Proof-of-Work (PoW) is not secure, has no future, and it’s electricity usage is a cancer that would guzzle watts like entire continents.
Bitcoin needs to someday change to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) if it's to survive in the long run. Otherwise, it's competing crypto-assets would do the world a favor by burying it.
As of August, you need about $400-800 million (*1) to attack the $44 billion Bitcoin chain (and in PoW too, you can get some or even all of them back by short selling in the right moment).
This makes PoW seem way less secure than PoS, where you'd need at least 15% of the stake (*1), or over $6B, and to buy all that, you'd drive the price to the moon, while everyone else cashes out, and the attacker is holding a worthless bag. But in PoW, even if the network forks away, the attacker didn't spend money buying any coins, but rather the transferable power to attack any similar forked coin as well.
PoW is also a huge pointless electricity drain on the world, already using more electricity than Iceland, the country.
PoW served it's purpose. It was good for getting economic incentives for miners to jump aboard.
However, if prices go 1000x higher as we like, it'll be 1000 Icelands, or entire continents of power just for PoW.
PoW therefor has no future. It's not at all secure, and it'd use entire continents of power usage to power it.
Bitcoin better change to Proof-of-Shares (PoS), if not delegated dPoS, or it's hard to imagine how it'll survive, by even modest govt attacks or otherwise.
For the time being, only PoS and dPoS systems such as NEO, QTUM, LISK, Bitshare, Steem and others coming to PoS like Ethereum, Tezos and EOS, seem viable.
(*1)
facts
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