Bitcoin Miners Are on a Path to Self-Destruction

Bitcoin Miners Are on a Path to Self-Destruction

Many of the complaints about Bitcoin over the years have been overhyped. But the cryptocurrency's increasing use of real physical resources“” energy and computer chips “” can no longer be ignored. If Bitcoin wants to avoid government crackdowns, it needs to shift to technologies that don't require constant massive resource consumption just to maintain the currency's price.

A real problem with addressing criticism of Bitcoin is that so many people have cried wolf about it in the past. Its initial enthusiasts believed “” and many still do “” that cryptocurrency is going to undermine central banks and take over from fiat currencies like the US dollar. That has led some to decry Bitcoin as a plot to bring down governments. That's a red herring. Bitcoin is not going to become the dominant currency as long as it remains highly volatile. And for it to become less volatile will probably require it to become inflationary “” that is, for its price to go down over time.

But the price, though it bounces around and has plenty of bubbles, has kept on going up. That's great for the people who bought in early and for people in the crypto software industry. But Bitcoin's high