If Bitcoin Were A Country: Some Stats As We Close In On $10,000

Bitcoin is up 25% in the past week.

Remember that $31 million Tether theft that triggered what, at least on an intraday chart, looked like a decent size move to the downside? Yeah, well Bitcoin is literally up $2,000 since then (and yes, that is just as hilarious as it sounds):

Here’s a market cap update:

A couple of things worth noting as Bitcoin closes in on $10,000. There’s still no readily discernible catalyst for this. There are a number of things which are driving speculation, not the least of which is the apparently imminent launch of Bitcoin futs on the CME, but efforts to “explain” this in terms that make it sound like anything other than pure speculation are spurious at best. This is just the greater fool theory at work.

As usual, that’s not to say that the technology isn’t important or that all of this isn’t going to play a role in shaping the future of exchange, it’s just to say that these types of gains over extremely short timeframes in an “asset” which eludes attempts to value it on fundamentals can only be chalked up to speculation. If you can get rich being a speculator, that’s fantastic. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you aren’t speculating.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg is out reporting that hedge fund platforms still have their doubts, with Privium’s CEO hilariously suggesting that cryptocurrencies may be something akin to Tamagotchi.

“Brooklands Fund Management, Mirabella Advisers and Privium Fund Management — which provide back-office functions and regulatory help for investment firms — all say they’ve had discussions with bitcoin funds in recent months,” Bloomberg writes, adding that “so far, they’ve turned down requests to take them on as clients, citing a lack of understanding about the value store and concerns over whether it’s a legitimate asset or a bubble waiting to burst.” Here’s the above-mentioned Clayton Heijman:

The biggest risk we face is: is this hype? Is it a fad? Or is it here to stay? Is it the Tamagotchi from 20 years ago?

Still, some believe that a surge above $10,000 and the CME’s move to enter the fray could help legitimize Bitcoin in the minds of the institutional crowd. As for retail investors, there’s certainly no lack of interest there. As noted over the weekend, Coinbase apparently added some 100,000 accounts between Wednesday and Friday, taking the total to over 13 million.

Amid the insanity, there’s no shortage of eye-popping statistics, and not just as it relates to the price.

“Bitcoin’s mining network uses more electricity in a year than the whole of Ireland,” The Guardian exclaimed on Monday, before continuing, incredulous:

… the estimated power use of the bitcoin network, which is responsible for verifying transactions made with the cryptocurrency, is 30.14TWh a year, which exceeds that of 19 other European countries. At a continual power drain of 3.4GW, it means the network consumes five times more electricity than is produced by the largest wind farm in Europe, the London Array in the outer Thames Estuary, at 630MW.

Digieconomist has more details on this. To wit:

The continuous block mining cycle incentivizes people all over the world to mine Bitcoin. As mining can provide a solid stream of revenue, people are very willing to run power-hungry machines to get a piece of it. Over the years this has caused the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin network to grow to epic proportions, as the price of the currency reached new highs. The entire Bitcoin network now consumes more energy than a number of countries. If Bitcoin was a country, it would rank as shown below.

Apart from the previous comparison, it also possible to compare Bitcoin’s energy consumption to some of the world’s biggest energy consuming nations. The result is shown hereafter.

So you know, it might make sense to just cut off Ireland, Oman, Bahrain, and the host of other “superfluous” countries highlighted in orange below:

I mean think about, the world definitely needs Bitcoin. Do those countries really need electricity? I don’t think so. So let’s just leave them in the dark and devote all that energy to mining Bitcoin. That seems like a good utilitarian option.

Here are some other fun stats (more here):

• In the past month alone, Bitcoin mining electricity consumption is estimated to have increased by 29.98%
• If it keeps increasing at this rate, Bitcoin mining will consume all the world’s electricity by February 2020.
• Estimated annualised global mining revenues: $7.2 billion USD (£5.4 billion)
• Estimated global mining costs: $1.5 billion USD (£1.1 billion)
• Number of Americans who could be powered by bitcoin mining: 2.4 million (more than the population of Houston)
• Number of Britons who could be powered by bitcoin mining: 6.1 million (more than the population of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool, Bristol, Croydon, Coventry, Leicester & Nottingham combined) Or Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
• Bitcoin Mining consumes more electricity than 12 US states (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming)