Quote from: ghdp on July 05, 2014, 07:29:24 AM

Quote from: InwardContour on July 05, 2014, 03:11:43 AM

Quote from: brenzi on July 04, 2014, 11:15:05 AM

Quote from: Skele on July 04, 2014, 05:58:36 AM

Technology stills evolving, more efficient mining hardware will appears, adding that not only Bitcoin has energy consumption problems, the rest of the world needs now alternative clean forms of energy that i believe are being researched so hard right now...

Besides, current prices are too low, some things would be different if Bitcoin goes to the thousand again...

Efficiency of mining hardware has no effect on energy consumption of the network. It only drives difficulty.

This is not true. If more efficient miners are on the network then the average energy consumption per THs on the network will be lower. As the difficulty increases, less efficient miners will take their machine offline as it will be consuming more energy then the bitcoin it produces will pay for.

Yes, and at equilibrium, the energy spent by the network has exactly the value of the minted coins.
Proof of Work = (literally) Proof of Energy Spent
There is no such thing as "efficient" mining hardware.

I would disagree with your statement about there being no such thing as "efficient" mining hardware. I would define efficient miners as machines that use less electricity per GHs then the network does as a whole.