Mining | Bitcoin mining's annual electricity consumption has surpassed Iraq and is approaching Singapore

The latest data from the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (as of February 10) shows that the annual electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining is estimated to be about 48.37 terawatt-hours (TW, trillion watt-hours), equivalent to 0.20% of global electricity consumption, and it continues to grow steadily over time.

Source: Diginomist

Of the total supply of 21 million bitcoins originally set by Satoshi Nakamoto in the 2008 white paper, nine years after its launch on January 3, 2009, more than 80% has been "mined" and entered the market through bitcoin "mines" around the world.

"Mining" is actually using the computing power of the chip ("hashpower") to continuously perform "hash collisions" in the blocks of the Bitcoin global network, solving them faster than competitors, thereby winning the right to record in the public ledger and obtaining Bitcoins rewarded by the system. This repetitive and boring process is figuratively called "mining" in the Bitcoin industry.

As time goes by, the number of bitcoins produced will decrease. In 2009, the reward given to miners for the "Genesis Block" was 50 bitcoins; today, the reward for miners who mine new blocks quickly has dropped to 12.5 bitcoins. In the future, "mining" new bitcoin blocks will require higher and higher computing power from mining machines, and the equipment will become more and more expensive. As the biggest cost, the electricity cost to maintain the operation of the mine will also become higher and higher.

On January 10 this year, the annual power consumption of Bitcoin mining was estimated to be only 39.84 TWh. Just one month later, this figure has climbed by nearly 10 TWh to the current 48.37 TWh. The "appetite" for electricity in the "mining" new areas has grown far beyond the normal national electricity demand.

What does 48.37 TWh mean? Iraq, which ranks 54th in the world in electricity consumption, has only 44.4 TWh for its citizens, and has now been surpassed by Bitcoin mining. According to the current trend, Bitcoin mining power consumption will surpass that of Singapore, a busy island nation ranked 52nd (49.5 TWh), but it will only be after the Spring Festival.

Source: Diginomist

Nicholas Ashworth, a stock analyst at Morgan Stanley, predicted in a research report on January 10 that the electricity demand for mining Bitcoin and other digital currencies in 2018 will reach a maximum of 140 terawatt-hours, which is four times the current estimated power consumption and reaches 0.6% of the world's total electricity consumption.

This also means that in the next ten months, the average monthly electricity consumption of Bitcoin will increase by more than 8 terawatt hours. It should be noted that China's new installed capacity in 2018 was only 120 gigawatts (GW), which is only one-fifth of 1 terawatt hour!

When compared with other emerging industries, the conclusion is even more surprising. As we all know, electric vehicles/new car manufacturing concepts are the hottest emerging concepts in 2017; Morgan Stanley previously predicted that the first popularization of electric vehicles in Europe will bring 1-2 trillion watt-hours of electricity demand in 2018, reaching 25 trillion watt-hours by 2025, and the global electric vehicle electricity demand will reach 125 trillion watt-hours.

Source: Morgan Stanley

In other words, the electric vehicle industry’s electricity demand will barely reach the level of demand for digital currency “mining” this year until 2025! Based on this, Ashworth made the conclusion that “Bitcoin 2018 = Electric Vehicle 2025”, and believed that the hot topic of the power industry in 2018 will give way to the “mining demand” of Bitcoin and other digital currencies.