Hacker News Reader

Some n amount is not required. Energy usage varies based on how many miners are running. It is a form of Sybil resistance, which may be understood better by reading white paper.

Mentioned elsewhere in this thread is the LN network which is cheap, fast, and low energy. LN allows spending coin pegged off the main chain.

The amount of electricity is proportional to the price. Transaction rates are completely separate from the amount of electricity it takes to mine.

Every other cryptocurrency can handle far more transactions than bitcoin. Only bitcoin has a transaction rate of 1.1 kilobytes per second (lower than a 14.4 modem). Increasing throughput does not affect the electricity needed, but bitcoin refuses to do it to sell a second layer that no one wants or needs. A scammer name Craig Wright made a fork of bitcoin to exploit some people who recognized the need for more throughput.

It probably won't be used for micropayments. Those are the costs of removing the middleman.