That's why the eventual value of bit-coin is supposed to be the value of the energy required to maintain it (because the cost of doing a transaction will be the transaction fees, which have to cover the miner spending the energy to process the transaction, but because anyone can compete in the market supply will always place the value at the cost of energy). Honestly in the long run bitcoin may be cheaper than credit cards or even cash in a pure energy sense. No matter what we do we'll have to spend energy to maintain our financial system.
* With cash we have to print and distribute cash, and move it around, and run hardware to validate it, and image scan it, and count it, and destroy it. Etc.
* Credit cards require servers, massive backups, authentication procedures, production of specialized hardware, and the same networked infrastructure as bitcoin, as well as server ops, bank managers, customer service. Etc.
* Bitcoin can use any machine, and the same internet as any other program. As chips get faster and more efficient the energy cost goes down.
> That's why the eventual value of bit-coin is supposed to be the value of the energy required to maintain it [...]
This is incorrect. The value of the sum total of fees over a certain period, will be equal (or slightly greater) than the cost of the energy required to maintain Bitcoin.
The value of Bitcoin itself is not limited to the amount of energy required to operate it. Confirming a 1M BTC transaction requires the same amount of energy as confirming a 1 BTC transaction, so the cost of the amount of energy expanded is not a limit to the value of Bitcoin.
Yes, but the (theoretical) only limiting factor on the market in a hundred years will be the cost of transaction fees. Which will be the cost of energy to maintain it. Theoretically a transaction fee will be the same regardless of amount of bitcoins in the transaction.
* With cash we have to print and distribute cash, and move it around, and run hardware to validate it, and image scan it, and count it, and destroy it. Etc.
* Credit cards require servers, massive backups, authentication procedures, production of specialized hardware, and the same networked infrastructure as bitcoin, as well as server ops, bank managers, customer service. Etc.
* Bitcoin can use any machine, and the same internet as any other program. As chips get faster and more efficient the energy cost goes down.