CryptoSuper 500 - Thirteenth Report: Bitcoin is a Global Decentralized Supercomputer

@OrionX_net
November 2024
Stephen Perrenod
CryptoSuper 500 – Thirteenth Report
Bitcoin is a Global Decentralized Supercomputer
Six Years of Coverage

@OrionX_net
Bitcoin
precedents
©2024 OrionX.net 2

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©2024 OrionX.net 3
✦ Bitcoin and cryptocurrency represent technology for
Money 3.0
– 0.x – decentralized: shells, beads, centralized: Yap rai stones
– 1.0 – decentralized ownership but state minting: gold and silver
coins
– 2.0 – centralized: national fiat currencies
– 3.0 – decentralized digital Money stored in, sent across the
Internet
– Some might say cryptocurrencies are simply digital assets
✦ There are tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies but
only 70 have market cap over $1 billion as 10/30/2024
✦ Very few use Proof of Work, only 7 of those have
market cap above $2 billion
OrionX position
Money 3.0

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©2024 OrionX.net 4
Digital Money or
Digital Property
Store of value
Safety, security, to
what degree?
Unit of account
Fixed Supply or
inflationary?
Medium of exchange
Stable or Volatile?
Money 3.0 is:
Money in and of the Internet
“Money has become
information. Bitcoin is energy
securely encapsulated as
information. Electrons to
eternal bits.” - @moneyordebt
a 700-year advance in accounting with
triple-entry ledgers on a timechain
Monetary
Technology 3.0

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©2024 OrionX.net 5
▪ It’s not either/or with blockchain and bitcoin, it’s both
▪ They are each layers in an integrated stack
▪ Blockchain (or timechain) is the triple entry ledger of
chained transaction blocks: sender wallet, blockchain,
receiver wallet
▪ A consensus algorithm (e.g. Nakamoto) that enforces
security and prevents double spending is required:
Mining, it also enforces a monetary policy
▪ An incentive is required to cause the algorithm to be
implemented and to add transactions to the chain:
▪ Smart contracts (ordinals, BRC-20, etc.) and second
layer chains such as Lightning extend the functionality
and scaling for fast, small transactions
Blockchain or Bitcoin? Gold, Fiat or Bitcoin?
Table 1. Advances in monetary technology. Aristotle defined the first four attributes required for
money over two millennia ago. We have added Fungibility “one is as good as another” to the
table. Bitcoin is private, global money on a decentralized, highly replicated leger.
Monetary Technology Advances

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©2024 OrionX.net 6
Supreme
Difficulty of
Bitcoin Mining
Difficulty ~
average
hashrate over a
fortnight
✦ The log10 of the Difficulty parameter versus the log10 of Bitcoin’s age in days, currently it is approaching age 16
years. Difficulty is a parameter in the Nakamoto consensus that is directly proportional to average hash rate and its
increase with adjustments at each 2016 blocks, keeps block times close to 10 minutes each. Straight line in log- log
means a power law, note how tight the relationship is, R^2 = 0.97, ordinary least squares regression.
✦ The difficulty of Bitcoin mining is rising as the 12th power of time, a very steep power law. There was a major boost
a decade ago with the switch to special-purpose ASICs from GPUs. The power law relationship may have slowed
to about the 8th power the last few years.
✦ Mining is a brutally competitive business with millions of mining rigs ever-growing in number, using faster ASICs
benefitting from Moore’s Law and recently switching more and more toward immersion cooling for faster systems.
Fig. 1: Log-Log
plot of Difficulty
parameter of
mining; age of
blockchain in
days

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©2024 OrionX.net 7
Price also
follows a
Power Law
Price ~ Agek,
k = 5.9 ✦ The log10 of Bitcoin Price (in blue) vs. log10 Age in years for 14 years of weekly data. A straight line on a log-log chart indicates a
power law. The price of Bitcoin is rising as the 5.9 th power of time according to a Generalized Least Squares regression (green
line), a steep power law. For an ordinary least squares, a 5.7th power of time. Despite bubbles, the long-term relationship has held
even while price has increased by over a factor of 1 million.
✦ The volatility is large, about one σ of 0.31 in the log10 value or multiplicative factor 2.0. The residuals are skewed to the right tail.
✦ This relation was discovered by Giovanni Santostasi a decade ago and has held up well over time. It is postulated to arise from
Metcalfe’s law. The value of the network goes as the square of the number of nodes, or in this case Bitcoin addresses (wallets). And
the number of wallets has been rising as nearly the cube of time.
Fig. 2: Log-Log
plot of Bitcoin
price; age in
years

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Hashed TimeChain
Winner take all
Lottery
Block Calendar
system
Difficulty Adjustment
Halvings
Key Design
Elements:
Nakamoto
Consensus
Security, exponential hardening
Security, Game Theory
Coordination, decentralization
Blocks ~ Equal time interval
Absolute Finite Supply
©2024 OrionX.net 8

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**Networks of the Bitcoin Ecosystem** - Chat GPT o1 preview
1. Bitcoin Blockchain Network
2. Mining Network
3. Lightning Network
4. User Network
5. Developer Network
6. Merchant Network
7. Exchange Network
8. Full Node Network
9. Regulatory and Legal Network
10. Service Providers Network
The Bitcoin ecosystem is a complex interplay of various networks, each contributing to its overall functionality and growth.
Feedback loops within these networks can amplify effects, leading to accelerated adoption, innovation, and, at times,
challenges. Understanding these loops is essential for stakeholders, as they can influence strategic decisions, policy-
making, and future developments in the Bitcoin landscape.
Bitcoin is a
Meta-
Network
©2024 OrionX.net 9

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Bitcoin is a major asset:
Table of Market Cap, Assets over $1 Trillion
CompaniesMarketCap.com
©2024 OrionX.net 10
Table 2. Bitcoin is a $1.8 Trillion
asset, up from $0.73 T a year ago.
The only other assets that are
larger in market cap are gold, 5
multi-trillion $ cap American tech
companies, and Saudi Aramco.
From companiesmarketcap.com,
as of November 16, 2024.

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CryptoSuper
Methodology
✦ We only consider Reusable Proof of Work mined (minted) coins, since they are
the only ones using significant supercomputing power. Only two make the $100
million value cut.
– Non-mined coins usually use Proof of Stake, or some other Byzantine Fault Tolerant
algorithm, and often have an ‘air drop’ for insiders
✦ The mining protocols and hash rates vary in very large degree between POW
coins, Bitcoin stands out with hundreds of ExaHashes/second (one Exa is 1018).
✦ Most RPOW coins require ASICs to be profitably mined, GPU mining still possible
for Dogecoin
✦ Pools are not miners per se; they are brokers, aggregators of hash rate, (possibly
includes their own mining company) acting as brokers for modest fees.
✦ We compare mining pools by using the Economic value of coins produced per
year = number of blocks mined x number of coins per block x price per coin and
adding transaction fee revenue
✦ Publicly traded, VC-funded Bitcoin mining startups are increasingly important and
responsible for around 25% of Bitcoin production including hosting for clients,
located primarily in N. America, and quickly filled the vacuum left by Chinese
‘shutdown’ of mining over 3 years ago

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✦ Thirteen publicly traded Bitcoin mining
companies have market caps at or above ~
$300 million and have over 20% of global
hash rate (includes hosted systems for
clients)
✦ Strong price recovery in 2023 and early
2024 but block halving of rewards in April
2024 renews pressure
✦ Most are HQ’d in the US and Canada, also
Singapore, Australia
✦ Data from company web sites 10/24/24,
price/market cap Yahoo Finance 11/16/24
✦ Because of Fourth Halving on 4/20/24,
minting rate for all Bitcoin about 450 / day
Publicly Traded
Bitcoin Mining
Companies
✦
Table 3. The top publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies,
2/3 of these companies have established other business
lines, including AI/data center hosting. In general, these are
new businesses with significant venture capital invested
and large capital expenses devoted to ramping up hashrate
with new mining rigs, so although they may have good
operating margins on mining, many are not profitable. Many
of these are also keeping much of the Bitcoin they mine in
their treasuries, collectively over $4 billion in value. Data
from company web sites, Yahoo Finance as of 11/16/2024.
Symbol Company Name
Share Price
($)
Market Cap
(B$)
Bitcoin
Holdings
Expansion plans
HPC/AI Current or
Planned
Other
BITF Bitfarms 2.25 1.07 1,147 +10 EH YE 24 N
4 countries including South
America, 12 DC
BTDR
Bitdeer
Technologies
11.09 1.85 $25 million
2.5 GigaWatts by
2026
Y
3 countries including
Bhutan, Norway, 6 DC, 67%
Carbon free
CAN Canaan 1.65 0.47 1,114 Modest Y, AI chip
Mining rig manufacturer; 5
countries, 8 DCs, Ethiopia,
$.042 per kWh ave.
CIFR
Cipher Mining
Tech.
6.63 2.31 2,270
Double to 566 MW in
2025
Y
$.027 per kWh, electricity
per BTC ~$26K
CLSK CleanSpark 14.03 3.62 8,049
50 EH/s during 2025
(up from 30)
N
Recent 200% growth rate in
Hashpower year-on-year
CORZ Core Scientific 15.83 4.42 0
750 MW expansion
by 500 MW by 2028
and shift to majority
HPC
Y $.045 per KWh
FUFU Bit FuFu 5.40 0.88 N
100% year-on-year revenue
growth, adding facility in
Ethiopia
HIVE Hive Digital Tech. 4.43 0.57 2,604
100 MW, goal double
hashrate
Y Northern Europe
HUT Hut8 25.26 2.36 9,106 Y
15 Bitcoin and DC sites,
$.032 per KWh
IREN IREN 10.67 2.02 1 GigaWatt addition Y, 10% revenue 100% renewable
MARA MARA Holdings 21.07 6.78 26,842
Over 50 EH/s during
2025
Y
4 continents, 14 DCs,
stranded energy focus
RIOT Riot Platforms 12.37 4.11 10,427
2 GigaWatts power
for expansion to 100
EH/s by 2027
N
Power cost $.027 per kWh,
62% GM, direct costs $25K
per BTC
WULF Terawulf 7.18 2.77
300 MW additional by
end 2025
Y
91% Zero Carbon, $.035
kWh
Total 33.23 61,559 69%

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Top 14 Public
Mining Cos.
(summary charts from
Compass Mining)
Total Hashrate
158 EH/s
(~ 23% of global
as of 10/24/24)
Total BTC mined
3152
(23% of all for
month)
Hash Race
Table 4.
Bitcoin
production, top
publicly traded
companies
during Sept.
2024. Four are
Consuming
over 0.5
GigaWatt

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Supercomputing for decentralized monetary network
Bitcoin Mining is
Green Supercomputing
✦ Method: We estimate the annual economic value of mined crypto, only Proof of Work coins
✦ Bitcoin market cap $1800 billion (at $91,000 price)
✦ Bitcoin daily production = $41 million (miners also receive about $0.8 million in transaction
fees)
– money supply inflation under 0.8% since April, 2024
– 24 hours x 6 blocks per hour x 3.125 coins x $91,000
✦ Annual production run rate, Bitcoin, about $15.2 billion including fees of order 2% (but highly
variable)
✦ All Mining produces revenue of $16.2 billion annual run rate across top 2 mined coins,
including both new coins and transaction fees. Very little revenue from other proof of work
coins at current prices
✦ Bitcoin mining is cleaner than average global use of energy; also, Bitcoin, unlike most
electricity outputs, is not consumption, it is production that creates permanent value (mostly
rising), only 2% goes to transaction fees, 98% to new economic value creation
✦ The Bitcoin Mining Council estimates that 60% the industry’s electricity inputs are from
sustainable sources including nuclear, based on a survey of their miners representing 45%
of all Bitcoin hashrate. They report that Bitcoin mining uses just 0.16% of global energy
(about 0.5% of electricity) and is responsible for only 0.11% of CO2 emissions
Bitcoin energy inputs > 50% green
Bitcoin only 1/900 of all CO2e, says
Bitcoin Mining Council
Used for load shedding during peak
hours, storms

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ChatGPT 4o response to How is Bitcoin greener than other industries?
Cryptocurrency
Mining is Green
Supercomputing
“Bitcoin mining has increasingly become “greener” compared to many industries for several
reasons:
1. Incentive to Use Renewable Energy: Bitcoin miners are highly incentivized to minimize their
energy costs, as electricity is one of their largest expenses. Renewable energy sources like
hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal often provide cheaper electricity
2. Energy Flexibility: Bitcoin mining is uniquely flexible in its energy use, as it can operate
anywhere there is a stable energy source. [ed. Also easy to curtail]
3. Off-grid and Stranded Energy Utilization: Bitcoin mining can tap into energy sources that
are otherwise stranded or wasted.
4. Technological Efficiency: As Bitcoin mining competition increases, there is constant
pressure to adopt more energy-efficient hardware and mining methods..
5. Decarbonization Trends: The broader trend toward decarbonization of the energy grid also
benefits Bitcoin mining. Many mining operations have also explicitly committed to carbon-neutral or
carbon-negative goals by offsetting their emissions.
6. Transparency and Accountability: The Bitcoin mining industry has become increasingly
transparent regarding its energy usage. Initiatives like the Bitcoin Mining Council regularly publish
reports on the energy mix used.
These factors together have contributed to Bitcoin mining becoming one of the greener, more
adaptive industries in terms of its energy consumption and sustainability practices.”
Queues for grid connection

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✦ These are 22 of the fastest Bitcoin
mining rigs on the market, from the
four largest vendors.
✦ The table shows hashrate, electricity
required, and operating profit at 5
cents per kilowatt-hour
✦ Typical hashrates are over 200TH/s
and operating profit of several dollars
a day per machine. Energy
consumption 3 KWatt or higher
(especially hydro models at 5 to 11
kW)
✦ It would take over 2 million of the
Bitmain Antimner S21 Hydros to
produce all 700 Exahashes/sec. of
global hashrate; some 11 GigaWatts
✦ This table from asicminervalue was
produced November 7, 2024
Top Mining Rigs
Table 5. Columns are model, announce date, hashrate, power consumption, noise level, SHA-256 is
algorithm for Bitcoin, and gross profitability per day at 5 cents per kWh. Operating revenue after electricity
costs only, ignoring equipment capital amortization. Several models are announced in advance of release.
Source: asicminervalue.com

@OrionX_net
CryptoSuper
Mining Trends
✦ Bitcoin mining hashrate has reached new highs of 0.7 Zettahash/s (700 Exhash/s)
✦ Bitcoin dominance for mining (minting) is strongly established; Dogecoin very distant
second since Ethereum departed the field
✦ A dozen pools broker (not mine) most of $16 billion worth of value, almost all Bitcoin, and
about 2% at present is transaction fees
✦ Ever faster mining hardware, up to nearly 400 Terahashes/second (and planned up to
twice that by year end) including liquid cooling; new highs in global hashrate, rising about
60% per year
✦ North American dominance, public companies as major players have increased to 1/4 of
all Bitcoin production, including hashrate hosting for clients
✦ Bull market since end of 2022 has seen much higher prices but miners are challenged by
latest halving in rewards during April 2024
✦ The electrical input has trended increasingly green, some publicly traded mining
companies have set carbon neutrality goals
✦ Some geographies are restricting electricity access but Bitcoin mining acts as a load
balancer for utility operators

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Comparison to
Top 500
Supercomputer
List
Attribute
Frontier
Supercomputer
(#1)
Top 500 (all)
May 2024
WhatsMiner 63S
Hydro cabinet
Bitcoin Network
Equivalent
Performance 1.2 Exaflops 8.2 Exaflops 4.68 Petahash/s 700 Exahash/s
One year
increase
9% 57% ~60% for industry 65%
Chips
37,888 AMD
Instinct GPUS 6nm;
9472 AMD Epyc
CPUs
Hundreds of
millons of cores
12 multithread, 5
nm ASIC
1,795,000 ASICs
Cabinets 74 1 150,000 cabinets
Power
consumption
23 MegaWatts 89.2 KW 13,340 MW
Weight 296 tons 0.76 metric tons 103,823 metric tons
Cost $600 million $107,000 $14.62 billion
Output Science
Science &
Engineering & AI
1.12 Bitcoin per
year
164,000 Bitcoin per
year
Value Priceless Enormous $70,600 per year $15.2 billion per year
Table 6. Comparison of a
hypothetical Bitcoin network based
on the latest high-end WhatsMiner
63S Hydro system with the
Department of Energy’s Frontier
supercomputer and the Top 500 list
as a whole. The cost to build out the
global Bitcoin network is about 24
times that of the Frontier system
while the economic output is
measurable at $12.3 billion
annually, currently. Interestingly
both the Top500 and the Bitcoin
network have recently experienced
similar Moore’s Law growth rate of
about 60% per year.

@OrionX_net
Six Year Review
since Nov. 2018
Attribute Nov. 2018 Nov. 2024 6 Year Growth
Coins making cut for
CryptoSuper report
Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash,
Monero
Bitcoin, Dogecoin Consolidation
Number of different
cryptocurrencies
2000 ~ 10,000 active Vast Majority worth little
Bitcoin Market
Capitalization
$111 billion $1800 billion 16 x
Bitcoin Price $6,334 $91,000 14 x
Bitcoin annual
production rate and fees
$4.2 billion $15.2 billion 3.6 x
Bitcoin Hash Rate
Exahash/s 57 700 12 x
Cryptocurrency Market
Cap $220 billion $3000 billion 14 x
Top cryptos annual
mining production w/
fees
$5.6 billion $16.2 billion 2.9 x
We dropped from 6 to 2 coins,
despite the 10-fold increase in the
number of cryptos
Bitcoin price has grown 50%
compounded annually
Bitcoin hash rate has grown over 50%
compounded
Even with Ethereum dropping out,
(and it once reached half of the value
of production), the mining
production has grown to $16 billion
Table 7. Key attributes of Bitcoin and major cryptocurrencies, comparing the first CryptoSuper report in 2018
with this report 6 years later. Recent data is as of November 16, 2024. Bitcoin has been growing in value at a
Moore’s law-like rate (but in a power law relation with its age), and its supercomputing crypto hashing power
has been growing faster than Moore’s law.

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Top Proof of Work Coins
Largest Pool Operators
Summary Tables

@OrionX_net
✦ Only Bitcoin and Dogecoin
make the cut of $250 million
annual production
✦ These 2 coins produce over
$13 billion of annual economic
value (AEV)
✦ Bitcoin has almost all the value
at $12.6 billion, Dogecoin is the
clear #2 since Ethereum
dropped out of the race.
✦ Bitcoin has 700 Exahashes/sec
of computer power, or 0.7 of a
Zettahash
Top Two Proof-
of-Work Coins
✦
Table 8. The first three columns give the coin name, its market cap as of 11/7/24 , and its
cryptographic hash algorithm rate and type. The next three columns give the annual production
value and the current and maximum supply.Only Bitcoin is in the hundreds of Exahashes/sec
range, and due to that and first mover advantage, nearly all the economic value is in Bitcoin.
Coin
Market
Cap (B$)
Total hash
rate and
Algorithm
Annual
Production rate
$B (nominal)
Current Supply
(millions)
Max Supply
(millions)
Bitcoin 1480
750 Exa,
SHA-256
12.6 19.77 21
Dogecoin 28
1200 Tera,
Scrypt
1.0 146,600 infinite

@OrionX_net
✦ Top 12 Bitcoin Mining Pool
Operators
✦ Pools are not mining farms,
they are brokers of hash
rate for a modest fee, 1 to
4% typical
✦ Miners, large and small,
typically choose to direct
their hashrate to a pool for
efficiency and for
predictable payouts
✦ It is relatively easy for a
miner to switch from one
pool to another
✦ We also list the host
country
✦ These top pools are
responsible for 92% of the
Bitcoin value brokered
Largest
Pool
Operators
Table 9. Top mining pools prior month by value using Bitcoin price of $91,000 as of
11/16/24. Transaction fees add of order 2% on top of Bitcoin’s block subsidy reward.
Pool Country
Bitcoin
Hashrate
Exahashes/s
# Winning
Blocks in a
month
Annual Run
Rate $M w/ 2%
boost from fees
Foundry Digital USA 196.7 1210 4241
AntPool China 173.1 1065 3739
ViaBTC China 93.8 577 2025
F2Pool China 69.7 429 1512
MARA USA 30.1 185 651
Binance China 20.2 124 436
SpiderPool China 17.9 110 386
Luxor USA 12 74 259
BraiinsPool Czech 11.2 69 242
SecPool China 9.3 57 200
BTCdotcom China 7.8 48 168
SBICrypto Japan 5.2 32 113
Top 12 operators 647 97% 13,972
All Bitcoin
Mining
670 15,200

@OrionX_net
November 2024
Stephen Perrenod
OrionX.net/research
Thank you!

@OrionX_net
Bitcoin 5th position after Fed, ECB, BoC, BoJ
Bitcoin relative
to Base Money
of Central
Banks
©2024 OrionX.net

@OrionX_net
©2024 OrionX.net
References
✦ https://21lessons.com/ - by Gigi, free online book on Bitcoin
✦ https://www.asicminervalue.com/ - list of top mining rigs and
profitability
✦ https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-mix-
increased-to-59-5-sustainable-in-q2-2022/ - Bitcoin Mining
Council estimate of ‘greenness’ of electricity input
✦ Broken Money, Lyn Alden 2023, Timestamp Press
✦ https://www.btcpolicy.org/articles/great-power-network-
competition-bitcoin - Matthew Pines 2023, “Great Power
Network Competition and Bitcoin”
✦ https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci - Cambridge Centre for Alternative
Finance Bitcoin energy statistics
✦ https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/dollar-worlds-reserve-currency
- Council on Foreign Relations, 2023. Discusses why the dollar
remains the world’s reserve currency for the foreseeable future.
✦ CoinMarketCap.com - market cap for most cryptocurrencies
✦ coinwarz.com - profit margins for Bitcoin mining hardware
✦ companiesmarketcap.com - market prices and capitalization for
largest companies and gold, silver, Bitcoin
✦ https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2023/html/ecb.pr23101
8~111a014ae7.en.html ECB statement on CBDC possibility
✦ https://www.educative.io/answers/what-are-the-different-steps-
in-sha-256 - SHA-256 algorithm details
✦ https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-
review-2023/ - Electricity review 2023 from Ember
✦ https://studio.glassnode.com/dashboards/btc-miners -
Glassnode, mining metrics
✦ https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/why-do-
bitcoins-have-value.asp - Why does Bitcoin have value?
✦ https://medium.com/the-capital/aristotle-would-prefer-bitcoin-
f0f825f87d3f - Aristotle would approve of Bitcoin
✦ https://medium.com/the-capital/bitcoin-and-the-circular-
economy-f1a4db39480c – Bitcoin as a circular economy asset
✦ https://medium.com/@cryptoassets0417/orionx-twelfth-
cryptosuper-500-report-bitcoin-passes-the-fourth-halving-
21b2040e9ed5 - Twelfth CryptoSuper 500 report May 2023
✦ Miningpoolstats.stream - tracks hash rate for mined coins and
larger mining pools
✦ https://www.educative.io/answers/what-are-the-different-steps-
in-sha-256 - SHA-256 algorithm details
✦ Softwar, Jason Lowery 2023, MIT master’s thesis, Amazon
(availability constrained)

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