@Mnementh:

Agreed on your points generally, except for your response on private keys existing on your computer. You could have a document on your computer which stores your private key but that would be really insecure in my opinion. I think it's much safer to store your private key physically divided in multiple parts and stored in multiple locations. That way it's impossible to confiscate your Bitcoin by just confiscating your computer or any other data holder. Also protects you from hacking.

Well yes, you can print out your key or copy it on USB-sticks. If the authorities don't find all copies and all copies are encrypted by a password only you know, then the authorities cannot use the copies they found, and you can still use your hidden copies. It is just effort. But I guess, if you own multiple Bitcoin (which is a lot of money), then probably that effort is not uncalled for.

Yes, it's speeding up its own destruction. Without all that (increasing) processing power, no more transactions possible.

And what happens if BitCoin 'succeeds'
https://voxeu.org/article/what-happens-if-bitcoin-succeeds

Basically you do not want to live in a world where BitCoin replaces Fiat money, but it will likely kill itself at some point.

As for banks failing from a solar flare knocking out most power grids. I would trust them more to have secure backups in underground facilities. But if you don't trust them, buy some actual physical gold and hide it somewhere. Of course gold may crash in value as well, but it can't be lost by solar flares or worldwide power outages!

Another thing to consider if the flippening happens (switch to crypto currencies)

At the highest level, governments will be hit hard, as they will no longer exercise the same level of control over the country’s currency. The idea of printing more money has been raised time and time again in response to financial turmoil, but that option disappears once currency has to be mined.

Doesn't sound like a problem. But now think about how we got through this pandemic....

Governments won't be able to print money to spend their country out of a drought or other natural disaster, which will happen more often with more extreme weather.

To replace the dollar, transactions will need to be a lot easier and faster to do. There isn't enough processing power in the world to change all visa transactions to bitcoin. Atm it takes about 10 minutes for a bitcoin transaction to be processed, but can take much longer https://www.coolwallet.io/delayed-crypto-blockchain-transaction-and-history/ Not quite the tap and go you get with visa...

Although you have to wait quite a bit for your transaction to go through, BitCoin still does about 300K transactions per day.
https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions
However Visa does 1,700 per second... (over 150 million a day)

So imagine Bitcoin using about 500 times more energy as it does now to match Visa. (and the carbon footprint of 1 bitcoin transaction is already equivalent to the carbon footprint of 1.6 million visa transactions)
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

21st century fools gold rush

Your computer uses a piece of software to do math problems and when a problem is solved you've mined said crypto currency and get a small percentage of the amount of you mined back. This takes up a lot of energy as it's solving complex problems. Some people build PCs with strong gpu's to mine on multiple devices as a form of income. Especially when crypto like Bitcoin are close or at all time highs you earn more from mining.

Tbf as clean energy alternatives become more accessible miners will probably move over to using those, lessening environmental impact in the long term.

This is a fallacy in thinking imo. That clean energy could be better used for more essential things. Hoarding clean energy to 'justify' doing useless complex math problems isn't helping the environment. Nor will it solve the scalability problem.
https://hackernoon.com/the-blockchain-scalability-problem-the-race-for-visa-like-transaction-speed-5cce48f9d44

I mean clean energy will need to become universal to stop the climate crisis. At a certain point were gonna be using clean energy for gaming. As for the scalability issue I'm not really aware of that so I can't really speak on it.

I don't agree with the assertion that Bitcoin was created so that the rich could get richer and so it could be manipulated. It was designed as an alternative to fiat currency which is heavily manipulated by corrupt governments. Bitcoin has a fixed supply schedule. Every 4 years the number of new bitcoin that can be minted is cut in half. Secondly the average joe has had years to front run bitcoin. Unlike stocks where the rich only can get involved with presales and then dump it on the backs of retail investors with bitcoin the institutions only really started to get into it in the last year or two and they've been pumping the bags of retail investors.