The other reason some "true believers" (or, as I refer to them, insane cultists) invest in Bitcoin is because they believe it will be "the world's currency", i.e. that it will replace major currencies like the dollar. But, were that to occur, it's market cap would skyrocket, at which point it would require a planet-and-a-half's worth of energy to stay secure, which is also not happening.
> require a planet-and-a-half's worth of energy to stay secure, which is also not happening
But what are the implications if it does?
Ehm, either that or the price of energy increases or the percentage of reward per block mined to mcap decreases.
Today, miners are getting paid about $1.5 billion per month. If they like money, they will keep adding new miners and run them until they all in total spend less than, but close to that amount.
So, $1.5 billion per month of fresh money needed to offset this pressure on Bitcoin price.
There goes the argument that Bitcoin is a good "store of value."
I agree. As far as I understood the issue was not with the money spent on energy but with the energy spent, no?
> So, $1.5 billion per month of fresh money needed to offset this pressure on Bitcoin price.
If I understand correctly, you're saying that BTC inflation is a problem and I believe this is true, both in the economic and ecological sense.
But there was no way in 2009 to foresee the optimal inflation rate (halving every 4 years isn't too bad actually) and modifying it now defeats the founding principles of BTC, so it'd be a big no no. So it was kind of a trade off and will continue to be, every 4 years a bit less though unless we hit hyperbitcoinization.
From an economic point of view the investment into bitcoin is only ever relative to other assets and most of them inflate far more (relative to their mcap).
Yes, I totally agree, the crux of my argument is really just "in a proof-of-work system, it is undeniable that electricity spend is proportional to total network market cap", so if the market cap doesn't change, then things can certainly putter along.
That said, if the idea is that more and more of the world's economy will be represented by BTC transactions, which these days is pretty much what every person who owns BTC believes, then the market cap can't stay static. I also have a very difficult time believing that if the market cap did stay static for 10 years or so that people wouldn't start to realize "the jig is up".
But yes, I totally concede, if the market cap doesn't rise, current electricity spend doesn't need to rise either.