[ad_1]
The crash of the Bitcoin digital currency begins a downward spiral: many producers of Bitcoin give up because their activity is no longer worth it. This puts the system in distress, but has positive consequences on energy consumption.
Many Bitcoin miners are under pressure from low prices. (Image: Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters)
The gold rush is over: the main digital currency, Bitcoin, has lost 75% of its value this year. Since early November, the losses are heavy. To pay $ 6,000 for Bitcoin two weeks ago, you can get it now for less than $ 4,000. The price crash also affects almost all cryptocurrency. According to the web portal Coinmarketcap.com, which lists about 2,000 digital currencies, has reduced the total market value of these currencies from the peak reached in early January from $ 831 billion to only $ 121.6 billion.
The consequences for the whole system are considerable. Prices are currently so low that for many, the mining industry needed to produce crypto-currencies is no longer viable, according to a JP Morgan analysis of 23 November.
Minors create digital currency units in complex mathematical processes on computers or primarily with entire computer arrays. Since they are mostly offset by shares in the crypto-currencies they produce, their income has dropped dramatically. According to Blockchain.com statistics, miners' incomes have fallen by more than 80% since the beginning of the year. In contrast, the effort remained high, ie energy costs.
Many miners go for economic reasons. As reported by the Coindesk web portal, between the onset of turbulence in November, between 600,000 and 800,000 Bitcoin miners closed or, at least, temporarily shut down their facilities.
The consequences are particularly clear in China, where more than half of the cryptographic field is created. Here, many miners have withdrawn in recent weeks, as reported by the "South China Morning Post". Online networks present images and videos of warehouses from which the seemingly deleted server is eliminated. Even with almost free electricity purchased, power plants are no longer profitable to operate.
But the reduction in capacity is also evident elsewhere. For example, in the United States, the mining company Giga Watt, owned by Dave Carlson, has filed for bankruptcy because it can not meet the liabilities in time, which includes electricity bills.
Miners who are currently stopping around the world are not simply being replaced by others. This is illustrated by the so-called hash rate of Blockchain.com. This estimates the total computing power of the Bitcoin network. The graph shows that since early November, a total of 24% of computing power has been lost.
However, the loss of computing power does not necessarily mean bottlenecks in crypto-currencies. Because the blockchain system predicts that the difficulty of the arithmetical tasks required decreases if the extraction capacity is reduced. In this way, fewer computers can generate more digital money. This helps ensure that enough Cryptocurrency units are available at all times.
Much less energy consumed
A positive effect of the fading computing power is reflected in the energy balance. As the calculation of the blockchain requires enormous amounts of energy, the amount of electricity saved is considerable. The Bitcoin energy consumption index currently indicates an energy consumption of 54 terawatt hours per year for Bitcoin. This figure is well below the 73 terawatt hours (-26%) estimated at the beginning of November.
But current consumption remains surprisingly high. This is almost equivalent to the consumption of electricity from all over Switzerland (2017: 58 TWh per year).
Source link
