O’Dwyer, Karl J. and Malone, David (2014) Bitcoin Mining and its Energy Footprint. In: Proceedings of the 25th Joint IET Irish Signals & Systems Conference 2014 and 2014 China-Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (ISSC 2014/CIICT 2014). IET, pp. 280-285.

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Abstract

Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency that has generated considerable public interest, including both booms in value and busts of exchanges dealing in Bitcoins. One of the fundamental concepts of Bitcoin is that work, called mining, must be done in checking all monetary transactions, which in turn creates Bitcoins as a reward. In this paper we look at the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining. We consider if and when Bitcoin mining has been profitable compared to the energy cost of performing the mining, and conclude that specialist hardware is usually required to make Bitcoin mining profitable. We also show that the power currently used for Bitcoin mining is comparable to Ireland’s electricity consumption.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	This is the postprint version of the published paper, which is available at DOI: 10.1049/cp.2014.0699 . This research was supported by HEA PRTLI Cycle 5 TGI.
Keywords:	Bitcoin; Energy Footprint; digital currency; mining;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Research Institutes > Hamilton Institute
Item ID:	6009
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1049/cp.2014.0699
Depositing User:	Dr. David Malone
Date Deposited:	09 Apr 2015 14:12
Publisher:	IET
Refereed:	Yes
Funders:	Higher Education Authority (HEA)
URI:	http://ieeexplore.ieee.org
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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