Opinion: 98% of ASIC miners will soon become obsolete

Blockchain expert Alex de Vries, who founded the Digiconomist blog, is confident that 98% of mining devices will become obsoletebeforethan will pay for themselves.

New Frieze studies confirm that onethe bitcoin transaction uses about 657.39 kWh of electricity, which is comparable to 59 days of electricity consumption by the average British family.

The carbon footprint of one transaction is similar to 780,650 Visa transactions or 52,043 hours of viewing YouTube, the blockchain specialist claims.

According to the researcher, around the world there are about 4 billion installations for mining. 98 percent of them will never confirm transactions, regardless of the high cost of electricity.

It is worth noting that according to informationCointelegraph, at the moment there are only 2.5 billion miners in the world. The researcher claims that devices that do not produce blocks are simply wasting electricity. However, his assumptions do not take into account the dynamics of mining pools and ignore the fact that a high hash rate increases the security of the Bitcoin network. 

Frieze said:

The shocking fact is that typicalthe service life of ASIC devices is one and a half years. During this time, a completely new era of machines is coming up, which are better at computing. This means that 98 percent of the equipment during the service life will not be able to make a calculation that will actually end with a reward. Thus, most miners do not extract anything, spending energy and generating heat, after which they are suitable only for trash. This is madness.