British scientists compared the power consumption of ASIC equipment for mining cryptocurrencies with systems based on quantum computing, concluding that quantum mining is more energy efficient.
Researchers at the University of Kent conducted a study comparing the energy consumption of Antminer S19 XP ASIC to the theoretical use of three different quantum computers for mining cryptocurrencies. The study results showed that quantum computing-based systems are vastly superior to classic mining equipment in terms of energy efficiency.
The researchers concluded that using quantum computers for mining can reduce energy consumption by about 126.7 TWh. To understand the scale of the savings, the authors compared it to Sweden’s energy consumption in 2020 which has about the same figure.
The scientists also note that unlike classic mining equipment, which has already achieved the pinnacle of its perfection, quantum systems can be tuned in such a way that their efficiency will grow even more.
However, the study found that quantum mining is only energy efficient when using equipment with about 512 qubits. Meanwhile, the most powerful quantum processors available on the market, the IBM Osprey and D-Wave D2, have only 433 and 512 qubits, respectively. But using such powerful equipment for crypto mining isn’t economically feasible.
Earlier, a group of scientists from the U.S. and Australia found that quantum computing can improve the energy efficiency, security, and reliability of Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithms.
