"if suddenly we've got useful works, such that you can apply that $X million in electricity to solve problems that are actually not wasteful, and worth perhaps

"if suddenly we've got useful works, such that you can apply that $X million in electricity to solve problems that are actually not wasteful, and worth perhaps $X million dollars in solutions" first if we ignore the part "not everyone is going to have equal access to people who are willing to pay for solutions of useful work" I think this can never happen. ---- People should think PoW as lottery. Every X minutes there is a prize draw giving you Y coins. But ticket price converges to market value of: ticket price = (Y coins)/(total tickets sold) So if you add a value to 'not winning ticket' by introducing 'useful work', you are changing ticket price to: ticket price = (Y coins)/(total tickets sold)-'work value' so you are just giving coins more value, means making 'new ticket' more expensive. new ticket = old ticket + work value In the end you will still 'waste' the same amount at equilibrium.