Scientists calculate that the energy consumption of the network in bitcoin mining last year was equivalent to the electricity consumption in Ireland
The work of the computing machines that produce bitcoin, Ethereum (etherium) and other cryptocurrencies is more like actual mining than expected. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (USA). Their study is reported by The Guardian newspaper.
The scientists calculated that bitcoin costs about 17 megajoules of energy per U.S. dollar, while the production of metals – copper, gold and platinum – requires four, five and seven megajoules, respectively. The energy input for etherium was also seven megajoules, and for Monero it was 14. All cryptocurrencies combined, according to scientists, can be compared to aluminum production: it takes 122 megajoules of energy to mine one dollar of ore.
“It can take as much energy to mine one bitcoin as it does to electrify your house for a few months,” The Independent quoted John Mark Truby, director of the Center for Law and Development at the University of Qatar. In his view, maintaining the current rate of energy consumption could “ruin the planet.
Mining is the name given to the process of producing bitcoins, which appear as a result of solving numerous mathematical problems by computers located in different locations around the globe. This happens without the involvement of any central authority. Miner computers perform arithmetic operations quintillions of times per second. A miner (or pool of miners) who picks up a hash (a fixed-sized block of data resulting from the transformation of an arbitrary-length array of input data) wins 25 bitcoins, as well as the right to verify all transactions made in the last 10 minutes.
As The Guardian notes, cryptocurrency may be virtual, but the cost of energy is very real. Previous attempts to estimate how much electricity is burned to power the bitcoin network, still the largest transaction blockchain (blockchain), have focused on estimating the network as a whole. In November 2017, according to one study, the network’s energy consumption was equivalent to that of Ireland. Another source notes that the annual carbon emissions from the bitcoin network are similar to those from a million transatlantic flights.
To account for the huge fluctuations in the price of cryptocurrencies and the effort expended by miners, the researchers used the median of their value between January 1, 2016 and June 30, 2018, as well as the geographic distribution of miners. “A cryptocurrency issued in China produces four times more carbon emissions than the same cryptocurrency produced in Canada,” the authors wrote, emphasizing the importance of country specificity.
John Mark Truby, while not opposing cryptocurrency as such, emphasizes that government regulation should encourage miners to choose more energy-efficient ways of production. For example, Ethereum is considering switching from the more energy-intensive proof-of-work protection algorithm to the proof of stake algorithm, which gives more chances to generate a block of transactions to the node with the highest balance.
