The amount of energy used by computers “mining” bitcoin so far this year is greater than the annual usage of almost 160 countries, according to new research.
Research by energy tariff comparison service PowerCompare.co.uk shows that the amount of energy expended mining bitcoin globally has already exceeded the amount used on average by Ireland and most African nations.
PowerCompare.co.uk used stats from Bitcoin and cryptocurrency data provider Digiconomist, which estimates that 29.05 TWh of electricity was used to mine bitcoin, compared to an estimated 25 TWh of electricity per year used by Ireland.
You can see a full list of the 159 countries whose energy usage is eclipsed by bitcoin here or see it visualised below (the orange countries are those that use less electricity than bitcoin mining):
https://www.businessinsider.nl/bitcoin-mining-electricity-usage-2017-11/?international=true&r=US
Bitcoin's incredible price run to break over $7,000 this year has sent its overall electricity consumption soaring, as people worldwide bring more energy-hungry computers online to mine the digital currency.
An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year.
This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. On a larger scale, De Vries' index shows that bitcoin miners worldwide could be using enough electricity to at any given time to power about 2.26 million American homes.
Expressing Bitcoin's energy use on a per-transaction basis is a useful abstraction. Bitcoin uses x energy in total, and this energy verifies/secures roughly 300k transactions per day. So this measure shows the value we get for all that electricity, since the verified transaction (and our confidence in it) is ultimately the end product.
It's obvious this energy consumption explosion can not go on for long before bitcoin uses more energy than all countries on earth combined. A big Bitcoin Crash is thus inevitable. Probably soon after it peaks somewhere over the 10000 mark.
