I think the more blocks in the chain the harder it becomes to mine. This is why I consider it inefficient technology. If a block is added every time a transaction occurs imagine how many blocks would be there if it was actually used as real currency. Just think if every transaction we made electronically or in cash was represented by a specific bill, Then logged in a ledger, and that electronic ledger(blocks) would follow that bill around. Then every time it was used it would be mined. This could be why the increased energy costs too. I read a book about cryptos and thought man this is garbage. It wasn’t even a book critical of cryptos. I was curious of the technology but it has a long ways to go before it’s efficient.
Your base assumption is wrong. Mining difficulty does not increase with chain length or number of transactions. It self-balances so a block is found every 10 minutes on average, based on the number of mined blocks since the last rebalance.
I suppose that you are not one of the super rich who can maybe still fix something. So for the average joe like you and me the situation is like I presented. That's the reality for 95% of all people. In my job as treasury manager (in a European company) I had to file a special FATCA report for each company that we had, or in which we participated. For each company the IRS wants to know who is the REAL ECONOMICAL BENEFICIARY. So to who the money finally goes. Banks that don't comply can get huge sanctions and even lose their licence for the US.
Apparently a lot of young kids in college were mining Bitcoin. They could use free electricity from their dorms.
This is incorrect. Electricity usage from 1-2 laptops is irrelevant. And nobody was using giant mining rigs in a dorm. Now there was occasionally a student/teacher using the schools' computers to mine, but that wasn't in the dorm.
The OP is the same type of person who said crypto will fail at $1. Get it through your thick skills, Bitcoin is the equivalent of what the internet was in the early 90s. Yes, eventually one will be used for more regular member transactions. Why? Because fiat now has competition and fiat sucks donkey balls. This goes back to competing currencies economic theory from the 70s. The government tried for very long to keep dollars as the only form of tender by doing things like taxing gold, etc. Now, a few intelligent nerds have figured out how to create competition for the dollar that government can't "ban" or "shut down" because they don't have the technological means to do so and likey won't ever.