A framework for maintaining sustainable energy use in Bitcoin mining through switching efficient mining hardware

Ali Fırat Yazıcı, Ali Bahadır Olcay and Gökçen Arkalı Olcay

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2023, vol. 190, issue C

Abstract: Blockchain technology revolutionized the financial system with the emergence of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin as the most used cryptocurrency has been particularly questioned in the literature for its sustainability. Very few studies explore the future of sustainability from the perspective of both miners' and technology makers' continual profitability. Our study evaluates the hardware used for Bitcoin mining from a sustainability analysis perspective; therefore, changes in the difficulty level in the block algorithm and mining hardware's thermal power usage are considered to determine the profitability and the exergetic efficiency of the mining process. The consistent decay in exergetic efficiency curves of several GPU and ASIC-based technology hardware suggest that the hardware can be utilized up to the levels where the efficiency values hit zero. Simultaneously, the diminishing profit levels over the course of changing Bitcoin prices make the mining hardware unsustainable signaling an end to its life cycle and switching the hardware with more efficient ones. Our findings shed light on the future of the sustainability of Bitcoin mining in terms of securing the profitability of the business by determining the exergetic efficiency of the hardware with a completely new perspective in the literature.

Keywords: Bitcoin mining; Blockchain technology; Exergetic efficiency; Sustainability of mining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:190:y:2023:i:c:s0040162523000914

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122406

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