Agreed. This is obvious both empirically and analytically. As BTC price goes up, the network starts to yield larger mining profits in total (in fiat terms) and

Agreed. This is obvious both empirically and analytically. As BTC price goes up, the network starts to yield larger mining profits in total (in fiat terms) and this creates an incentive for people to launch new miners to absorb the surplus profits... The increased competition then causes an increase in mining difficulty which reduces the profit margins back to what they were before the increase but now there are more miners in the network with more total hash power which are consuming more electricity in total. The equilibrium point is the point where most miners are teetering on the edge of unprofitability. One interesting thing to note, however, is that while increases in the price create an incentive for more miners to join the network, the Bitcoin network itself does not require so many miners to exist to support itself at those higher price levels. If you assume a hypothetical scenario were all governments around the world required a license to mine Bitcoin and limited the number of machines allowed in total, then price could keep going up without an increase in the total number of miners. This would be very convenient for existing miners as they would be able to earn more profits without having to buy more machines as the price increases. The fact that this obviously negative-sum game has been profitable for miners in the long run is proof that our current monetary system is broken. If our monetary system was efficient and becoming more so, it would be unprofitable to run so many miners. Bitcoin profits from the inefficiency of monetary system whilst revealing to us the fiat system's negative-sum nature. As dumb and unethical as this all seems, it is the smartest investment to make in the context of our current system. I suspect that Bitcoin saves more electricity than it wastes by turning the world economy into a giant squidgame... It attracts capital towards it instead of towards other economic activities which would end up consuming more electricity... Those other activities would certainly have made better use of the electricity (since, unlike BTC mining, they would have provided tangible value to people in return) but Bitcoin doesn't care about people's well being. It profits from the destruction of opportunities and the concentration of wealth. Poor people consume less electricity. Bitcoin saves electricity by ensuring that poor people stay poor by soaking up all the excess capital so that it doesn't get invested in real economic activities which would bring people out of poverty.