Is Bitcoin quickly becoming the power-slurping behemoth of our age?

The latest focal point on Bitcoin seems to be it’s ever growing demand for electricity. Though claims vary, these power-slurping digital coins are often vividly compared to households; one single Bitcoin supposedly drains as much as several average American homes.

In Bitcoin’s defense, most household comparisons are pretty unfair. Just because Bitcoins use a lot of power, this does not mean anyone is deprived of any electricity themselves. The comparison serves as a value judgment. Do we want more Bitcoins, or do we want more households?

It is possible to have both.

Lets inspect a popular assumption like this one more closely.

___________________________________________________________________

“Did you know that one Bitcoin transaction requires just as much power as an average American household uses in 5 days (163 kilowatt-hours)”

___________________________________________________________________

For most people power consumption can be confusing, Kilowatt-hours (kWh) especially. For the sake of readability we will keep it simple. In fact, kWh is probably a poor way of comparing it anyway.

If we truly want to compare Bitcoin to households, we should look at average constant power usage. kWh is total amount of energy used over a certain amount of time. We’d rather look at how much power is required to constantly keep the system running; the amount of Watts. This way we can make the comparison much clearer.

Another thing to consider is Bitcoin’s limitation when it comes to transactions. Currently the network only allows up to 7 transactions per second. This means that Bitcoin’s total power consumption will be limited too.

One household is simple. If we go by our 163 kWh for 5 days that means 32,6 kWh a day. So rather, a constant average use of around 1,36 kiloWatt.

(32,6 kWh divided by 24 hours)

By using Bitcoin’s total applied computing power and the power requirements of mining hardware (calculations can be found at the bottom of the article)

we came to this conclusion:

The entire Bitcoin network uses 700 045 kiloWatt.

Which is the equivalent of about 500.000 households.

Theoretically, because the Bitcoin network can calculate up to 7 transactions per second, one transaction would only cost 0,14 seconds to calculate.

For realistic purposes we have to work with half that speed, because on average there are only 3,18 transactions each second.

What this boils down to is 60 kWh for every transaction.

Household comparisons seem to hold their ground pretty well. However, most articles do a bad job of putting this in perspective. It seems to imply that Bitcoin’s power usage is a growing problem when it’s not. The fact that most people have only very limited reference does not really help.

Does Bitcoin use a lot of energy? Yes. Is it something to be worried about?

Not likely.

Bitcoin is not going to use much more energy in the future. Updates like SegWit and improved hardware make Bitcoin’s future look shockingly bright.

Mathematical Justification

___________________________________________________________________

Total Network Power

For our calculations we took the AntMiner S9, which is one of the most efficient mining units. We’re giving miners the benefit of the doubt here ;)

AntMiner S9 | 11500 Gh/s, 1127 Watt

Total Hashrate of Bitcoin (26 sept) | 7 143 326 031 GH/s

7 143 326 031 GH/s ÷11500 Gh/s = 621 158

Meaning you need 621 158 Antminers.

620000 x 1127 Watt = 700 045 000 Watt

__________________________________________________________________

Theoretical kWh per transaction

Now we calculate one transaction

7 transactions per second

0,14 seconds per transaction

(700 045 951 Watt /3600) * 0,14 =27kWh per transaction

Realistic kWh per transaction

9,5 minutes per block= 570 sec

1813 transaction each block

570s / 1813 transactions = 3,18 transactions per second.

0,31 seconds per transaction

(700 045 951 Watt /3600) * 0,31 =60kWh per transactions.

__________________________________________________________________

Source

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty