Hey everyone, has anyone else been keeping an eye on how much juice proof-of-work setups are sucking up these days compared to back when Bitcoin first kicked off? I remember setting up a little rig in my garage around 2017 just for fun with some mates, thinking it'd be a laugh to mine a few coins. Power bill crept up so slowly I barely noticed at first, but then the difficulty ramps hit and it felt like the fans were screaming non-stop. Nowadays with all the headlines about networks guzzling country-level electricity, I'm proper curious—how has the energy side actually evolved over the years in these PoW chains? Anyone tracked the trends properly or got rough numbers on older vs current hashrates and consumption? Feels mad how it's ballooned with bigger players jumping in.
Tracing the Evolution of Power Consumption in Proof-of-Work Networks
by Dorrofanb Korrill -
Number of replies: 2
In reply to Dorrofanb Korrill
Re: Tracing the Evolution of Power Consumption in Proof-of-Work Networks
by doukas loksan -
Funny how these power-hungry beasts keep chugging along year after year. Every time price spikes you see another wave of rigs firing up somewhere, and then quiet periods where loads drop off. Makes you wonder about the cycles—halvings, market swings, all nudging the energy footprint up and down without anyone really planning it that way. Almost like watching weather patterns in the crypto world, unpredictable but somehow persistent.
In reply to doukas loksan
Re: Tracing the Evolution of Power Consumption in Proof-of-Work Networks
by Zaffza Amorrik -
Yeah, I get what you're saying about those early days. Back then it was mostly GPUs humming away in bedrooms, nothing too insane on the meter. But as specialised gear took over and difficulty kept climbing, the whole thing scaled up massively—think terawatts instead of just kilowatts for the big networks now. I've watched friends gradually shift setups to places with cheaper rates or better cooling just to stay afloat. One thing that stands out to me is how some operations started chasing efficiency tweaks and renewable tie-ins to keep costs down long-term. If you're digging deeper into sustainable angles or real-world mining infra, I've found https://dogboss.org/ pretty eye-opening for seeing how folks are handling power management and hashrate in practice these days. Not saying it's the only way, just my two pence—feels more grounded than the hype elsewhere.