Quote from: skorupi17 on January 07, 2018, 04:45:57 PM

Quote from: CryptoDude2727 on December 04, 2017, 04:03:04 AM

With the power requirements to run the BTC network continually increasing... what is the long term solution? It doesn't seem viable that it can go on forever like this. Anyone have good insight? It's easy to just assume... "well there will be cheaper energy in the future" or "BTC will just switch to POS".... I guess I'm looking for answers with a little more substance and detail. Thanks!

This problem has been an issue years back. Miners are quite aware of this issue in the first place that's why asic mining was born. Using asic consumes less power but with big hash power. However, the issue still arises that's why pool mining takes into action. By mining in pools, mining became more efficient.
But the issue is still there. Bitcoin will not turn into a POS because of this. Bitcoin will remain a POW but power consumption will still be a problem. Maybe an upgrade to asic will be a way to deal with this but we all know that this would be just temporary. There is no permanent aid to this. Sooner or later, we will see only major miners will exist due to this issue.

In the long term mining efficiency (CPU, GPU, ASIC, pooling, etc.) only affects the difficulty, not the total power consumption.

Total power consumption is not reduced by more efficient mining.