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posted by martyb on Monday May 21 2018, @02:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-many-DeLoreans? dept.

According to a press release carried by Eurekalert

In the first rigorously peer-reviewed article quantifying Bitcoin's energy requirements, a Commentary appearing May 16 in the journal Joule, financial economist and blockchain specialist Alex de Vries uses a new methodology to pinpoint where Bitcoin's electric energy consumption is headed and how soon it might get there.

The abstract of the article says

The Bitcoin network can be estimated to consume at least 2.55 gigawatts of electricity currently, and potentially 7.67 gigawatts in the future, making it comparable with countries such as Ireland (3.1 gigawatts) and Austria (8.2 gigawatts). [...]

The author offers a caveat:

[...] all of the methods discussed assume rational agents. There may be various reasons for an agent to mine even when this isn't profitable, and in some cases costs may not play a role at all when machines and/or electricity are stolen or abused.

[Other] reasons for an agent to mine Bitcoin at a loss might include [...] being able to obtain Bitcoin completely anonymously, libertarian ideology [...] or speculative reasons.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @05:08PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @05:08PM (#682270)

    Car analogies:

    Current BTC usage estimate-
      2.55 gigawatts = 3419606 hp
        If an average car can produce 150 hp (peak power), this takes 22797 cars, all going full throttle.

    Future estimate-
      7.67 gigawatts = 10286000 (~ten million) hp
        For the same average car, this takes 68573 cars, all going full throttle.

    According to Wikipedia, there were 263.6 million registered vehicles in the United States in 2015. Of course most of them were not running at any given time (except perhaps during rush hours).

    Looking wider, US publisher Ward's estimates that as of 2010 there were 1.015 billion motor vehicles in use in the world. This figure represents the number of cars; light, medium and heavy duty trucks; and buses, but does not include off-road vehicles or heavy construction equipment.

    I'll leave it to someone else to produce estimates based on more realistic power levels, as used in normal driving (most of the time is not at full power.) Even with this adjustment, BTC is only a fraction of the power being used on ground vehicle transportation.

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  • (Score: 2) by EETech1 on Monday May 21 2018, @10:31PM

    by EETech1 (957) on Monday May 21 2018, @10:31PM (#682420)

    Or about 50 large container ships!

    At least they are not burning bunker fuel to mine BTC (yet)