Unit 5 Lecture Notes

For those unfortunate enough to still be addicted to consuming mass media, seemingly not a day goes by without a hysterical news item about how much energy bitcoin consumes, and what a terrible travesty that is because the energy could be used for better purposes. This edition of The Bitcoin Standard Research Bulletin will focus on Bitcoin's energy usage.

How much energy is Bitcoin really consuming? Is it too much, and is this a problem? What are the dynamics that govern mining, and how does Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment affect the profitability of mining operations?

Source: Saylor Academy, Bitcoin Mining: Energy and Security
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.