[tomp]

The alternative possibility is: the amount of bitcoins kept for trade significantly outweighs the amount of bitcoins kept as an investment. Then, the price (in $) would roughly equal to the ratio of the amount of money circulating in the society over some period of time (in $) the number of available bitcoins. Thus, bitcoin would probably be worth somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000.

[caf]

It's worth keeping in mind in mind that the equilibrium total mining power consumption is proportional to the price of a bitcoin in terms of the amount of electricity it can purchase.

With the current mining rate of 150 bitcoin per hour, a bitcoin price of $100,000 implies around 100GW of power consumption for bitcoin mining (for comparison, a large thermal power station has around 1GW of output). That's a lot of energy to throw out the window...

[tomp]

Yes, but in time, the mining rate will drop, and the energy loss will be reduced significantly.