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At 72.61 terawatt-hours/year and an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour, that's an asset that loses 9.6 billion per year. And if you ever stop

At 72.61 terawatt-hours/year and an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour, that's an asset that loses 9.6 billion per year. And if you ever stop wasting electricity, your bitcoin become less valuable. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

oarsinsync 6y ago
> an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour Source? The link supplied uses 5 cents/kWh, which is also an assumption on their part that they do not explain either. There are lots of reports of 'seasonal mining' occurring in China, where mining operations are occurring in areas with very cheap or completely free electric, generally because the costs of producing the electricity are fixed, rather than scaling up or down with demand (geothermal / hydro / other renewables).
- MichaelBurge 6y ago
  I got that figure from Google, but it's the average residential rate and I guess you'd get the industrial rate for a large operation(my power company charges 5.95 cents for that).
Passthepeas 6y ago
Vast majority of crypto currency mining is done with excess green energy that would otherwise be rejected by the grid and wasted, as high as 78% by some estimates. https://medium.com/value-of-bitcoin/bitcoins-energy-consumption-is-a-necessity-and-has-positive-impact-on-the-environment-752502288082 https://medium.com/value-of-bitcoin/bitcoins-energy-consumpt...
- banachtarski 6y ago
  Sorry but this reeks of nonsense to me. Even if true, surely the compute power could be used for protein folding or something actually useful instead of hashing bits only to throw the results away the majority of the time. Crypto needs to die.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    Not all cryptocurrencies require a ton of electricity. Some, such as those based on Proof of Stake are extremely efficient and use very little electricity so it's not fair to disparage them all on that basis.
smsm42 6y ago
I think there's a mistake here since crypto is not mined with average electricity. Nobody (at least not at scale) just puts a mining rig in an apartment in the middle of San Francisco. It's mined where it's cheap, so using average residential energy price is hugely misleading. That's like estimating the cost of making a car by summing up the prices of parts and labor at the car dealerships - that's not how the parts are actually procured when making a car!

oarsinsync 6y ago

> an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour Source? The link supplied uses 5 cents/kWh, which is also an assumption on their part that they do not explain either. There are lots of reports of 'seasonal mining' occurring in China, where mining operations are occurring in areas with very cheap or completely free electric, generally because the costs of producing the electricity are fixed, rather than scaling up or down with demand (geothermal / hydro / other renewables).

MichaelBurge 6y ago
I got that figure from Google, but it's the average residential rate and I guess you'd get the industrial rate for a large operation(my power company charges 5.95 cents for that).

Passthepeas 6y ago

Vast majority of crypto currency mining is done with excess green energy that would otherwise be rejected by the grid and wasted, as high as 78% by some estimates. https://medium.com/value-of-bitcoin/bitcoins-energy-consumption-is-a-necessity-and-has-positive-impact-on-the-environment-752502288082 https://medium.com/value-of-bitcoin/bitcoins-energy-consumpt...

banachtarski 6y ago
Sorry but this reeks of nonsense to me. Even if true, surely the compute power could be used for protein folding or something actually useful instead of hashing bits only to throw the results away the majority of the time. Crypto needs to die.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Not all cryptocurrencies require a ton of electricity. Some, such as those based on Proof of Stake are extremely efficient and use very little electricity so it's not fair to disparage them all on that basis.

smsm42 6y ago

I think there's a mistake here since crypto is not mined with average electricity. Nobody (at least not at scale) just puts a mining rig in an apartment in the middle of San Francisco. It's mined where it's cheap, so using average residential energy price is hugely misleading. That's like estimating the cost of making a car by summing up the prices of parts and labor at the car dealerships - that's not how the parts are actually procured when making a car!