Bitcoin mining and energy consumption
New Bitcoin are produced through a process called mining, where computers expend energy and computational resources to solve a difficult math problem that verifies a recent block of Bitcoin transactions. The miner who solves the math problem adds the block to the blockchain and receives newly minted Bitcoin. The difficulty of the math problem depends on how much computational power the network has in summation. As the Bitcoin network attracts more miners, the mining difficulty increases, and usually, the amount of energy a mining rig consumes increases too.
https://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/b675bff371a5d7befe01423f0157e2f0.pngElectricity costs have already put miners in search for a cheaper source of energy. Companies have been looking to places like Canada and the Sichuan province where electricity is typically cheaper. Because miners have incentives to use cheap electricity, this leads to more R&D in the energy space. In the long run, this should make forms of electricity cheaper to all of society as innovations are made in energy.
picture credits to: cointelegraph
Ideas got from: Patrick Thompson
