Bitcoin’s network is consuming electricity at an unprecedented rate even as miners face declining revenue due to sluggish transaction activity, according to a new report from GoMining Institutional.
The report, based on data from CoinMetrics Labs, shows that Bitcoin’s estimated energy use surged from 15.6 gigawatts in January 2024 to 24.5 gigawatts in January 2025. By May 2025, consumption climbed to 33.1 gigawatts, more than doubling in just 17 months. Much of this spike occurred in early 2025, with a 35 percent increase between January and May, largely driven by the deployment of more energy-intensive mining hardware following April’s halving.
Bitcoin mining isn’t just a hardware game anymore.
It’s sovereign strategy, energy economics, and capital markets.
From the U.S. Treasury’s 198K BTC reserve to sub-1% fees and AI-driven margin pressure — our H1 report breaks it all down.
Read it here: https://t.co/7AP6L8uE3y
— GoMining Institutional (@GoMiningInst) July 31, 2025
Despite record power demands, mining difficulty has remained relatively subdued. The first half of 2025 recorded 13 difficulty adjustments, rising from 109.78 trillion in January to 116.96 trillion by June, a modest 6.54 per cent increase, well below the 2024 monthly average of 4.48 per cent.
While difficulty briefly reached an all-time high of 126.98 trillion in May, extreme summer heat in North America forced miners offline, reducing hashrate by 147 exahashes per second and triggering a 7.48 per cent difficulty drop. This was the steepest decline since July 2021 during the post-China mining ban period.
This combination of rising energy consumption and restrained mining difficulty highlights the growing financial strain on miners. Revenue has been squeezed by weak transaction activity, leaving operators dependent on block rewards that continue to decrease with each halving.
Industry analysts caution that this pressure is likely to persist. Mining companies are deploying increasingly powerful equipment, but long-term profitability will hinge on network activity, user demand for block space, and the halving schedule, which will continue approximately every four years until the last Bitcoin is mined around 2140.
A June report from TheMinerMag noted that the cost of mining a single Bitcoin is expected to exceed $70,000 in the second quarter of 2025, up from $64,000 in the first quarter.
If you want to read more market analyses like this one, visit DeFi Planet and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and CoinMarketCap Community.
Take control of your crypto portfolio with MARKETS PRO, DeFi Planet’s suite of analytics tools.”
