Cryptocurrency

One Bitcoin transaction now uses more energy than a home needs in a week

Bitcoin is a buzzword nowadays. It does not need any introduction now as almost everyone is talking about it. It was around $2200 back in July when I first started noticing its hike and it is on the rise since then. Although some bans in different countries, especially in China, affected its growth for a temporary period but it has started rising again and is unstoppable since then.

Bitcoin network has grown tremendously and it has become a lot more difficult to mine a Bitcoin now. With an average personal computer, it may take several weeks or even months to mine a single bitcoin. As the Bitcoin network is growing, a lot more energy is required to mine and maintain Bitcoins. It is reported that Bitcoin miners use over 24 terawatt-hours energy annually as they try and mine the Bitcoins. This is as much energy as the entire country of Nigeria uses in a year. It is to be noted that Nigeria has over 185 million population. If we further break it down, about 215 KWh (kilowatt-hours) energy is required for a single Bitcoin transaction.

Now that is a lot of energy as a single home consumes about 900 KWh energy per month with all the appliances and machinery in it. It means that 215 KWh of energy, which is required for each Bitcoin transaction, is enough to run a house and everything in it for a week.

Bitcoin mining uses a public ledger and a hash which is made of data of transactions in the block. All of the blocks are linked together and it is impossible to create a fake block. If you more interested in Bitcoins and Bitcoin Mining, you can check these guides:

Bitcoin has already seen a 600% boost in 2017 and if it makes it to $10,000, the boost will increase by several hundred percents. Bitcoin has been in news a lot of times this year for the obvious reasons. It has seen the price hike and drops several times but the graph continued to rise several times. It hit the $6,000 mark at the end of the October and with the delay of just a day, it reached $6,500 and then $7,000 mark.