In this map you can see all the countries that individually consume less electricity than all the mining power directed towards Bitcoin. According to an Digiconomist article Bitcoin's estimated annual electricity consumption as of today is 30.25 TWh. With its current price at an all time high the annual mining revenues are $8,586,874,673 while the estimated consumption costs are valued at $1,512,271,665. There is currently 275 KWh of electricty consumed per transaction meaning you could power 9.3 U.S households for 1 day for a single transaction. Doesn't sound as crazy now that the transaction fees of Bitcoin are becoming massive.
The estimated annual electricity consumption right now is equivalent of 0.13% of the total global electricity consumption, if all Bitcoin miners were in a country of their own they would be ranked 61st in the world.
Comparing the map above with a map that shows the percentage of population with access to electricity it does show some relevance to power consumption of miners especially in the African countries
Here is a quoted list of some more interesting facts about the electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining taken from the source:
In the past month alone, Bitcoin mining electricity consumption is estimated to have increased by 29.98%
If it keeps increasing at this rate, Bitcoin mining will consume all the world’s electricity by February 2020.
Estimated annualised global mining revenues: $7.2 billion USD (£5.4 billion)
Estimated global mining costs: $1.5 billion USD (£1.1 billion)
Number of Americans who could be powered by bitcoin mining: 2.4 million (more than the population of Houston)
Number of Britons who could be powered by bitcoin mining: 6.1 million (more than the population of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool, Bristol, Croydon, Coventry, Leicester & Nottingham combined) Or Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Bitcoin Mining consumes more electricity than 12 US states (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming)
Here's a map of global bitcoin mining consumption compared to each country's electricity consumption
Bear in mind that the more ASIC miners are created and enter the market, the higher the electricity consumption, the bitcoin mining difficulty and the more countries Bitcoin Mining overtakes
Bitcoin Mining Consumption VS European Countries
Bitcoin Mining Consumption VS U.S States
Here is a scary chart. While Bitcoin Mining currently is only consuming 0.13% of the world's electricity output, if it keeps this up and countries would not add any new power generating capacity, it would consume all of the world's electricity by February 2020.
Bitcoin mining does not seem plausible to me, I predict that it will either change algorithm once it deems to be distributed enough, although many know how monopolized the hashrate is, or people will just ditch it at some point for more energy friendly currencies who are already out in the free market.
