Bitcoin mining is a pioneer species, proving out the tapping of novel and remote energy sources and laying the initial infrastructure for more investment.
As much as I appreciate articles like this, you're not going to win over the HN crowd with them. Especially now that Ethereum has been so successful with PoS and decimating power usage, not just on that chain, but all GPU based PoW chains.
There was only ever going to be one PoW chain that dominates the world.
Ethereum abandoning it just cements bitcoin as the winner. It might have some great utility, but bitcoin is now the standard for immutability that all other solutions will be measured against.
> There was only ever going to be one PoW chain that dominates the world.
Only because there is only one chip that can be produced in mass, asic's.
> Ethereum abandoning it
Ethereum didn't abandon it, it was part of the plan all along. Bootstrap on PoW, move to PoS. I agree with you about immutability, but that is going to be an issue moving forward, as I believe strongly that human nature favors utility.
https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-times/bitcoin-is-a-pioneer-sp...