As a miner, I'm running a machine that takes electricity as input and outputs bitcoin. Since I have to pay for the electricity in dollars, and since I sell the

As a miner, I'm running a machine that takes electricity as input and outputs bitcoin. Since I have to pay for the electricity in dollars, and since I sell the bitcoin for dollars, I'm actually operating a machine that takes dollars as input and outputs dollars. As long as I get more than a dollar out for every dollar I put in, I basically want to put as much money through the machine as it can handle, and I want to build as many more machines as I can afford. That will only change if the $ input:output ratio drops below 1. If the cost of electricity goes up, my ratio suffers. I have to pay more to get the same amount of bitcoin out. If the price of bitcoin goes down, my ratio suffers. I get less dollars out for the same input. If you want me to burn less electricity, you need at least one of those two things to happen: Increase my electricity cost or decrease the price of bitcoin. You may be rolling your eyes at the obviousness of this. That's because all industrial capitalism operates this way. You put money in to pay for power (to extract resources and fabricate), and you get money out the other end when you sell your product. The "use value" of the product never comes into it for the capitalist. All that matters is what it costs to produce vs what someone will pay at the end. You may say "but industrial capitalism produces actually useful things like food and clothes" but when it does, that's just coincidental! The situation with bitcoin isn't unique, it just illustrates the phenomenon especially elegantly: the economy does not care whether it's producing useful things or destroying humanity. It only cares if the math works.