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China Plans To Kill Most of the World's Bitcoin Mining Operations (bloomberg.com)
The Chinese government will end bitcoin mining operations in the country in the coming months in a move that could have a massive impact on the price of the world's biggest digital currency. From a report: China has been a central player in the development of bitcoin in recent years, but Beijing has spent the last six months cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry -- shutting down local exchanges and banning initial coin offerings. Leaked documents suggest the Chinese government plans an "orderly exit" for bitcoin mining operations in the coming weeks and months. In the documents, issued to the local offices of the internet-finance regulator, authorities were instructed to force mining operations out of business using measures linked to electricity pricing, land use, tax and environmental protection.
No, and this is one of the seemingly least understood aspects of Bitcoin mining. The difficulty of mining a block adjusts dynamically based upon the total amount of compute power currently mining. The more mining power, the higher the difficulty. The purpose is so that a new block is found approximately every 10 minutes. When power is added, blocks are found faster and the difficulty increases. When power is removed, difficulty decreases.
One important aspect if how often the difficulty adjusts -- it's around every 2 weeks for Bitcoin. So if a lot of power is suddenly removed, then the rate at which blocks are found will likely dramatically increase -- and stay that way for potentially several weeks. But eventually the difficulty will adjust to match the available compute power, and orderly blocks every 10 minutes will resume.
Some alternative cryptos have differentiated themselves versus Bitcoin by having much faster difficulty adjustment periods (e.g. as quickly as every single block).
Bitcoin would only consume a nuclear power plant of energy if humans put a nuclear power plant's worth of energy into mining. If instead humanity puts it 5V @ 0.001W of power, the difficulty will adjust and that will be the consumption. ROI will ultimately drive the amount of compute power dedicated to Bitcoin.