Electricity used for mining bitcoin globally is reached a level that there are 150 counties consuming less electricity in a year. simply if bitcoin is a country, at current electricity consumption , it would stand at 62nd position in world for consuming electricity in a year.
According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index by Digiconomist bitcoin miners consumed 30.14 TWh (1 TWh = 100 Crore Units) till 27 November 2017. On current growth rate of electricity consumption, it would stand at 38.36 TWh of electricity, placing it at 58th position, just below Hungary, in terms of total electricity consumption by countries. The total energy consumption is more than of Ireland which uses 23.79 TWh of electricity and North Korea at 11.24 TWh.
Similarly, Etherum (ETH) — the next most used cryptocurrency, has consumed 10.59 TWh of electricity as on Today. That is almost the equal amount of electricity consumed by Paraguay in a year.
At the current level, the electricity which goes towards mining bitcoin would be enough for 30 million Indians.
In the end of this year Bitcoin mining electricity consumption is reach the position on 58th rank next to Hungary(57th) used.
Bitcoin network vs Etherium network total consumption
To put the energy consumed by the Ethereum network into perspective we can compare it to another payment system like Bitcoin and VISA. The following graph shows the total energy consumption for each of these networks, measured by the total number of U.S. households that could be powered by it.
To put things in an even better perspective we can calculate the energy consumption per single transaction. It can then be shown that this results in a number of KWh that could easily power multiple U.S. households for a full day.
Bitcoin vs Etherium Consmption per transaction
So after this many technology expert are working on to fix this big environmental problem and some projects are introduced in past some time. Some projects like Envion are working on a blockchain that runs on only green energy like solar power and wind energy.
If we go with this current growth rate of proof of work types blockchains in future it maybe become a big issue on environment. Lets share your thoughts on this topic.
About Me
I am Vishal Verma and I am bloogging on Steemit, Blockchain, cryrtocurrency, trading and other niche. I am authored some articles on this popular blogs. Follow me for most important updates about steemit and cryptocurrency. Connect with me on social: