A Single Bitcoin Transaction Can Power Your House for 18 Days
Summary
- A single Bitcoin transaction has an electricity consumption of 549 kWh.
- The total electricity used to mine Bitcoin rivals that of the entire country of Israel.
- Bitcoin mining hashrate has dropped more than 20% following the halving.
Proof-of-work networks are run by power-hungry hardware which computes the hashes that run and validate the blockchain. Bitcoin’s energy consumption has long been the subject of controversy. This is all too real as data by Digiconomist shows that the Bitcoin network consumes almost as much electricity as the entire country of Israel or 0.26% of the world’s electricity.
The massive electricity consumption is directly responsible for the Bitcoin network having a carbon footprint comparable to the entire country of Syria.
Furthermore, a single Bitcoin transaction has an electricity consumption of 549 kWh. To put this in perspective, that is enough to power an average U.S. household for over 18 days.
Bitcoin Hashrate Drops Following the Halving
The Bitcoin halving a few weeks ago, halved the Bitcoin block reward from 12.5 Bitcoin to 6.25 Bitcoin. In doing so, the cost of mining Bitcoin exceeded the price of one Bitcoin for many miners. This resulted in a massive hash rate drop in the Bitcoin network. The hashrate dropped from 121 EH/s to 92 EH/s in just a few weeks. This is equivalent to 263,000 of Bitmain S19 Pro miners leaving the network. The hashrate drop has also resulted in a 6% difficulty drop.
This rapid hashrate drop has pushed the average Bitcoin block time up, resulting in an increase in transaction fees, as discussed by Johnson Xu, Chief Analyst at TokenInsight. Despite the massive hashrate drop, the Bitcoin network continues to use millions of kWh on a daily basis.
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