Cryptocurrency mining started with the first Bitcoin\u2019s block mined by Bitcoin\u2019s creator Satoshi Nakamoto on 1st September 2009. At that time, the Bitcoin mining difficulty was 1.00, and the hashrate was worth that produced by one CPU of that time. Back then, Bitcoin mining could be done using personal computers, let alone graphic cards. Alas, only a few individuals knew then that Bitcoin existed.As the industry developed and Bitcoin\u2019s network hashrate grew, the mining equipment evolved. Graphic cards became popular from the start, but as mining difficulty grew, more efficient GPUs were required to mine cryptocurrencies effectively. In 2013, the first ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) were built, powerful mining machines with high levels of electricity consumption. They could perform mining operations with much higher efficiency than GPUs. But they cost quite substantial sums of money, normally more than the most expensive GPUs.For that reason, mining pools were launched, the first one being launched by Slush in 2010. In them, miners could share their computing powers to maximize the mining efficiency of the pool and share the block reward in proportion with their contributions to the mining power of the pool. With the bull run of 2017, the electricity required for Bitcoin mining reached 15.95 TWh on 26th December 2017. That required another big step forward in terms of mining equipment. Huge mining facilities featuring thousands of them were built, with cumulative mining power amounting to hundreds of terahashes per second (THs).The more powerful machines and bigger mining factories were pushing the hashrate and electricity consumption on the Bitcoin network higher and higher. As a result, in 2020 Bitcoin\u2019s electricity consumption reached 77 TWh \u2014 above the level of electricity consumed by Colombia in 2019.It will be fair to assess the popularity of cryptocurrencies in mining terms by the hashrates on\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cryptocurrency mining started with the first Bitcoin\u2019s block mined by Bitcoin\u2019s creator Satoshi Nakamoto on 1st September 2009. At that time, the Bitcoin mining difficulty was [...]<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afluxcoin.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}