How Does the Block Reward Incentivize Miners to Consume More Energy?

The block reward, a set amount of new cryptocurrency awarded to the miner who successfully adds a new block to the blockchain, is the primary incentive in Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining. To win this reward, miners must compete by expending computational power, which consumes energy.

As the value of the cryptocurrency increases, the block reward becomes more valuable, encouraging more miners to join the network. This increased competition drives up the total energy consumption as each miner invests in more powerful hardware to increase their chances of winning the reward.