Astro Bug

MENLO PARK, Calif. - AstroBug -- OrionX Research today released the twelfth edition of its CryptoSuper500 list. The list recognizes cryptocurrency mining as a form of supercomputing application, tracks the top mining pools, and offers a snapshot of the cryptocurrency industry. CryptoSuper500 was developed by Dr. Stephen Perrenod, OrionX Partner and noted crypto analyst who has also created a top-ranking Bitcoin evaluation model based on the power law and the Weibull S-curve cumulative distribution function, and elucidated the concept of the "blockchain calendar".

With 15 years of history behind it, and increasing acceptance globally, Bitcoin is now a trillion- dollar asset again, available for sale through various exchanges, as well as custodied with Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) from traditional financial institutions.  With the fourth halving of the block reward last month, 19.7 million bitcoins have now been issued out of the 21 million maximum supply. The inflation rate is now less than 0.8%, half of that for gold and will be cut in half again in 2028.

The Bitcoin network is a Zettascale decentralized supercomputer whose behavior is reminiscent of a capable AI model because of its anti-fragile resilience and uncanny adherence to power laws. Bitcoin's market cap has risen faster than the sixth power of its age, and the price at well over the fifth power, during its lifetime. The total user count has risen as the third power of time.

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"The decentralized Bitcoin network that validates and protects the Bitcoin blockchain has emerged as a great example of a specialized supercomputer," said Dr. Stephen Perrenod, OrionX Partner and Analyst. "With the emergence of chiplets, there is a growing trend towards using specialized computational modules to increase the performance and energy efficiency of supercomputers. While hashing is not the same as 64-bit floating point workloads, it demonstrates the effectiveness of the specialized-silicon strategy."

The world's fastest centralized supercomputer, Frontier at DOE's Oak Ridge National Lab, has 47,000 CPUs and GPUs delivering 1.2 Exaflops. The world's largest recently announced AI supercomputer is the Aurora system at Argonne National Lab with 10.6 Exaflops of short floating point arithmetic on 9,500 nodes. By contrast, the Bitcoin network has 500 to 600 Exahashes of sustained computational power fueled by several million ASIC-based mining systems.

As with traditional supercomputers, energy efficiency is an important parameter for Bitcoin. As a gross estimate exercise, if one were to build the current Bitcoin global hash power from the latest high end Whatsminer 63S Hydro systems it would require 124,145 water cooled cabinets (located around the world) with a total weight of 95 megatons and a power requirement of 11 GigaWatts. The current average electricity consumption is uncertain but about 14 GW or 120 TeraWatt-hours per annum. Bitcoin electricity input is greener than average since it seeks out the lowest cost electricity and can be located at the source. It also provides grid load-balancing since usage can be curtailed quickly as required.

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In this latest report Bitcoin miners are producing $11.6 billion of annual economic value for Bitcoin, and for Dogecoin nearly $1 billion, for an aggregate $12.5 billion. This is a factor of 2.2 increase over 5 years and is much less steep than the price increase of 10 times during that interval because of the extremely competitive nature of the Bitcoin mining industry and the rapid rise in hash rate.

In 2018 roughly 2/3 of mining hash rate was in China. Since the Chinese mining ban in mid 2021 the US has become the leading source of mining hash rate. Nearly 30% of global hash rate is now located in a dozen publicly traded venture funded mining companies, who mine for themselves and also host ASIC equipment for customers. Their collective market cap is $17 billion.

The first CryptoSuper500 report was released five and a half years ago in November 2018. All twelve reports are available on the OrionX website without requiring registration or payment.

About OrionX
OrionX is a Silicon Valley consulting firm offering Technology Research, Market Execution, and Customer Engagement services to high tech companies. More than 70 technology leaders and financial institutions in virtually every technology segment have trusted OrionX to provide advice, help set new break-away strategies, ignite brands, and grow market share. Visit us at OrionX.net.

* Note: This effort is an analysis of the technologies and trends surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It is not, and must not be considered as, financial, investment, or legal advice.