The amount of energy required to "mine" one dollar's worth of Bitcoin is more than twice that required to mine the same value of copper, gold or platinum. One dollar's worth of Bitcoin takes about 17 megajoules of energy to mine.

What makes Cryptocurrency mining this expensive?

1. The exponential growth in mining price is a consequence of rising hash rate, which is a measure of miners' performance.
2. Hash rate adjustments can make Bitcoin mining exponentially more energy intensive.
3. As the hash rate increases the chances of computing the mathematical puzzle required to earn bitcoin also increases but along with it, the amount of energy needed to run a bitcoin mining too surges upward.

Mining is a process equivalent of a government printing new currency and apart from knowing its mining cost; it carries an entire process of releasing new Bitcoins.
 
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