The power currently used by the hardware used to mine the currency is 32.53 terrawatt-hours (TWh) a year. This makes it the equivalent of the 62nd biggest consumer of energy across the globe, placing it above Serbia and just behind Denmark, and this power requirement will only get higher.
The current bubble building ahead of Sunday's launch of a bitcoin futures market by the Chicago-based CBOE Glomarkets Exchange has seen the price of a single unit soar to almost US$20,000 as investors piles into the currency.
The fear is that as more and more speculators chase bitcoins, there will be ever more companies mining the currency, thus pushing up their power needs.
In China, where a majority of the world's miners are, there factories with tens of thousands of computers running to perform the complex tasks required to gain Bitcoins. The energy required in that country is predominantly created by coal-fired power stations.