the very nice information with us, Stay awesome.
@adnanrabbani yes indeed steem has many advantages. But who cares ?
The only electricity it's consuming is that of witnesses running nodes and people using the site/blockchain.
Or we can say it's our greed overpowering humanity
nice article, I agree it is not sustainable, almost seems as a waste considering all the countries or people that have to live without power. Unfortunate, I wish it was more balanced. As someone that works at building electricity infrastructure i suppose it's good news. Here they are phasing out coal power so I'm not sure how much growth in consumption the market can handle.
The problem with this calculation is that it complete forget that the world energie consume will also rise and the development of new technologies. Maybe in 2020 we have fusion power reactor that could power the earth with no problem or we could have quanten computer or computer made of supra conductor that reduce the energie consumation havily.
Yeah, I did mention that
so it does not count the fact that we are moving towards cleaner energy like solar power and increasing the generation from there.
But if the development is made like in Germany then we realy will have a problem. First shut down the nuclear power plants and then start building solar, wind, etc energie and realize oh shit we don't have enough energie let by the french nuclear energie and power up the coal power plants, because it is good for the nature. The best at the end id that we don't even have a place to stock all the radioactive material.