Author: Jared Lee Richardson 2017-03-31 16:46:10
Published on: 2017-03-31T16:46:10+00:00
The cost of running a node capable of handling 300% of the 2015 worldwide non-bitcoin transaction volume today would be a rounding error for most exchanges, even if prices didn't rise. However, PayPal has multiple data centers, and so does Visa and each banking system. It is believed that they need that much power to run a global payment system at the transaction volumes they run at. The math behind the transaction volume is known, which is 426 billion transactions in 2015, which equals 669 terabytes of data per year, assuming a transaction size of about 500 bytes. The hard drive cost is about $36k a year, declining approximately 14% per year. The bandwidth is the biggest cost, with 942 mbit/s. That's 310 Terabytes per month of bandwidth, which comes down to $18,500 a month or $222,000 a year, plus storage costs of $36k per year. This works out to around $250k per year, which is not a rounding error but within the rough costs of running an exchange. The team of 5 developers works out to approximately $400-600k a year, and the cost of compliance with EU and U.S. entities (including lawyers) runs upwards of a million dollars a year. Furthermore, there's the support department, which costs approximately $100-200k a year. If hard drive prices decline by 14% per year, that cost becomes $3,900 a year, and if bandwidth prices decline by 14% per year, that cost becomes $1800 a month ($21,600 a year). Against a multi-million dollar budget, even 3x that isn't a large concern, though not, as previously stated, a rounding error. CPU usage was not approximated, but it is not believed to be a higher cost than bandwidth, which seems to be the controlling cost compared to adding CPUs.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T22:40:14.683533+00:00