Bitcoin's Electricity Dilemma

Bitcoin miners

By Michael Hooper

I was an early believer in bitcoin. I started buying bitcoin when it was about $1000 per coin. Then I started mining bitcoin in summer 2017.

I was earning about $4000 worth of bitcoin per month with about $640 worth of electricity, which powered four Antminer S9 15.5TH/s. At the time, these Antminer S9s were top of the line miners but are considered outdated today. Each machine required 220-volt power. I was so excited to be making money, about $135 a day, running these miners inside a room in my garage. I had an air conditioning unit in there to keep the place cool and I had special ear protection because the miners were extremely loud. And I have sensitive ears.

Then halving occurred in May 2018. My profits were cut down substantially and the price of bitcoin had fallen from a high of $20,000 in December 2017 to around $7000 per coin. Plus more people got into mining, thus reducing the amount paid out to miners. Essentially I was breaking even in the business, I spent $640 a month in electricity and I earned about $640 a month in bitcoin. I decided to shut down the mining business, partly because of the amount of electricity that I was consuming. I was consuming enough energy to power six houses; that is a staggering amount of electricity going through just four machines. As you can imagine, global consumption of electricity for bitcoin mining grew substantially over the next nine years, creating a huge dilemma for bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin is currently trading around $78,300, down from a high of $126,198.07 on October 6, 2025.

Today bitcoin's global electricity consumption is estimated between 155 to 204 Terawatt-hours (TWh) annually. This power draw is roughly equivalent to the annual energy consumption of mid-sized nations like Pakistan, Poland or Switzerland, according to crypto.com.

The consumption of energy is driven by bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism. The miners essentially verify transactions on the block chain.

Some large-scale mining companies have converted their electricity use to renewable sources, including wind power and solar power to save money and to save the planet. Some experts estimate that about 50% of the power used by these miners comes from renewable sources.

Technically, bitcoin miners could reduce the number of miners substantially; a lower number of miners reduces the overall cost to conduct proof-of-work on the network, but a lower number of miners would make the network slower, the difficulty would drop and make it easier for the remaining miners to add a new block of transactions to the blockchain.

There is only going to be 21 million bitcoin. This number creates scarcity because bitcoin is owned by people all over the world. Bitcoin is a world market. Currently there are about 20 million bitcoin in circulation. But experts estimate that up to 3 million to 4 million bitcoin in circulation may be permanently lost due to lost passwords or discarded hardware. You may have heard about the bitcoin millionaire whose girlfriend threw away his computer, which ended in a dump, and the computer was never found. Many tears have been shed over lost bitcoin. Personally I never lost any bitcoin because I have kept my crypto in secure wallets.

Experts estimate that bitcoin will be mined for another 114 years, with the last bitcoin mined around the year 2140.

Roughly every four years or every 210,000 blocks of transactions, the reward miners receive for validating transactions is cut in half. This is what happened to me in May 2018 when my reward for mining was cut in half. The most recent halving occurred in April 2024, and the next event is projected to happen in 2028.

After all bitcoin has been distributed, miners will still have incentive to continue mining because they will receive fees paid by users for validating transactions.

Some critics believe that bitcoin has no future because electricity will become too scarce and force the miners to quit mining. This could happen. A country or state could outlaw mining to conserve energy.

I expect the last remaining miners to convert to 90% to 100% renewable energy, using their own wind power and solar power to generate electricity. Bitcoin's electricity dilemma is real, but I believe technology will solve this problem and bitcoin mining will continue indefinitely.