With the power requirements to run the BTC network continually increasing... what is the long term solution? It doesn't seem viable that it can go on forever like this. Anyone have good insight? It's easy to just assume... "well there will be cheaper energy in the future" or "BTC will just switch to POS".... I guess I'm looking for answers with a little more substance and detail. Thanks!
I'm not sure what you're getting at, exactly. Bitcoin's difficulty algorithm is meant to adjust to waxing and waning levels of miner investment. As Bitcoin becomes less profitable to mine, rational marginal miners will start shutting down their operations. By the same token, hash rate continues to trend upwards because of heightened speculation on the future price of BTC.
It's a "gold rush" so to speak. It will eventually die down when profitability drops (maybe because of miner oversaturation or a long term bear market), and difficulty will adjust accordingly. Just as difficulty has been trending upwards for so long, it's okay for it to trend downwards. We just don't want to see a
sudden, drastic drop in hash rate that puts security at risk by allowing old generation mining equipment to attack the network. As long as fees rise to replace the block subsidy, that risk should be mitigated.
The concern isn't the difficulty adjustment or anything having to difficulty. The concern, which I think is valid, is the total amount of energy being consumed by all the miners added together. It is a lot. If the price goes to $45,000 per BTC as some predict then the amount of energy used to mine will go up by a factor of about 4.5 and the network will consume even more power.
The question being asked is "what can be done about the total power consumption of the entire Bitcoin system". It is a fair question. Unfortunately there is no answer without fundamental changes to Bitcoin (POS instead of POW as one example) because it is working exactly as designed: miners will burn as much energy as they can afford to burn in order to secure the system.