How are liters calculated?

At a high level, liters are caclulated by dividing your mining rate (in dollars) by the cost of a liter (in dollars).

In order to estimate liters, we convert your mining rate into expected coins per hour then use the current price of the coin to exchange to USD. Next we assume $30 brings water to one person for life and that they will consume 64 ounces of water each day (eight 8oz cups or 1.89 liters). Using population data, we calculate the average remaining lifespan and use that to arrive at an average total number of liters. We divide the cost of $30 by average total number of liters. This gives us a very rough cost per liter. We can then apply a conversion from $/hour to liters/hour. Here’s what that looks like:

A lot of work is done in Africa, so we’ll use those numbers.

Life Expectancy: 60.7 years mean
Source: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+africa

Median Age: 18.7 years median
Source: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+age+africa

Clean Water for One Person: $30
Source: http://charitywater.org

Water per Day: 64oz = 1.89271 Liters
Assume 1 person needs 64oz of clean water each day

Next we calculate dollars per hour. In order to this, we need to look up information on the cryptocurrency. I won’t go into detail here, but I hope to follow up with an article that does. These values are dyanmic and captured at time of calculation:

P is the value of a single hash in dollars. Mining rates are calculated in hashes per second. So we multiple the above, dollars per hash, by your rate then convert from per second to per hour:

The result of this equation is dollars per hour generated at the current coin price.

We then adjust the dollars per hour by the maximum expected expenses of 30% including transaction fees.

Finally we divide dollars per hour by dollars per liter to get liters per hour:

If you’ve followed this so far, it’s hopefully clear that these calculations are just estimations. Even so, they should give you an idea of what kind of impact your mining contributes.

We decided to show values in liters per hour because it’s not obvious how far a small amount will go. It’s also a lot of fun to see liters fill containers as you mine.

Do you have some ideas on how we can improve? If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts. You can contact us at hello@charityminer.io.