Bitcoin virtuaali valuutta: Energiatehokas louhinta

Abstract

Bitcoin is a distributed, virtual currency without centralized control. While a few services accept bitcoins directly, it is also possible to exchange bitcoins into fiat currency and vice versa. Bitcoins are effectively computation puzzles that are mined based on a bruteforce algorithm. As computation requires electricity, it can be stated that the miners are exchanging energy for bitcoins. However, electricity is not usually free and the energy efficiency of the mining devices can vary. Thus, some low-efficiency devices could be considered mainly as an environmental hazard because the expense of using the electricity exceeds the profits. The miners are competing with each other to find solutions, which has resulted in an arms race to use specialized hardware for mining. While this improves energy efficiency, the computational limit for profitable Bitcoin mining is still a moving target. In this thesis, we study and analyse past developments in this limit and try to estimate its future directions.