You can probably tell that I'm a Taleb fan, but it seems that whatever we have in place for doing the same thing is rotten to the core. What happens when we get hit 2x or 4x as hard as 2008? The way financial systems are structured today is the problem, and decentralization seems to be the only answer. Bitcoin is exactly that.
Bitcoin's future value may end up being no more and no less than helping us preserve a functioning world economy given an unprecedented financial crisis. Is that worth double the energy of data centers? Yes, because without it you will have 0 data centers.
Solutions will have to be implemented to curtail that energy use. Could be better power sources, could be more efficient consensus mechanisms.
That means that whatever practical good bitcoin provides, we’ve DOUBLED the energy usage of data centers.
Is that good worth having to build that much additional capacity?
What about the problem that bitcoin keeps increasing it’s energy usage?
And finally, is there no more efficient (in energy usage) way of doing the same thing?