[gruez]

>bitcoin power consumption actually increases because an increase in efficiency means more money if similar rates of power are consumed, except this also has the side effect of increasing mining difficulty, thus making the entire network more energy hungry overall

well not really, the amount of bitcoin to be mined is fixed (and actually drops in the long term), so the amount of money that is up for grabs should stay the same unless the price changes. Therefore it's more reasonable to say that the increase is power consumption is fueled by the increase in price, not because of increase in efficiency.

[root_axis]

Price is one factor, but ultimately the actual price is secondary to the fact that miners are incentivized to hash as much as possible because more hashes per kWh means more earnings, regardless of the actual price, yet this increase in hashes per kWh doesn't actually provide more utility for the network.

[627467]

Only if miners paid their costs in BTC which they don't (yet).