My point is not that *all* energy will be consumed by mining. My point is that mining makes energy more expensive. It will consume all energy that is cheap enough to make mining profitable, so all other pursuits now have to use the more expensive energy (= they become more expensive), or be more profitable than mining (then they are effectively determining the price of energy available for mining). Among other things, it makes all hobbies and necessities more expensive because they are by definition not profitable.

There is no real reason for the “price” of bitcoin — its exchange rate against the real currency — to ever go down, as long as people see it as a store of value and a means of speculation — unless, of course, the network is compromised and there is a danger to lose everything. There is no set price by which the exchange rate is determined. There is also no mechanism by which the bitcoin becomes cheaper: First, if Bitcoin’s exchange rate to fiat currencies doubles more often than the reward is halved, the reward in real-world money goes up, not down. Given what the price has been doing for the last 12 years, it looks like that is the case. Second, reducing the rewards is equivalent to printing less new currency every year — in real-world economics a move like that is supposed to reduce inflation, ie to make the currency less available, and thereby more expensive. Third, Bitcoin’s total supply is limited by design, which is a major advertising point for Bitcoin bros. It makes it effectively rarer than gold, because there are vast reserves of gold on and off Earth that are currently just too expensive to access, whereas there can only be 21 million bitcoins.

So yes, the price is likely only going to go higher, and with it the price of electricity available to you.

By the way I am not the only one who thinks that bitcoin is deflationary. You can for example check out Noah Smiths’ articles on that topic. Unlike me, he is an economist.