Burn, baby, burn!
Did you know? The Proof-of-work / waste mining in bitcoin is a global energy environmental disaster. The estimate for bitcoin classic transactions is 300 kW-h per bitcoin transaction (!) that's about 179 kilograms of CO₂ emissions¹.
¹: Assuming let's say 0.596 kilograms of CO₂ per kW-h (that's the energy efficiency in Germany) that's about 179 kilograms of CO₂ per bitcoin transaction (300 kW-h × 0.596 kg). For more insights see the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.
Why? Why? Why?
Did you know? The only purpose for burning millions of $$$ in energy every day (or billions every year) for the proof-of-work / waste hashing is... running a lottery that picks one (!) random winner every 10-minute, that's all.
Bitcoin's hash rate experienced an explosive increase over 2019, jumping from 42 exahashes per second (EH/s) (or, 42,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second) to 112 EH/s.
Mining difficulty more than doubled from the beginning to the end of 2019, rising from 6 T to 13 T.
(Source: Happy Birthday Bitcoin! Here's a Look at Bitcoin's 11th Year by the Numbers)
Note: No matter how many more tickets (e.g. from 42,000,000,000,000,000,000/s to 112,000,000,000,000,000,000/s) you "buy" by hashing more - the difficulty will rise (e.g. from 6 to 13) and the lottery keeps on picking one (!) random winner every 10-minute.
How Bitcoin Mining Works by Trolly McTrollface
Me: I just set a $100 bill on fire.
Everyone: That's stupid.
Me: I have undeniable proof.
Bitcoiners: We'll give you $200 for it.
From Saifedean Ammous' book The Bitcoin Standard:
The question of whether Bitcoin wastes electricity is at its heart a misunderstanding of the fundamentally subjective nature of value. Electricity is generated worldwide in large quantities to satisfy the needs of consumers. The only judgment about whether this electricity has gone to waste or not lies with the consumer who pays for it. People who are willing to pay the cost of the operation of the Bitcoin network for their transactions are effectively financing this electricity consumption, which means the electricity is being produced to satisfy [get-rich-quick] consumer needs and has not been wasted. Functionally speaking, Proof-of-Work is the only method humans have invented for creating digital hard money. If people find that worth paying for, the electricity has not been wasted.
That's the absurd logic from the Bitcoin is the new "Gold Standard" prophet.
Bitcoin's stupendous power waste is green, apparently - bad excuses for Proof-of-Work by David Gerard, May 2018
The more bitcoin is used, the fewer transactions it can process per watt-hour. Bitcoin currently uses 300kWh per transaction, and by the end of 2018 this will be 900kWh - for the same two to four transactions per second.
Bitcoin uses as much electricity as all of Ireland. And everyone else is starting to notice — and they're not happy. Non-technical people often assume that Bitcoin will get more efficient as it goes on - like other technologies do. This isn't the case at all.
With every other technology, the economic motivation is to reduce energy costs. But with Bitcoin, you make your bitcoins by spending as absolutely much energy as you can throw at the problem.
More efficient mining hardware comes out all the time - but it's then set competing against other mining hardware of the same model, and the efficiency improvements don't advance anything.
Thus, Bitcoin's energy efficiency only gets worse with time - which is what we see.
There Is Nothing Virtual About Bitcoin’s Energy Appetite by Nathaniel Popper, New York Times, January, 2018
Creating a new Bitcoin requires electricity. A lot of it. In the virtual currency world this creation process is called "mining." There is no physical digging, since Bitcoins are purely digital. But the computer power needed to create each digital token consumes at least as much electricity as the average American household burns through in two years...
How to Buy Bitcoin (The CO₂-Friendly Way) by Trolly McTrollface
- Take one $50 bill, five $10 bills, or ten $5 bills (I wouldn’t recommend change - stay with paper fiat).
- Go to the bathroom.
- Lift the lid of the loo.
- Throw money in.
- Flush down water.
Congrats! You just purchased $50 worth of Bitcoin - without fucking the planet!
Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (in Estimated TWh per Year) by Alex de Vries, Digiconomist
Annualized Total (Estimated) Footprints
- Carbon footprint: 34.75 Mt CO₂ - Comparable to the carbon footprint of Denmark
- Electrical Energy: 73.15 TWh - Comparable to the power consumption of Austria
Note: To calculate your own estimate start with the bitcoin network mining hashrate (at an all-time-high in 2019!) ...
You can calulate the minimum estimated energy consumption from the total network hashrate, assuming the only machine used in the network is Bitmain's Antminer S9 (drawing 1,500 watts each). On February 13, 2019, the minimum benchmark was changed to Bitmain's Antminer S15 (with a rolling average of 180 days), followed by Bitmain's Antminer S17e per November 7, 2019.
Bitmain is focused on computing chips with a vision of realizing a even more beautiful digital world. It has design capabilities for different chip processes, including the state-of-the-art 5 nanometer process. In the blockchain mining area, Bitmain has shipped billions of ASICs, accounting for 75% of the global market.
Q: How much electricity (kWh) does an Antminer S9 consume in a day?
A:
Shalom Komornik writes:
Find it's rated power and calculate. It is not difficult.
José Gregório De Figueiredo Rosa writes:
It depends on the "power" of each S9 Antminer. For example, the "Antminer Bitcoin S9 B3" has a "power" of 1600W. If the Antminer Bitcoin S9 B3 "remain connected 10 hours in a day, the daily consumption of electricity will be: 1600W x 10h = 16000Wh = 16kWh
Eliot Pearson writes:
The Antminer S9 draws 1.6 kW. If you ran the S9 for 24 hours that would be 38.4 kWh a day.
Russ Weiss writes:
We run a data center where customers host Antminer S9 units and other miners.
Bitmain's official specifications state that the units consume 1300 - 1340 watts at the wall with Bitmain's APW3 power supply. They mention an expected discrepancy of +10%, but it is not clear if that discrepancy relates to power consumption, efficiency percentage, hash rate, etc..
Based upon our experiences, on average, Antminer S9s actually draw about 1,500 watts.
Most miners run these systems 24 hours per day - so the equation is simple:
1,500 x 24 = 36,000 watt hours, or 36kWh.
In a 30-day month, these systems will draw about 1,080 kWh.
If your power cost is $.12/kWh, it will cost you $129.60 to run a single S9 unit. There is one thing that most of our customers do not account for when they are comparing the cost of hosting their Antminer at our data center to what it costs them at home. They don't think about the added cost of cooling the system.
(Source: Quora)