M^O Labs co-founder and chief architect Greg Di Prisco discusses President Donald Trump's upcoming crypto summit at the White House on 'Varney & Co.'

President Donald Trump recently made a surprise announcement that the U.S. government would invest in a crypto reserve including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano. With the White House Crypto Summit on Friday set to embrace a pro-innovation regulatory framework, crypto looks set for a boom over the next four years.

Well… maybe.

While a White House Summit may help push currencies like Bitcoin further into the mainstream, the blockchain industry needs something more to really take off: energy — a lot more energy.

TRUMP'S CRYPTO CZAR DECRIES GOVERNMENT'S LACK OF BITCOIN 'LONG-TERM STRATEGY'

A recent study revealed that Bitcoin — just a single cryptocurrency — consumes nearly 175 terawatt hours per year. To put that into perspective, it’s roughly the same amount of energy the nation of Ireland consumes in a year.

Whether it’s for your private wallet or a national reserve, transactions done on public blockchains, like Bitcoin, have to be mined. Mining is so energy intensive, any serious attempt at establishing a crypto reserve necessarily demands a strategy to exponentially increase energy consumption.

This acute need for energy is only........

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