Except it gets more difficult the more you (and others) mine.
WHAT? What makes you think Bitcoin is driving anything other than speculation and greed?
Does it sound more plausible / correct with that phrasing?
It is better to turn it around:
Those with environmental awareness are shocked by the absurdity of Bitcoin.
The greenies won't care to admit it but Bitcoin has finally provided the motivation to pursue cheap, efficient, reliable renewable energy where all they've ever had to offer was financially-punishing "save the planet" vibes.
Depending on the source, 50% (+-20%) of crypto mining is already powered renewably.
Isn't that true for every user of electricity?
My country has an obnoxious "incentive" structure where the power companies aren't actually required to pay me for the energy I generate. They give me "kWh credits" which expire if unused for over one year. So I have no reason to generate more energy than I need.
Cryptocurrency changed everything. It allowed me to sink my surplus energy production into proof-of-work. I get paid for it and get to support an amazing project like Monero.
A typical situation might involve a business or manufacturer taking power, raw materials, and labor to create something of value and sell it.
With bitcoin, anyone with sufficient capital can simply exploit natural resources and turn it directly into money. It's a capitalist dream: remove nearly all labor from the equation leaving only capital and land (land in the Georgist sense being natural resource like coal, oil, land, water, etc). I think in this way it exposes market failures faster than anything else since the efficiency of capital-infused actors is so high...