[spiznnx]

>but that amount is substantially less than the energy it costs to keep no fewer than three Fortune 500 financial companies running at full steam for a few days.

Ridiculous comparison. They are working on other transactions as well. Currently a bitcoin transaction uses 427kWh.

One thing that is interesting to think about is that once block rewards go away, increasing the transaction capacity of the chain will probably lower energy usage. Competition on transaction fees will dry up if more transactions can fit on the chain per minute, reducing the total reward from fees and making mining unprofitable until total network electricity costs go down (by miners shutting down) until equilibrium is reached again.

But txn fees are still only 15% of the total block reward so those effects won't really matter for a while. If satoshi had predicted this rise in value, he would have made the block rewards drop faster than once every 4 years. Secure network consensus is not what the mining market is getting paid by, it's getting paid by the $140k USD created out of thin air every 10 minutes.