The mining reward is similar to a military budget. The higher the amount, the harder it is for someone to mess with peoples freedom to spend their money.

Currently it is about $10B per year.

The military budget of the USA alone is over $700B per year.

It is a tricky issue. How can we create security from malicious actors without spending much on defense?

How much does the world spend on locks? Probably a lot. It seems we have not found a cheaper way yet.

Maybe proof of stake will be as reliable and cheaper. We will see in a few years.

Wouldn't the right question be "Will BTC move to an energy efficient protocol?". As far as I know, there is no plans from the Bitcoin developers to move away from Proof of Work, but I'd be happy to be corrected.

I believe the simple answer is "when BTC stakeholders stand to lose money by not moving away from PoW".

I think there's too much ideology, politics and tribalism involved to simplify it like this.

You can't move bitcoin off proof of work. You can fork it, and the fork can become more dominant, but the fork won't be bitcoin. Similarly for changing the 21M coin limit. Bitcoin is an idea, not a democracy.

To me, the fact that bitcoin is so inefficient means that a government cannot coopt it because it would be politically untenable. That's trading a bad thing for a good thing

Ultimately though, side chains with various insured instruments (aka banks) will prevail due to their ease-of-use, and most real-world transactions will use unstable side coins (aka fiat currency).

It will never. Best option is just invest in Ethereum which has Proof of Stake (not energy-intensive) coming next year. The changeover to it being the top coin is inevitable. It only needs to double its market cap right now to do so, which isn’t that difficult in something as wild as crypto. And I say that without bias and I’m about 80/20 BTC/ETH right now. I think the coming months may be the last hurrah for BTC. There’s no need to use that much energy and it will only get more important with time. I have lost an incredible amount of money backing the wrong horse the past year or two and being in Bitcoin as Ethereum has eaten its lunch.

BTC maximalists will file in below me with bogus attestations that proof of stake is bad and none of it will be correct or factual. Proof of stake actually increases decentralization and eliminates the fact that now to mine btc you need to be near a very cheap electricity source and have ties that can get you the fastest asic mining machines as soon as they come out.

Source: Myself, a former crypto miner.

It's not jsut maximalists, every day people will tell you that the richest people invariably create cartels and it ends up badly. This time is not different

Ethereum's current approach to PoS is insecure. It will take a lot more work to get to a secure enough place to switch over, if a switch is even possible at all.

I pointed to the latest vulnerabilities in another reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29229084

When will everyone only do energy efficient things. Stop the global party.

https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoins-carbon-footprint/

I skimmed this but it seems pretty heavy motivated reasoning.

> However, despite being extremely energy intensive, per unit power consumed, Bitcoin mining is probably one of the most environmentally friendly activities in the world. This is due to the unique flexibility with respect to where the power is required. This means miners often choose renewable power due to the low stable costs or miners are able to use otherwise wasted or stranded energy. This is a fact often claimed by Bitcoin proponents and it is probably true. Per unit power consumed Bitcoin is likely to be exceptionally environmentally friendly.

Ok, but what's actually happening? We can pontificate about how bitcoin mining could be hypothetically switched over to entirely renewable power because it is geography and time independent, but what's the cold hard reality?

What % of energy used in bitcoin mining is from coal or other fossil fuels?

What's the delta amount of fossil fuels burned compared to bitcoin not existing? How does that compare to other ways of sending money digitally?

Any defence of bitcoin on environmental grounds that dodges that question is flaky at best.

> What % of energy used in bitcoin mining is from coal or other fossil fuels?

> What's the delta amount of fossil fuels burned compared to bitcoin not existing? How does that compare to other ways of sending money digitally?

How would it be possible to answer any of those questions reliably when any individual could set up a miner at their home?

I'm only talking analytics-quality data here, at the very least you would look at the major players and see where they are based. You would at least want to include anyone capable of doing setting up their own power plant specifically for mining, like these guys https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-58020010