This has a lot of fascinating implications for Bitcoin. Although large scale fusion plants are not yet existent, this research suggests that they may one day provide us with massive amounts of cheap, constant energy.
In such a scenario, fusion would likely face the problem of fission; too much energy and too few buyers. In this way, miners will step in as the buyers of last resort they are and help support these growing fusion plants.
What is also interesting to consider is that fusion's promise of dramatically cheap energy could drastically lower the costs of mining. One big concern with scaling the base chain is fees as throughput increases, but fusion would help this. Cheaper mining means fees can be lower, and thus fusion could provide something of an offset to rising onchain costs. A good article that explores it a bit more can be found here.
So, what do you guys think of this? Will Bitcoin be able to accelerate fusion production? Will fusion make Bitcoin cheaper to use? idk, guess we'll see what happens with time.
See also another post, found here on SN, featuring an article that (broadly) addresses this:
What If Bitcoin Existed Alongside Unlimited Nuclear Fusion Energy #66048 bitcoinnews.com/bitcoin-unlimited-nuclear-fusion-energy
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!remindme 25 years
As that's the earliest we'll see this in commercial use, I suspect. But who knows.
As a baseload energy source, that makes for a great match with bitcoin mining, should CapEx on the mining rig hardware remain a huge component of the cost of mining (second only to the cost of electricity).
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