Bitcoin Sustainability Report October 2018

Due to the stability in revenues available to miners, Bitcoin’s energy consumption has been stable as well recently. This can be observed as well in the average network hashrate. The highlights of the past month are as follows:

  • Mining revenues were stable.
  • Mining revenue from transaction fees decreased by 15 percent.
  • The average fee per single transaction was $0.47.
  • The total network power consumption increased by a little over 3 percent.
  • The average energy consumption per transaction was down by around 5 percent, and amounts to 828 KWh per unique transaction (enough to power 1 U.S. household for more than 27 days).

The full report is featured below:

Description Value Monthly change Trend
Mining Revenue
Average Bitcoin Price $6,477 -1.76%
Average Price Volatility 30.31% -32.63%
Mining Revenue from Fees $3,520,464 -15.35%
Mining Revenue from Blocks Mined $402,491,337 -0.13%
Total Mining Revenue $406,011,800 -0.28%
Mining Costs
Total Costs of Mining $310,515,795 3.33%
Percentage of Total Revenue 76.48% 3.62%
Total KWh Consumed 6,210,315,898 3.33%
Network Statistics
Total Transactions Processed 7,501,075 8.60%
Average KWh Consumed per TX 828 -4.83%
Average Fee per Transaction $0.47 -21.67%
Energy cost per TX (at 5 cents per KWh) $41.40 -4.83%
Average Network Hashrate (GH/s) 56,492,517,128 0.39%
Average Network Effciency (J/GH) 0.15 -0.34%
Bounds
Economic Maximum KWh Consumed 8,120,236,009 -0.28%
Technical Minimum KWh Consumed 4,848,274,095 3.68%

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 Switzerland in 2018.

Description Value
Mining Revenue
Average Bitcoin Price $8,162
Average Price Volatility 66.04%
Mining Revenue from Fees $284,300,482
Mining Revenue from Blocks Mined $5,328,963,729
Total Mining Revenue $5,613,264,212
Mining Costs
Total Costs of Mining $2,647,999,557
Percentage of Total Revenue 47.17%
Total KWh Consumed 52,959,991,141
Network Statistics
Total Transactions Processed 64,883,403
Average KWh Consumed per TX 816
Average Fee per Transaction $4.38
Energy cost per TX (at 5 cents per KWh) $40.80
Average Network Hashrate (GH/s) 38,781,077,292
Average Network Effciency (J/GH) 0.19
Bounds
Economic Maximum KWh Consumed 112,265,284,237
Technical Minimum KWh Consumed 32,642,992,567

Disclaimer

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.

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

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Comments (2)

  1. Marc Thomas Reagan November 4, 2018
    • Marc Thomas Reagan November 4, 2018