As Reported, The Bitcoin Network Now Consumes Nearly 7 Nuclear Plants Worth of Power

Bitcoin's Power Consumption 

As bitcoin’s processing power has touched all-time highs in 2020, the SHA256 hashrate that secures the Bitcoin network has grown massively during the last few years. Consuming as much as seven nuclear power plants, moreover, the gigawatts of electrical consumption powering industrial bitcoin mining is today. 

Groups of miners compete in order to capture as many block rewards as they can is the process of bitcoin mining. In order to hash away at the Bitcoin network’s consensus algorithm so they can outpace competitors, bitcoin miners essentially plug machines into the wall that consume electricity.

Dedicated to the blockchain network, hashrate is how analysts measure the amount of computing power. 

Obtaining more BTC via mining is basically ASIC mining machines producing higher hashrate values other than others. Filled with thousands of ASIC mining rigs, in 2020 there are now extremely large facilities and warehouses. So, they can pool their hashrate together in order to gather more bitcoins, additionally, solo miners working in remote areas in the world typically join a mining pool. 

Making up the total amount of hashrate dedicated to the blockchain is collectively the aggregate total of all the bitcoin miners combined. Around 120 exahash per second is the bitcoin network hashrate. 

How much electricity is consumed to power the entire network, is not exactly known to analysts. On how much electricity is consumed and the average price miners pay per kilowatt-hour researchers have been able to come up with a very close estimate. 

The Statistics According To Experts 

Showing that on average, miners are paying between $0.03 to $0.05 per kWh this year for instance are findings from Tokeninsight’s 2020 mining research as well as the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. At the end of March 2020, the cost to mine a single bitcoin is roughly $7,577.51 as estimates also indicate. This ultimately gives the miners around $4,184 of a profit margin at current exchange rates, as on Monday, August 24. 

Claiming the cost to produce a single BTC is around $5,000 although another estimate from Bitooda’s mining report published in July. BTC network hashrate could surpass 260 exahash per second during the next year and a half according to researchers in Bitooda. 

The report published on July 15, 2020, notes that by their assessment the Bitcoin network is set to exceed 260 EH/s in hashrate in the next 12-14 months. An upgrade cycle that will replace older generation S9 class rigs with newer S17 and the next-generation S19 class rigs, it is led by a modest increase in available power capacity from 9.6 to 10.6W. 

Attempting to estimate the amount of energy consumed by bitcoin mining is the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, (CBECI), produced by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative finance. The Bitcoin network’s power consumption is more than seven gigawatts of electricity today according to the CBECI. 

It was observed that hereby the CBECI indicates running the BTC network with 7.46 GW as it equals around 63.32 TWh or terawatt-hours of energy consumption on Monday. Equal to more than seven nuclear power plants or 21.8 million photovoltaic solar panels is the amount of power consumed by bitcoin miners. 

Here it is observed that as powerful as 2,884 utility-scale wind turbines or 9.1 million horses of energy is the BTC network. 

The Mining Facility In Kazakhstan 

It was reported by the mining facility operator Enegix as it told the financial technology columnist Paddy Baker, that the firm was set to launch a large mining facility in Kazakhstan with 50,000 ASIC devices last week. 

As calculations indicate the Kazakhstan facility would power only 90,000 American houses against Baker’s story calculating the operation would power 180,000 US homes. The whole BTC network could power 2.25 million US homes, according to CBECI’s data. 

China commands 65.08% of the global hashrate according to Cambridge’s mining map, whereas this estimate may be incorrect. Researchers from Bitooda claims that Chinese miners only account for 50% of the network as well as the US has upped its game to 14% in July. 

Here the experts find Cambridge’s mining map indicating that in contrast, it is the US commanding 7.24%, the Russia 6.9%, the Kazakhstan 6.17%, the Malaysia 4.33%, and Iran capturing 3.82% of the SHA256 hashpower. Connected to major mining operations, the mining map leverages geolocation data of miners.  

The Final Thoughts

Finally, here comes Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto who has invented and allegedly mined the first 18,000 blocks on what is the single high-end computer work station and thereby predicted the massive growth of the network handles today. 

Nakamoto thereby wrote on November 2, 2008, that most users would run network nodes at first whereas it would be left more and more to specialists with server farm of specialised hardware as the network grows beyond a certain point. In the case of Bitcoin mining, the rest of the LAN connects with that one node, as a server farm would only need to have one node on the network as Nakamoto added.