Energy Consumption

Energy consumption for mining has a high correlation with bitcoin value (exchange rate). Because variable costs of mining are dominated by electricity price, the economic equilibrium for the mining rate is reached when global electricity costs for mining approximate the value of mining reward plus transaction fees.

So the higher the value of one bitcoin, the higher the value of mining rewards and transaction fees, the higher the energy consumption of the bitcoin network in the long run.

more efficient mining gear does not reduce energy use of the bitcoin network. It will only raise the network difficulty

cheaper energy linearly increases mining energy use of the bitcoin network

the same conclusions apply to all proof of work based currencies (i.e. Litecoin). Click to expand...

We've yet to be impacted by the major negative aspect of Bitcoin. Unnecessary and increasing use of electrical power.By design, creation of new Bitcoin is limited by the cost of electricity. ("mining cost"). It is just a move back to the "gold standard", except now the gold is electrical power.It takes an ever-increasing amount of computing power to mine bitcoin. This is by design. It is no longer practical to mine bitcoin using desktop computers in most localities (at least not if you are paying for the electricity), because the electricity will cost more than the value of the bitcoin mined. And, so, miners have had special ASIC circuits created that can mine more efficiently.Ultimately, though, they will bump-up against the cost of electricity again, and then need some more boost to efficiency. Maybe we can generate electricity more efficiently. Might be good for society, as it might drive-down the cost of electrical production, and drive up the efficiency of computation.But it does ultimately mean that we will use more and more electricity to produce - what? To produce tokens of value. But, to me, that electricity is completely wasted. We would be using the electricity to produce tokens of value - not value itself.BTW, this is not lost on the dark side of the Internet. People are stealing your electricity right now. There's plenty of malware that uses your computer to mine bitcoin. One of the latest trends is Javascript mining. It's very inefficient, but (to the miner) the electricity is free.Gold, at least, has other useful purposes it can be used for. If you no longer need a gold coin as a store of value, you can turn it into a piece of jewelry, some electrical contact plating, or a tooth filling. Electrical power, once consumed to mine bitcoin, is exhausted and cannot be "reused".I suppose the solution to the madness would be eventually the government orders mining operations to be halted and sends in troops to shut-down the miners, thus making electrical production available for useful purposes.Wow, what a great Science Fiction scenario...