Electric cost of each transaction in bitcoin amounts to $ 173
A study by MoneySuperMarket determined the electricity costs of transactions made with cryptocurrencies
An investigation carried out by MoneySuperMarket, a financial site, from the United Kingdom and disseminated by Fortune magazine, showed the electrical costs of each transaction, no matter how small, carried out by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as its repercussions for the environment.
The results of the report show that a transaction with bitcoin requires “1,173 kilowatt hours of electricity”, an amount with which a home in the United Kingdom can be supplied for more than three months or six weeks in the United States.
When performing the calculations with other cryptocurrencies with the highest demand in the market, the following results were obtained: Ethereum 87.29 kWh; Bitcoin Cash 18,957 kWh; Litecoin 18,522 kWh; Cardano 0.547 kWh; Dogecoin 0.12 kWh; XRP 0.0079 kWh.
According to the number of transactions carried out with bitcoin during a year, an approximate consumption of “123 terawatt hours or 123 billion kWh was determined. While Ethereum consumed 39.19 terawatts and cardano only 0.01 terawatts. These figures reflect that the energy consumption required by bitcoin is higher than that used by 185 countries and comparable to the annual energy consumption in Norway.
The report also presented the calculations made in money. That is, they took the world average price per kWh, which stood at 9.0 cents on the dollar and determined that each bitcoin transaction has a value of $ 173. While Ethereum transactions amounts to $ 12.92; Bitcoin Cash $ 2.81; Litecoin $ 2.74; Cardano $ 0.08; Dogecoin $ 0.02 and XRP $ 0.001.
Energy consumption of NFTs
The report also dedicates a section to determining the amount of power required by NFTs, noting that most transactions are executed on the ethereum blockchain and although it could be assumed that an “NFT transaction would use the same amount of power as an ethereum transaction”. However, the research determined that it is not that simple because “each step of the cycle requires energy.”
The document indicates that the average electricity consumption of an NFT is about 340 kWh “and leaves a carbon footprint of 241 kgCO2”. When making the estimates with the total amount of registered sales of the NFTs in the last 12 months, they found that the cost of each NFT is equivalent to 50.32 dollars.
M. Rodríguez
Source: diariobitcoin.com
