Bitcoin mining annual water use
TLDR
Each Bitcoin sub transaction requires 0.11L or 0.19 pints🍺 & 0.4 kWh of electricity.
The average $100,000 on-chain transaction requires 3 buckets 🪣🪣🪣of water & Tesla battery of electricity.
The average $100,000 on-chain transaction requires 3 buckets 🪣🪣🪣of water & Tesla battery of electricity.
Current Bitcoin mining water use 2024
From my spreadsheet I know which units are water cooled & how much power they consume. Roughly 48.5% power is consumed via water cooled ASIC's, of that an estimated 30% dissipate heat via evaporation. Everything else is air cooled. The coolant loop, like your car may have its water changed once a year. We will assume 2 Litres of water per ASIC , 1 in the mining unit and 1 for the cooling loop.
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Here my figures are compared to the wild claims of Alex de Vries claim for 2021
Litres per transaction
10,031,538,861 Litres per year / 365 = 27,483,668 Litres per day
Litres per TX = Litres per day / Transactions per day
27,483,668 / 600,000 = 45.8 Litres per transaction
A very small "swimming pool" 🤔 actually more 3 buckets 🪣🪣🪣 . Not bad for sending an average TX value of $100,000 across the world.
Litres per TX = Litres per day / Transactions per day
27,483,668 / 600,000 = 45.8 Litres per transaction
A very small "swimming pool" 🤔 actually more 3 buckets 🪣🪣🪣 . Not bad for sending an average TX value of $100,000 across the world.
Adding more detail
Mining energy serves 2 main purposes - Block reward (like mining gold) and Transaction Fee's (like spending gold). We never think of all the water used to mine gold when we spend gold. So we'll similarly discount it here for a fair comparison.
Now for 2024 we have to factor in not only straight forward on-chain TX's but also Lightning & Batched payments that are really taking off. Let's say on average for every on-chain transaction there are 50 Lightning or Batched transactions.
5.5 Litres / 50 = 0.11 Litres per Transaction or 0.19 Pints 🍺 Cheers !
5.5 Litres / 50 = 0.11 Litres per Transaction or 0.19 Pints 🍺 Cheers !
Misinformation
In November 2023 Alex de Vries & the BBC claimed -
"In total, bitcoin consumed nearly 1,600 billion litres - also known as gigalitres (GL) - of water in 2021" Every Bitcoin payment 'uses a swimming pool of water" (see screen shot). This seemed a little excessive, because in my own experience of home mining I do not use ANY water what so ever !? What do they mean by use ? evaporation ? cooling circuit ? So I decided to calculate both. Thought experiment -
If we took the most extreme power estimate (also Alex de Vries 🤔 ) to see how much water we could boil. This would give the absolute maximum amount of water that could be lost via evaporation.
Basics science tells us we need 2256 k Joules or 1.596 kWh to evaporate 1 litre or 1 kg of water. In 2021 Bitcoin power consumption was around 50 - 400 TWh/year depending on the estimate ( My calculations show 56 TWh ), we will take the worst case scenario -
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(no link because I do not want to back link to rubbish thereby lending page ranking "authority" . So you'll just have to find it yourself. It's not hard because its the only thing you are allowed to find)
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Litres water = Power / Latent heat of vaporisation
= 400 TWh / 1.596 kWh
= 250 Billion Litres ✅ or 100,000 Olympic Swimming pools
not 1,600 Billion Litres ❌ or 640,000 Olympic Swimming pools
= 400 TWh / 1.596 kWh
= 250 Billion Litres ✅ or 100,000 Olympic Swimming pools
not 1,600 Billion Litres ❌ or 640,000 Olympic Swimming pools
So there we have it, actual mathematical proof Alex de Vries & the BBC are wrong !
Misinformation !
Misinformation !