Bitcoin's generation mechanism and security mechanism is pure energy. The name of the function it uses, designed by a cryptographer named Adam Back, is "proof of work". And this is a good name since energy is fundamentally what work is made of.
If BTC's value were extrinsically linked to the value of energy, you might have an argument, but Visbek did a pretty good job of dismantling your argument demonstrating how the amount of energy available to purchase with 1 BTC is in no way linked to the value of BTC. Therefore BTC is
not energy any more than I am Diet Coke, despite my addiction.
If 1 BTC could always purchase a fixed amount of energy (or at least an amount in a very narrow range) then BTC would be extrinsically linked to something of intrinsic value providing a price anchor. There are significant problems with this idea, but I'd argue that it's better than what it is now.
The problem that most people utterly fail to comprehend is that in order to have a stable economy the demand for productivity needs to be in some relation to the availability of money that can be used to consume it.
The other problem of BTC and other fixed quantities of money like gold is that it cannot be created, it must be possessed in the real world before it can be spent. You likely think that's a feature, not a bug, but I doubt you realize the problem that it creates.
In the fiat economy productivity is the limitation of money creation (modified by inflation).
Quick sidebar.
When you or I spend on a credit card, we are
creating money. When we take out a loan from a Fed member bank, we are
creating money. Individuals are really selling a security to a bank to take a loan (the document you sign to take the loan). We can securitize our loans with our property or the promise of future payment represented by our capacity to make money. It's a whole interconnected system that makes our system highly efficient in ways that will only become obvious when it's gone.
Ok, this matters because it allows producers to make goods and services to sell for money that's not been created yet. A producer can take a loan (the same way an individual does) and use the loan to make, for example a car. The fact that I can create money though securitization assures the car company that wants to sell the car, that the sale is not limited to money in circulation.
Back to it.
Thus, most fiat money get's it's value from the productivity that justified it's creation as most loans are made to either make or purchase something of real value. The system of money creation between the government and bank money creation (which is really money created as credit) in turn creates webs of interdependency and shared risk and thus shared interest in maintaining and ensuring the stability and integrity of our system of money.
If the economy does poorly, fewer loans are created which will eventually result in a slowdown of real things being created. Despite most people's understanding, money is not thrown from helicopters, but is often created to facilitate the creation of real goods, which in turn requires real labor which pays salaries.
BTC does none of that. The amount of coins is entirely arbitrary. There is no system designed to maintain value and reduce fluctuations. The result in a BTC (or similar) economy would large price fluctuations (and labor is a price, salary) as the result of the business cycle. There would also be more creative destruction in a BTC economy.
With fiat, the stability of prices (and salaries) is what is emphasized and businesses cycles result in periods of higher or lower deficit or the expansion or contraction of the money supply.
