Bitcoin Sustainability Report April 2018

Digiconomist is committed to promoting (the development of) sustainable blockchain technology. Blockchain protocols such as Bitcoin currently run on the energy-slurping proof-of-work algorithm (creating these proofs of work is better known as “mining”). The Bitcoin Energy Consumption index is a key tool that was created to provide insight into this energy consumption amount, and raise awareness on the unsustainability of the proof-of-work algorithm. The sustainability report uses historical data from the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index to summarize the sustainability progress and performance of the Bitcoin protocol over the past month.

April Highlights

After March being a relatively stable month for Bitcoin miners, their revenues dropped again in April. This is partially due to the ongoing decrease in revenues from transaction fees, but also the Bitcoin price weighed down on the value of the mining rewards. The highlights of the past month are as follows:

  • Mining revenues decreased by a little over 15 percent.
  • Mining revenue from transaction fees decreased by 17 percent.
  • The average fee per single transaction was $1.43.
  • The total network power consumption increased by almost 6 percent.
  • The average energy consumption per transaction was up by around 8 percent, and amounts to 893 KWh per unique transaction (enough to power 1 U.S. household for more than 30 days).

The full report is featured below:

Description Value Monthly change Trend
Mining Revenue
Average Bitcoin Price $7,995 -11.52%
Average Price Volatility 72.81% -16.89%
Mining Revenue from Fees $8,039,216 -17.17%
Mining Revenue from Blocks Mined $516,713,328 -15.87%
Total Mining Revenue $524,752,544 -15.89%
Mining Costs
Total Costs of Mining $251,568,949 5.92%
Percentage of Total Revenue 47.94% 25.93%
Total KWh Consumed 5,031,378,986 5.92%
Network Statistics
Total Transactions Processed 5,635,041 -1.67%
Average KWh Consumed per TX 893 7.72%
Average Fee per Transaction $1.43 -15.38%
Energy cost per TX (at 5 cents per KWh) $44.65 7.72%
Average Network Hashrate (GH/s) 30,627,726,466 11.48%
Average Network Effciency (J/GH) 0.23 -1.81%
Bounds
Economic Maximum KWh Consumed 10,495,050,888 -15.89%
Technical Minimum KWh Consumed 2,204,811,124 7.87%

Year to Date Performance

Apart from the changes in monthly performance, numbers on the current year to date (YTD) performance are found in the following table. These numbers show that Bitcoin has, so far, consumed as much energy as countries like Portugal and Singapore in 2018.

Description Value
Mining Revenue
Average Bitcoin Price $9,905
Average Price Volatility 98.52%
Mining Revenue from Fees $251,735,434
Mining Revenue from Blocks Mined $2,631,682,033
Total Mining Revenue $2,883,417,466
Mining Costs
Total Costs of Mining $856,297,949
Percentage of Total Revenue 29.70%
Total KWh Consumed 17,125,958,975
Network Statistics
Total Transactions Processed 25,694,421
Average KWh Consumed per TX 667
Average Fee per Transaction $9.80
Energy cost per TX (at 5 cents per KWh) $33.35
Average Network Hashrate (GH/s) 25,482,160,806
Average Network Effciency (J/GH) 0.23
Bounds
Economic Maximum KWh Consumed 57,668,349,326
Technical Minimum KWh Consumed 7,337,600,247

For a daily estimate of Bitcoin’s energy consumption make sure to visit the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.

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