Assume that mining reward is approximately equal to investment. This will tend to be the case, though it fluctuates.
Right now we're rewarding 25 bitcoins, at a price of $45, every ten minutes, or $6,750 per hour. Let's say half the required investment is hardware, half electricity at the national average of 11 cents per kWh. Divide 3375/.11 for 30,681 kW power devoted to bitcoin at this moment.
With similar calculations, I recently figured out that if bitcoin were to reach the size of the U.S. dollar in about 20 years, it would be consuming about a gigawatt. It was less than I expected, because the number of new coins per block keeps decreasing, and you only pay electricity for the new ones. This doesn't account for transaction fees, which increase the mining investment that can be sustained. At the moment I think they're a small percentage of the mining award. I'm also neglecting miners' profit margins, which decrease our energy investment.
Coal is 22% of U.S. power production, and generates 2,460 kWh/ton. (30,681 * .22) / 2460 happens to equal almost exactly one ton of coal burned per hour to support bitcoin.
The U.S. generates 227 GW from coal, so our 6.7 MW is about one part in 33,000 of total U.S. coal consumption.
Sources: just type questions into google and all the numbers come right up. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that U.S. numbers were more typical of the bitcoin population than global numbers.
Math goof, can't edit: 30,681 * .22 is 6750 kWh, which divided by 2460 kWh/ton is of course 2.74 tons of coal per hour, not sure how I came up with 1 ton.
Assume that mining reward is approximately equal to investment. This will tend to be the case, though it fluctuates.
Right now we're rewarding 25 bitcoins, at a price of $45, every ten minutes, or $6,750 per hour. Let's say half the required investment is hardware, half electricity at the national average of 11 cents per kWh. Divide 3375/.11 for 30,681 kW power devoted to bitcoin at this moment.
With similar calculations, I recently figured out that if bitcoin were to reach the size of the U.S. dollar in about 20 years, it would be consuming about a gigawatt. It was less than I expected, because the number of new coins per block keeps decreasing, and you only pay electricity for the new ones. This doesn't account for transaction fees, which increase the mining investment that can be sustained. At the moment I think they're a small percentage of the mining award. I'm also neglecting miners' profit margins, which decrease our energy investment.
Coal is 22% of U.S. power production, and generates 2,460 kWh/ton. (30,681 * .22) / 2460 happens to equal almost exactly one ton of coal burned per hour to support bitcoin.
The U.S. generates 227 GW from coal, so our 6.7 MW is about one part in 33,000 of total U.S. coal consumption.
Sources: just type questions into google and all the numbers come right up. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that U.S. numbers were more typical of the bitcoin population than global numbers.