This assumes that the value produced by bitcoin transactions is equivalent to the value produced by banks operating, though, which seems a rather huge assumption? The stuff banks do on a daily basis is very, very important, and they do a lot of it.
Like, a trivial example: Let's say I can eventually pay my rent with bitcoin instead of a bank wire. I'd have to do that off-chain or on an exchange or something, right? What happens once you factor the cost of operating those exchanges in? My landlord probably needs to convert that BTC to USD at some point, so then banks and wires are involved to transact the USD.
It's trivial that the value exceeds the price of the electricity. Unfortunately, electricity is often priced well below cost once you account for externalities like pollution.
Aren't bitcoin transactions dependent on miners continually mining in order to verify transactions? It sounds like bitcoin is relying on a perpetual profit margin for mining, in order to make transactions possible.
This is the point of transaction fees in bitcoin. Fees get 'attached' to the block that is mined and go the miner. So even when all bitcoins have been distributed there will remain a profit motive for mining. The difficulty in mining is also automatically algorithmically adjusted, so if the industrial scale miners move onto other things - suddenly it might become profitable to go back to GPU mining. And the fewer people mining, the more profitable it would become.
#cough# JavaScript cryptocurrency miners in adverts, #cough# cloud computing with stolen resources, #cough# anticipation of future bitcoin value when estimating cost effectiveness
Like, a trivial example: Let's say I can eventually pay my rent with bitcoin instead of a bank wire. I'd have to do that off-chain or on an exchange or something, right? What happens once you factor the cost of operating those exchanges in? My landlord probably needs to convert that BTC to USD at some point, so then banks and wires are involved to transact the USD.