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The only way this could possibly be true for any sustained period of time is if the value of bitcoin were rising and the cost of energy falling by a combined 20% per month.
Isn't higher energy costs built in to the nature of bitcoin? As coins become more scarce it requires a great level of computation to 'mine' one.
Well, I'm convinced.
If everybody else in the world stopped mining*, you would be able to mine 75 BTC/hr on an old PC. * everyone else would have to ramp down gradually over a couple of months. If mining drops abruptly, that causes a problem.
What drives up the difficulty is the _value_ of BTC, which attracts more miners to compete for the same fixed supply. The periodic halving of block rewards _reduces_ energy use by making mining less attractive.
So you are disagreeing with the claim that it will continue to increase energy use long term bc people will stop mining (eventually). Is there evidence that people are stopping? My guess is the more likely outcome would be the use of renewable to continue to mine.
As the paper that started this story explains (and it's not as bad as I suggested, the idiocy was in the reporting), in the equilibrium in aggregate people spend as much money on mining as the mined bitcoin are worth...
The number of bitcoin mined is on a declining path, and does not depend on the behaviour of miners. The current cost of mining is, per the paper, currently 60-70% cost of electricity. So the major determinants of electricity use are cost of electricity and price of BTC.
You can see a graph of the aggregate "amount of mining done" (in effect), which is basically electricity used x energy-efficiency of hardware (which is increasing). It generally goes up, but is volatile.https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate …
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