Even in case you have only started to develop an interest towards the blockchain space and cryptocurrencies, you have probably heard of the power consumption problems that come hand in hand with Proof of Work protocol.
Bitcoin power consumption is said to be insanely high, and this is all due to the fact that the original cryptocurrency uses Proof of Work protocol for validating transactions made with BTC through the Bitcoin network.
With Proof of Work miners can easily validate transactions, but at what cost?
It is said moreover, that Bitcoin is becoming more expensive in fees as well, which is a consequence not only of the mining monopoly that ASIC miners are holding but also because they need to compensate through fees with large energy consumptions.
So, what is the cost of Bitcoin power consumption?
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What is the Cost of Bitcoin Power Consumption?
It is said that Bitcoin network spends over 60 TWh in energy consumption during the period of a single year.
This might not be a shocking statistic in the case where you wouldn’t be aware of the fact that this amount of energy consumption is just enough to power an entire country of a size of Netherlands, Belgium, or Switzerland with electricity on annual basis.
So, when it comes to Bitcoin power consumption, it becomes evident that Proof of Work asks for a lot of energy that has to be paid through fees that are proportionally growing from year to year for Bitcoin transactions.
This is why it just isn’t cost-effective to send micropayments in BTC – the fees can grow larger than the amount you are sending, which is especially applicable to small parts of Bitcoin units.
The bottom line is that the energy consumption of Bitcoin is so ridiculously high, which eventually makes it expensive to use.
The Miners’ Monopoly and Bitcoin Power Consumption
Miners with ASICs are running wild with BTC transaction validations, as the creator of the block can reward himself with around 12 BTC units, which means that are millions entering the mining industry each day with Bitcoin transactions.
The Proof of Work protocol allows them to keep their hegemony alive, as there is no original dev team available to eventually consider changing the protocol to Proof of Stake which is far less energy consuming than PoW protocol.
That is how miners are definitely taking advantage of Bitcoin power consumption which is ridiculously high in oppose to many of its crypto peers, but at least someone is benefiting from this amount of electrical consumption.
To try and diminish the factor of high energy consumption seen in Bitcoin, there are many forks derived from the BTC blockchain that are using hybrid protocols like Proof of Activity, or numerous new projects that are offering delegated Proof of Stake or plain PoS protocols that spend far less energy than BTC.
Still, despite the high power consumption, Bitcoin miners are still spinning millions per day with validating BTC transaction that goes through the network. Keywords: bitcoin power consumption calculator, bitcoin energy consumption index, bitcoin energy consumption per transaction, bitcoin mining electricity cost, kwh per bitcoin, ethereum energy consumption, bitcoin power consumption 2020, bitcoin energy consumption reddit
