this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
0 points (NaN% liked)
Technology
57448 readers
4511 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The economics of Bitcoin mining are a bit weird in that it impossible to make it more energy efficient.
The system auto adjusts the computational complexity of mining bitcoin so that it always costs a little less than one bitcoin to mine a bitcoin, and at scale the only variable expense is electricity so as the price of bitcoin goes up, so does the amount of money that must be spent on electricity.
Current 6.25 Bitcoin are mined every 10 minutes. So globally about $2 million must be spent on electricity every hour.
In a little over 2 months the block reward cuts in half to only 3.125 bitcoin every 10 minutes. That will have the side effect of reducing the money spent on electricity for mining bitcoin so long as the price of bitcoin remains the same.