The amount of electricity it takes to mine bitcoin is reported to be larger than that of some countries.
The environmental impact caused by this much energy usage could be preposterous.
In an era of environmental focus would this be something that could ruin bitcoin’s future?
It's true that Bitcoin's electricity consumption is larger than of many countries, but those countries are small and/or underdeveloped - if you'd compare Bitcoin's electricity consumption with top countries or big industries, it would still be tiny. Bitcoin is nowhere near as close threat to the environment as cars, industry, fossil fuels, etc.
The real problem with Bitcoin's energy consumption is that it might become limiting factor for Bitcoin's growth in the future. Bitcoin is based on game theory, the assumption that people won't cheat because the amount of electricity spent on cheating would cost more than their potential profit. But as Bitcoin's price and network growth, more energy would be required for this equilibrium - when every block will be transacting billions worth of value, we will need amounts of energy of the same order of value. The solution to this might be switching to another algorithm - a new kind of PoW or PoS. But this is a problem for a future, so there's no need to worry about it now, when there are other problems lurking around.
