The proof of work is destructive and it does not imbue some sort of magical value to bitcoin. The value of bitcoin should not come from the energy wasted in min

The proof of work is destructive and it does not imbue some sort of magical value to bitcoin. The value of bitcoin should not come from the energy wasted in mining it but in its utility of moving value in a trustless medium. It's like saying a hammer is more valuable the more glass panes it shattered. Mining is wasteful but the main thesis of BTC is that waste is less than the current monetary system maintenance waste. I think it might just be right but can't tell right now. If some sort of working secure alternative to POW comes up we should seize it, seeing as it would reduce the cost of transaction ans would make a currency more appealing and useful (the less a transaction costs, the more the currency can be used for smaller payments). > If you removed the limit on the number of bitcoins and rearranged mining so that difficulty would increase more in parallel with the increase in performance of computers But the mining difficulty _does_ increase in parallel with the computing performance. That is the beauty of it. People can say all they want about cryptocurrency and greed and politics, but I think Satoshi was a fucking genius. I think he was a true visionary and I was stunned the clarity with witch he could see problems arising and the fixes and incentives for the actors in the system.