Bitcoin and all other cryptos that utilise a prrof-of-work algorithm are a
good way to abuse the world’s energy reserves and even worse they are
adding to the environmental crisis.
Let us break it down into the cost per transaction. Below are the current
estimates for the top 2.
Bitcoin Key Network Statistics
DescriptionValue
Bitcoin’s current estimated annual electricity consumption* (TWh) 45.64
Annualized global mining revenues $10,382,095,434
Annualized estimated global mining costs $2,282,035,219
Country closest to Bitcoin in terms of electricity consumption Iraq
Estimated electricity used over the previous day (KWh) 125,043,026
Implied Watts per GH/s 0.24
Total Network Hashrate in PH/s (1,000,000 GH/s) 21,960
Electricity consumed *per transaction* (KWh) 481.00
Number of U.S. households that could be powered by Bitcoin 4,225,991
Number of U.S. households powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for
a *single* transaction 16.25
Bitcoin’s electricity consumption as a percentage of the world’s
electricity consumption 0.20%
Annual carbon footprint (kt of CO2) 22,364
Carbon footprint per transaction (kg of CO2) 235.58
Ethereum Network Statistics
DescriptionValue
Ethereum’s current estimated annual electricity consumption (TWh) 12.68
Annualized global mining revenues $11,562,678,694
Annualized estimated global mining costs $1,521,968,628
Country closest to Ethereum in terms of electricity consumption Kyrgyzstan
Estimated electricity used over the previous day (KWh) 34,748,142
Implied Watts per MH/s 7.884
Break-even Watts per MH/s (based on 5 cents per KWh) 59.893
Electricity consumed per transaction (KWh) 33.00
Number of U.S. households that could be powered by Ethereum 1,174,359
Number of U.S. households powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for
a single transaction 1.12
Ethereum’s electricity consumption as a percentage of the world’s
electricity consumption 0.06%
src: digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
Now factor in that these per transaction figures are for the miner that is
first in confirming the block. All the work done by the other miners is
mostly thrown down the drain.
Also these estimates are on the lower side. but even if we were to work
with 400KWh of power per transaction, relate that to how long you could run
your house with such a figure. On my part this would be a month of heavy
usage.
The reason i call this a waste is that there are better means of achieving
the same blockchain based trust without the PoW algos. The best candidate
so far has been Hashgraph but unfortunately the founders of this tech got
greedy and decided to patent it instead of releasing it as open-source.
All the same, there are other options that are still viable and hopefully
we shall see these being implemented to keep the blockchain dream alive.
Regards,
Kevin
On 29 January 2018 at 12:30, Robert Muthuri via kictanet <
