How Much Power Does a Bitcoin Take to Create?

Cryptocurrency may sound fascinating as compared to fiat money. Bitcoin is useful for online transactions and it is an asset (a digital one) that has shown a promising future for the people who own them. Bitcoin has attracted a lot of investors from all across the globe. Now there are alot of Bitcoin currency exchange sites available online that provide guidance on bitcoin. 

Bitcoins are created by miners via solving complex mathematical computer calculations and these calculations require a lot of power. The massive amount of power required to generate one bitcoin has created a new debate whether this digital currency claims to solve problems of the modern world is environmentally friendly or not.  

Does Bitcoin Need A Lot of Energy to Mine?

To create or mine a bitcoin, people use multiple computers generally known as mining machines. These computers are then connected to a network of cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoins are created by individuals all around the globe. This is done by solving the complex mathematical puzzle via mining machines. According to one estimate every 10 minutes, someone somewhere in the world tries to solve a puzzle, and if he does it, he is and is rewarded with a few bitcoins. Once a puzzle is solved, a new complex puzzle or problem is created, and the process starts all over again.

The puzzles are somewhat essential for verifying bitcoins movements. They provide hurdles to make sure that nobody unfairly edits the worldwide transaction record.

Gradually people are learning about cryptocurrencies and besides investment directly into mined coins’ people have shown interest in mining too. The price of bitcoin is increasing every year therefore more and more people are jumping on this bandwagon to get their piece of share.

As a good number of people are continuously joining the network to solve the puzzles and get their share, the demand of power for this sector is increasing.  

This demand multiplies daily because the bitcoin puzzles are not ordinary puzzles it takes a lot of time and effort to solve one. A person cannot just come and solve it in a snap of time. Even if a person’s reward is very small.

Therefore, to make a reasonable amount of money from bitcoin mining, a huge number of miners create a network and work. If you want to know how huge it could be? Consider a warehouse full of miners working constantly.  

And therefore a lot of power is required to produce bitcoin because highly valuable items are never easy to have.

How Much Electricity Does a Bitcoin Need to be Created?

The puzzles are made up of several sums and these sums in general are known as hash. A one hash alone is equals to nothing. A huge amount is required to bear the fruit. In line with one research, the 2020 has marked the inclusion of nearly 120 exhashes per second on bitcoin networks. The exhash is equal to 1 quintillion (1018) hashes/sec.  

Due to a lot of power consumption companies mostly use ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) computers. These computers use less power than ordinary mining computers. But still mining takes a lot of time and power, i.e., 120 GW (gigawatts) per second. Almost 412 wind turbines are required to generate one gigawatt per second. To mine one bitcoin, it takes almost ten minutes that means for one bitcoin takes 600 seconds which is equivalent to 72000 gigawatts just for one bitcoin.

This is still a rough estimate number could vary depending upon the type of technology miners are using

According to one study bitcoin mining consumes energy of almost 2 million houses of the United States and another study by a United States Senate Committee of ENR (Energy and Natural Resources) claims that bitcoin currently consumes approximately 1% of the total energy of the world, and that’s a huge number.  

Besides all of the advantages that bitcoins bring to the table for solutions to our transactional problems the use of such a huge amount of power is staggering. Electricity generation is detrimental to our environment. And there lies a big question, once the use of bitcoin will become widespread more people will join the network and with time mining is also supposed to get difficult. Then how are we going to fulfill the needs without affecting our environment?