That would fall under the "sheer bloody mindedness" the gp comment mentions. There is no fundamental reason. Even Zimbabwe or wherever still has some taxation p

That would fall under the "sheer bloody mindedness" the gp comment mentions. There is no fundamental reason. Even Zimbabwe or wherever still has some taxation power. There is some pretty weird stuff that could happen with bitcoin, because there is a lot of compute that exists, but would not be deployed once the energy costs can't be recovered with mining. Presumably at some point you get into 50% attack territory (which doesn't really have an economic incentive), and then what happens?