Since you bring up the energy issue again, I'm curious on your opinion on the energetic wastage that results from video media, that I mentioned previously, but I don't think you responded to. There are other, less energy hungry ways for humans to entertain themselves using the internet, and to convey information, than video, which is extraordinarily unsustainable if we apply the same logic as you do to Bitcoin. If Bitcoin does hit 1 million USD it's role in our world will also be far more significant, so it's kind of untrue IMO that that energy usage is just going to be doing nothing, just as it is kind of untrue now.
What it is doing, it could be doing more efficiently, yes. But again, the same thing applies to video media for the purposes it serves in our world, and the ability to stream HD video, presumably, does NOT rank higher than "living in harmony with the planet", as you put it, and video media is a bigger environmental problem than Bitcoin TODAY, rather than at some hypothetical point in the future.
It still just seems strange to me to focus specifically on the energy usage of a very new computational technology rather than simply the environmental impact of certain ways of generating this energy, which remains the core problem. Despite what you said earlier about it not mattering whether the energy comes from polluting industries or entirely green sources, it's hard for me to see why this is the case, unless you think ANY wastage of energy is inherently wrong - which maybe you do, but this doesn't seem to align with the argument that the problem is it's environmental impact.
Assuming that you didn't and don't speak out against the arguably frivolous use of video media as an unsustainable and environmentally destructive force - which right now, it is, if arguably not due to an inherent problem with the technology - why didn't you, or why don't you?
I did see your question, and sorry I didn't address it until now, there's only so much time in the day for typing out thoughtful replies. Yeah the energy usage of video sucks, and it's something that needs to be improved, no doubt about it. We need to talk more about the true cost of all these digital services that we take for granted, myself included, and the public needs to put pressure on Google, Netflix etc to improve this, as well as look at our own consumption. If I was smarter in mathematics and younger in my career I'd love to work on improved video encoding algorithms that could improve the efficiency of video streaming. I know there is a huge incentive to improve these algos, so it's definitely something that's constantly being worked on. I think there's a lot of potential in using AI to resynthesize HD video out of thinner data streams.
The difference vs bitcoin is that we don't have an immediately usable alternative that can provide the same functionality at 1% (or 0.1%, or less) of the energetic cost. That's why it seems like such a no-brainer and tragedy that everyone is so focused on bitcoin right now. There are literally working cryptos, right now, that can do everything that bitcoin can, but better (faster transactions, lower fees), at 1% or less of the cost. If you can find an analogous replacement for current video streaming services, I'd love to be educated. I don't think it exists right now. This is low-hanging fruit.
The other difference is that bitcoin's energy usage scales linearly with the
market price of the currency itself, rather than its utility. The network throughput of of bitcoin does not scale linearly along with price, its bottlenecked by the tech. This is a tremendous problem because if the price does 20x to 1 million, it won't be processing more transactions as a result of that higher price (ie providing more utility), it will simply be burning 20x more energy for roughly the same amount of tx.
This would be analogous to youtube burning more energy because google's stock price goes up, with the world as a whole being bandwidth limited to roughly the same amount of TB/s of video streaming as in 2012. It's a pretty fucked dynamic when you have energy consumption tied to its price instead of utility, and you have everyone cheering on a market rally.
Your statement that "if BTC goes to 1 million, its role will be far more significant" is true in the sense that it will be one of the biggest carbon emitters on the planet, and will probably be the largest market cap asset, bigger than gold. However, it won't be powering a significant number of the worlds monetary transactions, because it doesn't scale like that. The vast bulk of transactions will probably be happening on a mixture of the same kinds of payment systems we see now, along with newer cryptos.
You can see
BTC's transactions per second here. It's not scaling up significantly since mid 2016.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
But oh well, I still locked in almost 2 whole percentage points lower than I had.