The ceiling for the power usage of bitcoin can be estimated by taking the value of the bitcoin that is mined in total each hour (say 6 blocks/hour * 6.25 BTC * 60K $/BTC = 2.25M dollars/hour) and dividing it by the cost of electricity (e.g. (2.25M $/hour) / 0.05 $/kWh = 45 gigawatt). As long as miners are using less electricity than that, they can make more profit by expanding their operations.
(It's a bit more complicated because of capital costs and operational costs other than electricity etc. but I think it's a good rough estimate to start with.)
When we finally phase out the legacy banking system completely for cryptocurrency, it will represent a drastic reduction in finance-related energy consumption worldwide.
False equivalence. It supports several orders of magnitude fewer transactions and throughput.
>When we finally phase out the legacy banking system completely for cryptocurrency
This will never happen.
>it will represent a drastic reduction in finance-related energy consumption worldwide
Assuming this hypothetical, prove it. Explain mathematically how proof of work supporting global finance levels of transactions would result in a net reduction in energy consumption.
What the hell does this even mean?
Quantum computers will eventually rip this stuff apart. And the reason folks won't be able to do the same to US banks and institutions using QC? The military and NSA will hunt you down.
However, the transactions do more so arguably the cost/benefit ratio improves a bit. Measuring this might be hard without a clear definition of what the benefit of a transaction is.