It seems noteworthy that Kazakhstan represents ~22% of Bitcoins hashrate (~45 TWh/year of electricity), at the same time as people are out in the streets rioting over the price of heating their homes.
BTC and other crypto seem to gravitate toward less expensive energy sources, yet require a substantial capital investment. Is crypto an emerging method for dictators to expropriate wealth? Are there going to be “blood bits” similar to “blood diamonds” or other commodities tainted by their provenance?
Yes, same for local mafiosi/siloviki who can force the electricity company guy to look the other way (at gunpoint).
> Are there going to be “blood bits” similar to “blood diamonds”
Given the recirculation and tumbling, probably a majority of BTC/Ether went through shady people's hands (just like most $100 bills have coke residue on them...). Bitcoin advocates usually tout this as a feature not a bug.
If dictators/mafiosi contribute a significant amount to the overall hash rate, are they not decreasing transaction costs for whichever blockchain they use?
(The actual transaction cost to the user is driven by congestion and is set unilaterally by the user based on their tolerance for queueing, so it can be zero.)
This data is from geolocation of the IP's of miners connecting to the servers of mining pools. Note the obvious flaws in the methodology:
1. IP geolocation data may not accurately represent the location of the mining hardware (e.g. VPNs could be used) 2. The participating mining pools may not be a representative sample of the total hashrate distribution.
So take the data with a grain of salt. Especially since China banned all crypto mining in the past year, going from a reported 35% share to nothing in an instant, it seems plausible some miners are operating underground using a VPN. Some people are saying that up to 20% of total capacity is actually still operating in China.
I see now that their most recent figure has changed to 18.1%.
The electrical power figure was then calculated based on the total global power consumption published in the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
It looks like Kazakh total energy consumption is 861 Kwh [0] and total elecricity is 104 TWh. Is it realistic for 43% of a country's electricity to be going to Bitcoin? If that were true, what sort of infrastructure would be developed? Datacenters colocated with coal plants?
Over less than a year, Kazakh average monthly hashrate share went from 5% to 18%, increase of >260%. Given 2020 utilization of 104 Kwh with 12.5 Kwh going to Btc ((5/18)45=12.5), then current (no pun intended) utilization with 18% hashrate share would be 136 Kwh (104+45-((5/18)45)). Is it reasonable for a country to increase electric generating capacity by 30% to support bitcoin?
Oct'20: 4.77%
Nov'20: 5.35%
Dec'20: 6.17%
Jan'21: 6.71%
Feb'21: 7.65%
Mar'21: 8.19%
Apr'21: 7.37%
May'21: 8.80%
Jun'21: 13.79%
Jul'21: 18.10%
It also seems the increase in hashrate coincides with China banning Bitcoin mining? That likely puts a skew on the numbers, although I'm not immediately sure which way.
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a064b82a-4e4c-41ce-...
> Use of natural gas by households is dependent on the availability of natural gas network and price (Figure 5, Figure 6). Out of 21 000 surveyed households, 41% were using natural gas (for all purposes, including for heating, water heating and cooking purposes). The share of natural users by house type was as follows: 45% of urban apartments, 50% of urban detached houses, 31% of rural apartments and 31% of rural detached houses. Majority of the households in the western regions of Kazakhstan rely on natural gas due to the developed gas pipeline infrastructure and low gas prices.
Even though the price of LPG had doubled and that supposedly caused riots, even the new doubled price is way lower than price of LPG in Europe and other parts of the world.