The way the scaling operates, as it goes along, even if you had FREE energy piped from a hyperspatial link in the heart of the Sun… eventually the ASIC farms themselves will begin to cook the planet.
It doesn't stay alive and profitable unless it keeps burning energy MORE. The fact that the energy's going to come from the dirtiest and most dangerous (cheapest) possible fuels, is certainly a problem and will continue to be one for as long as such fuels exist, but in the literal absence of fuel and cost of fuel, the exponential-growth thing just switches to the computers turning (now free and infinite) energy into calculation.
There is always a bigger server farm, because such a thing costs money, and those with money are the ones who can and will make more of it. With cryptocurrency, that's just literal, and their profitability is always a perfect and direct match with how hard they can cheat or abuse any possible rule there to constrain them. The end result, perfectly untraceable and fungible, as long as the system is allowed to continue.
Disaster will always be more profitable, in cryptocurrency-land. I mean, I suppose you could play nice and barely make any money…
The energy usage of Bitcoin is proportional to the price, it doesn't grow without bound as you seem to be saying here. Miners compete for a fixed reward, it doesn't make sense for new miners to enter the system if the rewards already are distributed to the point that they just cover the costs.
The way the scaling operates, as it goes along, even if you had FREE energy piped from a hyperspatial link in the heart of the Sun… eventually the ASIC farms themselves will begin to cook the planet.
It doesn't stay alive and profitable unless it keeps burning energy MORE. The fact that the energy's going to come from the dirtiest and most dangerous (cheapest) possible fuels, is certainly a problem and will continue to be one for as long as such fuels exist, but in the literal absence of fuel and cost of fuel, the exponential-growth thing just switches to the computers turning (now free and infinite) energy into calculation.
There is always a bigger server farm, because such a thing costs money, and those with money are the ones who can and will make more of it. With cryptocurrency, that's just literal, and their profitability is always a perfect and direct match with how hard they can cheat or abuse any possible rule there to constrain them. The end result, perfectly untraceable and fungible, as long as the system is allowed to continue.
Disaster will always be more profitable, in cryptocurrency-land. I mean, I suppose you could play nice and barely make any money…