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Change Log
Index Changes
The CBECI follows the semantic versioning guidelines available at https://semver.org. The two latest versions (excluding patches) will be maintained by the team, with the dataset available for download below.
v1.6.0 – 6 March 2024 09:00 GMT
Updated SHA-256 miner equipment list: We have incorporated the performance and power data of five new ASIC mining devices into our SHA-256 mining hardware list.
v1.5.0 – 1 December 2023 09:00 GMT
Updated SHA-256 miner equipment list: We have incorporated the performance and power data of eight new ASIC mining devices into our SHA-256 mining hardware list.
v1.4.0 – 31 August 2023 09:00 GMT
This version adds the following content:
Revised methodology for more precise Bitcoin electricity consumption estimates: Following careful evaluation, we have transitioned from a purely equally weighted approach for all profitable hardware to one that not only differentiates between profitable and non-profitable hardware but also considers the release dates of specific models in our list. It also distinguishes between a unit's release date and its deployment date. The latter represents the date the hardware is deemed operational and is included in our calculations.
Updated SHA-256 miner equipment list: We have incorporated the performance and power data of nine new ASIC mining devices into our SHA-256 mining hardware list.
v1.3.1 – 26 April 2023 08:00 GMT
This version adds the following content:
Update of the graph showing Bitcoin's historical power demand.
The updated graph allows users to toggle between historical power demand and annualised electricity consumption.
SHA-256 miner equipment list.
We have added performance and power data of 13 new ASIC mining devices to our list of SHA-256 mining hardware.
v1.3.0 – 27 September 2022 07:00 GMT
Launch of a new digital tool dedicated to greenhouse gas emissions related to Bitcoin.
A new index that provides estimates on annualised greenhouse gas emissions, total greenhouse gas emissions, and the electricity mix and emission intensity related to Bitcoin.
With a similar layout to the current index page for electricity consumption, there are three boxes containing annualised GHG estimates. Two of those represent outlier scenarios, namely emissions if the whole network was powered solely by hydropower or solely by coal power, defining the range that encompasses our best-guess estimate. We have used one chart to show the estimates of all three scenarios over time to support and visually represent this data, and a second chart to show total GHG emissions (based on the best-guess estimate) over time (on a monthly, yearly and cumulative basis). The index page also contains Bitcoin's electricity consumption by source and emission intensity.
A comprehensive comparison section dedicated to GHG emissions.
To provide context to the estimates in the index section, a comprehensive comparison section compares our Bitcoin GHG emission estimates to various industries, countries and global emissions to present a wide range of other emitting entities or activities, thereby ensuring that the data can be compared objectively.
A detailed description of our methodology.
This section is for those who wish to understand our approach and the corresponding computational steps in detail, or even replicate our work. The wording, illustrations, and explanations are presented in a way so that this study is also accessible to a non-academic audience, which is the approach we have always taken with CBECI.
v1.2.0 – 17 May 2022 07:00 GMT
Updated equipment list (available here).
Adjustment of mining hardware selection method used by CBECI power demand model:
Consolidation of hardware manufacturers to exclude ‘exotic’ devices by only considering ASIC hardware from the three major manufacturers Bitmain, MicroBT and Canaan. The full list of mining hardware is available here.
Introducing a maximum economic lifetime of five years to reflect the finite usability of hardware.
Remove Coinmetrics’s estimate for Bitmain S7 and S9 hardware share by retroactively returning to an equally-weighted basket of profitable hardware models.
Power demand estimates prior to this change can be found here:
v1.1.1 – 05 Oct 2021 09:00 GMT
Updated equipment list (available here) with pre-ASIC hardware models to retrospectively extend the CBECI model to the previously-missing period from July 2010 to June 2014, which was necessary to calculate the monthly and cumulative electricity consumption.
V1.1.0 – 15 Jul 2021 09:00 GMT
Refined best-guess estimate with the retrospective inclusion of Antminer S7 & S9 distribution provided by Coin Metrics.
V1.0.5 – 10 Jun 2021 08:00 GMT
Updated equipment list (available here).
V1.0.4 – 17 Feb 2021 08:00 GMT
Prospective change of data source for daily network hashrate, difficulty, mining revenue (issuance + fees), and bitcoin market price from Blockchain.info to Coin Metrics.
V1.0.3 – 04 Dec 2020 08:00 GMT
Updated equipment list (available here).
V1.0.2 – 08 May 2020 08:00 GMT
Updated equipment list (available here).
V1.0.1 – 29 Dec 2019 08:00 GMT
Updated equipment list (available here).
V1.0.0 – 02 Jul 2019 08:00 GMT
Index launch.
Website Changes
31 August 2023 09:00 GMT
CBECI > Index: integration of new charts showing the historical and most recent efficiency estimates of bitcoin mining hardware.
CBECI > Methodology: general revision of this segment and expansion to include changes related to the revised approach to estimating Bitcoin's electricity consumption. The previous version (before update 1.4.0) can be found in our archive.
CBECI > Comparison: update of sources and corresponding figures of our Bitcoin comparison section.
CBECI > FAQs & About CBECI: update of segments in the FAQs and About CBECI sections to reflect recent changes.
CBNSI: website layout change to make switching between Bitcoin and Ethereum more seamless and improve user experience.
27 September 2022 07:00 GMT
CBECI > Index: enabling users to switch between aggregated monthly and yearly data on total electricity consumption. The csv file will change automatically depending on the period selected.
CBECI > Comparison: changing icons of the Bitcoin and Gold mining comparison, and the Bitcoin icon at the country ranking comparison.
CBECI > FAQ: update in About this project and Environmental Implications segments in the FAQ section. The update will reflect internal changes related to staff and adds information about the individuals who participated in the peer-review process and experts we consulted during development.
17 May 2022 07:00 GMT
CBECI > Methodology: formulas for calculating the power demand of all estimates (lower-bound, upper-bound, best-guess) have been added to complement the formulas for annualised electricity consumption.
CBECI > Comparison: update in Total World Production & Consumption comparison. Removing total energy consumption and directly comparing adjusted annualised Bitcoin electricity consumption to total energy production.
CBECI > Comparison: size of bubbles in industry comparison has been adjusted to their true size. The size modification before was made to fit the names of all activities inside the respective bubbles.
CBECI > Comparison: reformatting of chart: Country ranking, annual electricity consumption.
CBECI > Mining Map: Updated name of the Chinese province "Nei Mongol" to "Inner Mongolia" on the mining map and underlying dataset.
CBECI > Mining Map: updated mining map with data from September 2021 until January 2022 included. Text amendments in Methodology: Data aggregation and analysis. Addition of map showing United States hashrate distribution by state in December 2021.
CBECI > FAQ: About This Project segment in the FAQ section has been updated to reflect recent changes.
03 Nov 2021 13:00 GMT
Website migrated from www.cbeci.org to www.ccaf.io/cbeci to form part of the new CCAF online toolkit.
19 Oct 2021 15:30 GMT
CBECI > Mining Map: minor update of the Discussion section on the Methodology page to include a reference to the effects of the Chinese government crackdown on the local mining industry.
13 Oct 2021 07:30 GMT
CBECI > Mining Map: updated mining map with data from May 2021 until August 2021 included. Added a new chart showing absolute hashrate evolution of countries. Excluded Macau SAR and Hong Kong SAR from China provincial hashrate, renamed China to “Mainland China”, and updated both map and chart accordingly. Added a disclaimer for Germany and Ireland share. Moved Chinese provincial hashrate chart to a new section titled "Historical findings”.
05 Oct 2021 08:00 GMT
CBECI > Index: now displaying historical daily network power demand (in gigawatts) in the main chart instead of annualised consumption (in terawatt-hours), and showing continuous data points starting from July 2010. Added a new separate chart depicting the estimated monthly and cumulative electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network. Update of corresponding methodology section.
CBECI > Comparisons: added assumption about conversion loss during the energy transformation process to the energy comparison.
15 July 2021 08:00 GMT
CBECI > Index: refined best-guess estimate with the integration of the estimated hashrate share of Bitmain Antminer S7 and S9 equipment from Coin Metrics. The methodology section has been updated accordingly.
CBECI > Comparisons: complete revision of webpage with new data and text.
CBECI > Mining Map: updated mining map with data from May 2020 until April 2020 included. Replacement of Microsoft PowerBI map with custom chart. Addition of new time series charts. Update of corresponding methodology section.
CBECI > About: updated website structure with new umbrella section ‘About’ which now contains the ‘FAQ’, ‘Contact’, and ‘Change Log’ pages. Change Log includes previous index versions. FAQ have been fully updated.
21 May 2021 15:57 GMT
CBECI > Index: replaced 30-second network power estimate with 24-hour intervals due to unreliability of input data (real-time hashrate estimate). The methodology section has been updated accordingly.
20 May 2021 20:25 GMT
CBECI > Index: power estimates have been temporarily removed due to an issue with a data input source. The issue is under investigation and will be fixed as soon as possible.
19 Mar 2021 13:12 GMT
Mining Map > Visualisation: updated disclaimer.
17 Feb 2021 08:30 GMT
CBECI > Methodology: The data source for daily network hashrate, difficulty, miners revenue (issuance+ fees), bitcoin market price has been changed from Blockchain.info to Coin Metrics. We retain Blockchain.info as data source for the real-time hashrate estimate.
11 Feb 2021 21:49 GMT
CBECI > Comparisons: updated data source for country ranking (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2019).