An interesting BBC article points out that the worldwide mining of Bitcoin may actually use more energy than my entire country. I find that mind-boggling and at the same time completely possible.
Source
Here's an excerpt from the article about how the energy usage is calculated:
A widely-used formula to calculate energy consumption is from the crypto-currency blog Digiconomist, which relies on the performance specifications of common mining technology.
It takes total mining revenues as a starting point, estimates the operational costs to miners as a percentage of their revenues, and then converts these costs into energy consumption based on average electricity prices.
According to this method, Bitcoin's current annual electricity consumption is estimated to be 32.56 terawatt hours (TWh).
This is how comparisons with entire countries are being made.
For example, data from Eurostat shows that in 2015, Denmark consumed 30.7 TWh of electricity and the Republic of Ireland consumed 25.07 TWh.
I'm a novice in the world of crypto. Does it concern you that Bitcoin is possible having a major impact on the environment from the large energy consumption needed to mine it?
@pennsif, who made me aware of the article, pointed out that in terms of the impact on the climate, it might make a case for shifting from Bitcoin to Steem, as Steem is not generated in the same way.