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The title of the article is yet another stab at the bitcoin energy usage calculation but the content is actually much more interesting. There's an assertion, that I can't validate, that there's a point at which mining becomes unsustainable because the energy cost becomes too expensive and thus the network crashes. Anyone have a rebuttal for that?

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If mining becomes too expensive, then people stop mining.

When people stop mining, competition for mining falls, making it easier to mine.

If it's easier to mine, mining becomes cheaper, so people start mining.

GOTO 1

Does the transaction price go up when fewer people mine?

No. (Well, in the short term as miners leave, the block time increases, which increases the block pressure and increases fees, but the block time re-normalizes itself regularly as the mining difficulty adjusts.)

The only thing that the number of people mining directly affects is the cost for an attacker to perform a 51% attack on the network.

No, the transaction price scales with total transaction volume on the network.

AFAIK, theoretically, some people stop mining, so the value of mining increases again, and it reaches a natural equilibrium.

However that doesn't happen instantly - and in the meantime everybody may stop mining.

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