Cost of Computing
Bitcoin
- Mining a block currently gives a reward of 3.125 bitcoins
- A block is mined roughly ever 10 minutes.
- Roughly 450 bitcoins are mined per day.
- 24.85 GW x 24 hours = 596 gigawatt-hours is used every day
- One bitcoin is roughly 1.33 gigawatt-hours.
- Bitcoin mining hardware efficiency is 21.16 Joules per Terahash
- Bitcoin hashrate historical chart
- A hash is a double SHA-256 computation.
- Total bitcoin market capitalization
- Total energy cost is roughly 16 billion dollars.
- Market cap is 2.4 trillion dollars.
- EIA. Electric Power Monthly.
- Historical state residential electricity prices
- Bitcoin Mining Difficulty History Chart
- Bitcoin difficulty chart
| year | tW-hr per year | bitcoins created per year | mW-hr per bitcoin | exa-hash per year | hash per W-hr | US electricity $ per kW-hr | market cap billion $ | $ billion cost per year | energy cost over cap | tera-hash per block |
| 2011 | 0.14 | 2,628,000 | 0.05 | {$1.4 \times 10^{2}$} | {$1.0 \times 10^{9}$} | 0,10 | 0,02 | 0.014 | 90% | 0.0000005 |
| 2012 | 0.10 | 2,505,934 | 0.04 | {$5.2 \times 10^{2}$} | {$5.2 \times 10^{9}$} | 0,10 | 0,09 | 0.01 | 12% | 0.000002 |
| 2013 | 1.06 | 1,314,000 | 0.8 | {$1.6 \times 10^{5}$} | {$1.5 \times 10^{11}$} | 0,10 | 5 | 0.11 | 2% | 0.007 |
| 2014 | 4.73 | 1,314,000 | 4 | {$5.2 \times 10^{6}$} | {$1.1 \times 10^{12}$} | 0,10 | 7 | 0.47 | 7% | 0.02 |
| 2015 | 3.62 | 1,314,000 | 3 | {$1.7 \times 10^{7}$} | {$4.6 \times 10^{12}$} | 0,10 | 5 | 0.38 | 8% | 0.07 |
| 2016 | 5.73 | 998,066 | 6 | {$5.4 \times 10^{7}$} | {$9.5 \times 10^{12}$} | 0,10 | 11 | 0.59 | 6% | 0.2 |
| 2017 | 12.93 | 657,000 | 20 | {$3.0 \times 10^{8}$} | {$2.3 \times 10^{13}$} | 0,10 | 124 | 1.36 | 1% | 1 |
| 2018 | 43.32 | 657,000 | 66 | {$9.3 \times 10^{8}$} | {$2.2 \times 10^{13}$} | 0,11 | 150 | 4.56 | 3% | 4 |
| 2019 | 54.63 | 657,000 | 83 | {$2.3 \times 10^{9}$} | {$4.3 \times 10^{13}$} | 0,11 | 98 | 5.75 | 6% | 10 |
| 2020 | 67.14 | 446,078 | 151 | {$3.8 \times 10^{9}$} | {$5.6 \times 10^{13}$} | 0,11 | 350 | 7.11 | 2% | 16 |
| 2021 | 89.00 | 328,500 | 271 | {$4.6 \times 10^{9}$} | {$5.2 \times 10^{13}$} | 0,11 | 732 | 9.88 | 1% | 22 |
| 2022 | 95.53 | 328,500 | 291 | {$7.1 \times 10^{9}$} | {$7.4 \times 10^{13}$} | 0,12 | 608 | 11.8 | 2% | 30 |
| 2023 | 121.13 | 328,500 | 369 | {$1.4 \times 10^{10}$} | {$1.1 \times 10^{14}$} | 0,13 | 576 | 15.4 | 3% | 54 |
| 2024 | 168 | 216,677 | 775 | {$2.3 \times 10^{10}$} | {$1.4 \times 10^{14}$} | 0,13 | 1,346 | 21.8 | 2% | 91 |
Examples
- 25,000,000 euros to purchase
- 1,044 GPUs
- one megawatt x one year = 1 million euros
- 1,000 kilowatt x 8,760 hours = 1 million euros
- 8,760,000 kilowatt hours = 1 million euros
- 1,752,000 euros
- 0.20 euros for kilowatt hour
- 2025 increased fourfold to 125.9 million billion operations per second, and had been increased before that regularly
Literature