Quote from: w00t on February 10, 2017, 07:57:56 AM

Even today (I mean right here, right now) with all the problems Bitcoin has (and there is plenty - such as it doesn't scale well) it's already superior to gold so I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be on par with gold.

No way. This post (from very early in this thread) is a bit dated because we are now in the next era but the point is still valid:

Quote from: BurtW on August 01, 2014, 12:56:52 PM

We cannot/do not want to get to $500,000 per BTC any time soon. Here is the math behind it:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.0

If BTC were to go to $500,000 in this era it would cause a catastrophic mining bubble:

$500,000 x 25 = $12,500,000 per block = $75,000,000 per hour

$75 million per hour would drive the mining to attempt to use 675 GW. This is about 30% of all the power generated on the planet.

So, in order to keep our power consumption under about 2% of world wide power production, we cannot/do not want the price to get to $500,000 before era 6, which is about 2033 or so.

Using my previously derived formula for the power consumption:

P = (6(50/2^e) + f)(x)(1 - g)/c [kW]

where:

x = exchange rate [USD/BTC]
e = era [0..32] (we are currently in era 1)
f = average fees per hour [BTC/hour]
c = cost of energy [USD/kWh]
g = average gross profit margin [unitless ratio]

we can look at the power consumption in each era assuming a price of $500,000 per BTC.

In order to make it simple I will make the following assumptions:

x = $500,000 per BTC
f = fees per hour will keep the coinbase above 6 BTC/hour (1 BTC/block) in all eras
c = $0.10 per kWh
g = 0.1 miner gross profit margin

Code:

Original target Subsidy Est Fees Power % of total world
Era starting year BTC/block BTC/hour GW power production
--- --------------- ----------- ---------- ----- ----------------
  0 2009 50.00000000 0.00000000 1,350 58.41%
  1 2013 25.00000000 0.00000000 675 29.20%
  2 2017 12.50000000 0.00000000 337 14.60%
  3 2021 6.25000000 0.00000000 169 7.30%
  4 2025 3.12500000 0.00000000 84 3.65%
  5 2029 1.56250000 0.00000000 42 1.83%
  6 2033 0.78125000 1.31250000 27 1.17%
  7 2037 0.39062500 3.65625000 27 1.17%
  8 2041 0.19531250 4.82812500 27 1.17%
  9 2045 0.09765625 5.41406250 27 1.17%