Will Bitcoin be Using the World’s Electricity in 2020?

Something to think about:

In just a few months from now, at bitcoin’s current growth rate, the electricity demanded by the cryptocurrency network will start to outstrip what’s available, requiring new energy-generating plants. And with the climate conscious racing to replace fossil fuel-base plants with renewable energy sources, new stress on the grid means more facilities using dirty technologies. By July 2019, the bitcoin network will require more electricity than the entire United States currently uses. By February 2020, it will use as much electricity as the entire world does today.

This is an unsustainable trajectory. It simply can’t continue.

Writes Eric Holthaus on grist.com (link to the article).

Yes. It cannot continue and it won’t. This is one of many reasons why we are working on moving transactions off-chain, e.g. via the Lightning Network.