Pearl vs Bitcoin
Both networks are costed the same way: observed hashrate divided by the most efficient machine currently sold for it. That gives a floor on power, machines and capital — real fleets run older hardware — but because the method is identical, the ratio between the two is meaningful. The hashrates themselves are not comparable: a Pearl hash is an FP8 matrix multiplication, a Bitcoin hash is SHA-256d. Only the physical quantities are.
Pearl energy as a share of Bitcoin
The headline comparison. Watts are comparable even when hashes are not.
Network power draw
Pearl on H200s at 700 W and 1.25 PUE; Bitcoin on Antminer S23 Hydros at 9.5 J/TH and 1.05 PUE — the first sub-10 J/TH miner; Zcash on Antminer Z15 Pros at 3.31 J/kSol and the same PUE.
Power and fully diluted value
What each network draws against what the market values its whole supply at. FDV is every coin that will ever exist at that day’s price: 2.1B PRL, 21M BTC, 21M ZEC. Power is a frontier-hardware floor: the table on today’s machines, as in the chart above; the dots on each day’s best machine, back to each coin’s first traded price.
Power draw at the same point in issuance
Pearl, Bitcoin and Zcash since their first block, lined up by the share of their supply issued instead of by date. All three issue half their cap in their first four years, so the same x is the same point in the schedule — though not the same age: where Pearl is today, and what Bitcoin and Zcash were drawing when they had issued as much. Each day is priced on the most efficient machine available that day — for Bitcoin a CPU in 2009, then GPUs, FPGAs and each generation of ASIC; for Zcash a CPU, GPUs from late 2016 and ASICs from 2018; for Pearl the card with the most hashes per watt.
Machines implied
Frontier GPUs for Pearl, frontier ASICs for Bitcoin. A unit of account, not a census: a fleet of older hardware would need more of it.
Hardware capital
What it would cost to rebuild each network from scratch at today's best hardware — a replacement cost, not what was actually spent.
Issuance value per day
Coins minted each day valued at that day's price, not revalued at today's. This is the sell-side each market has to absorb.
Market cap
Coins mined so far times the price, on both sides. Not a physical quantity like the charts above: it is what each market says the coins that exist are worth. The ratio alone is its own chart.
Bitcoin on-chain volume
Estimated value transacted on-chain, with change outputs stripped. Pearl's own on-chain volume is on Activity, walked from our node; it is gross of change, so the two are not compared on one chart.
Where to next
Related pages that answer the questions this one raises.