Bitcoin Mining Requires More Electric Energy Than It Is Permissible   

Because of Bitcoin mining popularity Bitcoin network could soon be using more electricity than some large European countries.

According to the new research published in science journal Joule by the end of the 2018 Bitcoin network could be using 0.5 per cent of the world’s electric energy to mine bitcoins.

As a result of the study Alex de Vries who is professional financial economist and blockchain specialist calculated that at the present moment Bitcoin network utilizes 2.55 gigawatts of electricity.

bIn fact Alex de Vries calculates that by the end of 2018 the quantity of electricity usage can rise to 7.67 gigawatts, which is almost as much energy as it takes to power Austria.

So it is obvious that if Bitcoin’s value rises as high as some experts predict, the network could eventually consume more than 5 per cent of the world’s electricity.

In any case, commentators of the investigation have brought up that the counts depend on ‘unstable suppositions’ and deficient proof.

De Vries, who is the founder of the Digiconomist blog, a senior consultant at the Experience Center of PwC in the Netherlands, is the sole author of the new study. He wrote,

“The electricity that is expended in the process of mining Bitcoin has become a topic of heavy debate over the past few years.

It is a process that makes Bitcoin extremely energy-hungry by design, as the currency requires a huge amount of hash calculations for its ultimate goal of processing financial transactions without intermediaries (peer-to-peer).

We cannot observe this hashrate directly, but it is possible to derive this number from the observable difficulty and the actual time required to mine new blocks for the blockchain.”