Bitcoin has boomed over the past 2 year, with December 2017 seeing the largest increase in value. Bitcoin's value isn't the only thing booming. The power consumption of Bitcoin mining increases as more Bitcoin mining farms are created to process the cryptographic calculating requirements of the digital ledger.
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To estimate how much electricity is being used for entire Bitcoin network, a peer-reviewed article has been published on May 16th 2018 in the journal Joule. The estimates Alex de Vries came up with are that the current minimum usage of the BItcoin network is 2.55 gigawatts which is nearly the amount that Ireland uses.
Each single transaction is estimated to use the same amount of electricity that an average home uses per month in the Netherlands. By the end of 2018, the estimated power could be as much as 7.8 gigawatts. This would be about what Austria uses. It's also representative of 0.5% percent of the worlds total consumption of electricity.
Think about that. One network using half a percent of the power of the world in order to make it run. This is such a huge waste of electricity when it's not even required. It's not helping reduce the need for power in the world.
Additionally, this adds more argument in disfavor of Bitcoin or by association other cryptocurrencies compared to the traditional financial system, even though other cryptos are much more power efficient by not requiring useless hash calculations in Proof of Work (POW). With an continual increase in the value of Bitcoin, the network could reach 5% of the world's electricity, according to de Vries.
The more people get in trying to mine Bitcoin, the more power will be used and wasted. Not everyone who tries to mine gets to do so and claim the reward of 12.5 BTC. Miners compete for the chance to mine. Those who don't win still consume power with the computations they engage in. To increase the chance of winning the mining round, you need to increase your computing power. This incentives greater processing hardware and mining farms to be made.
Eventually the cost of hardwarer and electricity for mining will equalize with the value of Bitcoin. de Vries has looked at the cost of the mining hardware to estimate how much the cost is from hardware and how much from power consumption, but many manufacturers are secretive about their hardware. He has to rely on imprecise data for some of his estimation. He says his estimates look forward into cryptocurrencies and how sustainable they are, allowing policies to be made to restrict mining for cryptos like Bitcoin. Some U.S. states have already applied restrictions for Bitcoin mining.
The Estimated Number of Terahashes per Second (Trillions of Hashes per Second) Performed by the Bitcoin Network
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I don't like this factor of the Bitcoin network using so much power wastefully. I suppose it will stick with mining coins to make it competitive until the cost of mining is greater than the BTC rewarded for mining. Another cryptocurrency can do better as the "king of crypto" if Bitcoin is locked in its ways and unwilling or unable to change how it functions. Maybe STEEM can take over someday? :P
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