The energy consumed to secure and run a payment system is not wasteful. Like any other payment service, using Bitcoin incurs processing costs. Services necessary to run the current popular financial system, such as banks, credit cards, and money transporters, also consume a lot of energy, although the total amount of energy they consume is not as transparent and easy to measure as Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin mining mechanism is designed so that it can be optimized over time by using specialized hardware to consume less energy. The operating cost of mining is still proportional to demand. When Bitcoin mining becomes too competitive and the benefits decrease, some miners will choose to stop the activity. In addition, all the energy consumed by mining is eventually converted into heat energy, and the miners who can make the most profit are those who can make good use of the heat energy. An optimal and efficient mining network will not consume any additional energy. Although this is an ideal situation, the economic principle of mining is that individual miners strive towards this ideal situation.
