This was a really interesting read. I'd thought about mining myself when I first started getting into crypto. Actually many years ago I started trying to actually mine. At that time I had free electric too. (But I didn't know what I was doing so gave up without realizing I actually had it working LOL.)
In the end the reason I decided to invest instead of mining is that electric is super expensive where I live. I just don't see how I could compete with people in places with subsidized electric of cold weather (neither of which is my situation). It's good that you worked out whether there really was reason for the govt. to intervene here instead of jumping to a reflex conclusion.
This bolsters my interest in proof of (anything other than work) coins.
No matter what you do, it always ends up being less profitable than you think. You have downtime, crashes, power outages...hardware failures or DOAs, configuration problems...and forget about ever getting the "advertised" hash rates for your hardware unless you are a configuration guru.
You need awfully cheap power to do well at mining IMO. I do believe DPOS is a better option for these and other reasons.
Agree POW/POD/POI is the future. However, I personally think the whole "consuming so much energy" is a narrative used to deter cryptocurrency adoption. I'm not saying there isn't an increase in energy consumption, but how often does the govt/commentators take into account the income generated by miners and complementary services/products?
I think with the POW-energy narrative the governt can mobilize more people too be against crypto and make it easier to pass anti-crypto legislation masquerading as controlling energy prices.
I'm sure sometimes that's what's going on. Governments all over the world are really split on crypto right now. Some states are accepting crypto for taxes and fees. Others are trying to stamp it out. Some nations are issuing their own crypto. Others are making it illegal to do just about anything with it. I'm getting a sense that apart from being taxed sky high (tax on every trade?) our government mostly intends to profit from it. But any given municipality/state can in many ways make their own decisions on that.
I'd have to agree. In most cases, the worries about power usage are rather overblown, particularly given the potential of the technology in question.