Since Bitcoin's inception in 2009, the amount of energy required to mine has always been less than the amount of Bitcoin you got for mining. But that was never going to last; there was a limit of 21 million possible Bitcoins baked into the system from the jump, and the rate of new coins mined has gotten slimmer as competition has increased, making the economics worse and worse over time.
These days, one Bitcoin trades for around $94,000, but costs about $137,000 in electricity for small-scale operations to mine, making new coins an economic liability for all but the largest players. For those whales, Gizmodo estimates the most optimal cost for mining a bitcoin at around $82,000 — slim margins which are shrinking fast.
Right now, the top 8 percent of crypto wallets own a little under 99 percent of all Bitcoin in circulation. Zooming in even farther, we see that the top 1 percent of crypto wallets control over 90 percent — so much for all that decentralization that Bitcoin was supposed to represent.
These are US electricity prices. Where in the US? They don't say. There are miners in the US who get their electricity for "free" ie they generate it from waste heat or waste gas. So this is de facto a cherry picked number.
Most bitcoiners believe that the value of bitcoin will continue to rise in the future as it has for the past 14 years. A $137K bitcoin today could be an insane bargain in several years. Also "untainted" coins - Coins that haven't passed through other wallets yet - Generally trade at a slight premium as there is lower risk of them being confiscated by governments in the future for having passed through the hands illegalized owners.
No shit bitcoin is concentrated in a few holders. It's money, under capitalism. The author conflates communist-style distribution of value with the decentralized administration of the network itself. This is like saying that Lemmy isn't decentralized because the majority of posts come from 1% of users. There's no way that rhentorical switchup was accidental, that is a misleading and disingenuous writing choice.
I'm as happy as anyone to criticize bitcoin, but this is trashy clickbait.
For your second point, in that scenario it's more valuable to turn your rig off and just buy it then.
Yeah, if you're actually paying that much and untouched coins are of no benefit to you then you'd probably pull the plug. Any rational miner in the US still chugging away right now is obviously not losing money according to their business plan or they'd shut off.