— Jim Rickards
… The computing power needed, the electricity consumed, and the wasted heat generated will all grow exponentially as bitcoin mining continues to solve more difficult problems (called “proof-of-work”) to validate transactions on the blockchain, a distributed record of all prior transactions.
The electricity usage in bitcoin mining is so extreme that many miners locate in China, where electricity is cheap due to government subsidies, or to Iceland, where the near-Arctic climate reduces the cost of cooling the computers.”