But the parent was talking about energy and resource efficiency. You're bringing in new arguments without reacting to the original train of thought. This can go on forever. (And usually does, as with any loaded topic.)

> The block reward continually decreases with time, so it isn't clear that more adoption will increase energy usage.

It's weird. You quoted the very end of the sentence that contains the explanation why I say that the rewards grow. The part that you didn't quote literally is a response to what you have just said: "And if adoption grows, BTC price grows and if BTC price grows (or, in other words everything devalues relative to BTC) then mining rewards grow (measured in other assets)"

In other words, while the block reward (denominated in BTC) does decrease, its value keeps increasing while adoption keeps growing. (Value here means either other currencies, or, if you think they will cease to exist, then the goods you can buy for the BTCs you get as a block reward.)

It's pretty obvious, this is, actually, part of the reason why people buy BTC: because they think its price will increase due to increased adoption. And it has to, because BTC is deflationary (again, yet another property that the proponents see as a selling point). You have 21M coins and those should replace who knows how many trillions of USD. (It depends on what level of adoption we're talking about.) IIUC, 90% has already been mined, but the adoption is pretty minimal, so the value of the coins will increase substantially with adoption. Halving seems to occur every ~3 years. I've checked and the earliest I could easily find a price for, happened in 2013. Then one BTC was ~16USD, the block reward went down to 25BTC, so $400. Now it's 6.25BTC, with today's rate that's $181k(!) as of now. To get back to $400, you'd need 8-9 other halvings if the BTC value (price) didn't increase. But it has to, if adoption grows, because demand will grow and supply can only grow minimally.

> In terms of automating away humans, aren't we building society to improve human life

Again, the comment I've responded to talked about the resource use. Also, you'd need a pretty strong proof that VISA (and/or the banking system) cannot be automated, made more efficient without BTC and/or crypto in general.

> so in future the efficiency should increase dramatically.

Well, maybe you should start making claims (or starting arguments) about the efficiency when you have the data. At least as an estimate, for which you'd need to know how the system will work.

> There is a social and political impact. Intermediaries like banks infringe on our basic freedoms to hold our own money,

Nope. They provide a service. You can hold your own money, of course. Competition, thanks to automation(!) should also continue driving down the price of digital banking services.

> to have privacy,

It's the state, not the banks that want to have the right to look into your transactions in well defined cases. And it is the very interest of the society. Complete, unbreakable anonymity sounds good as long as you only think about yourself. It stops being a good idea when you realize that there are criminals, tax avoiders, etc. (Unless, you are one of them, of course.)

> and transact with each other as we wish. Therefore there will always be value to such a system that allows us to transact directly peer-to-peer;

Maybe. I'm not so sure about this. There will definitely always be some demand for this. But let's face it: debit cards and digital bank accounts are a pretty reasonable user experience. It's not that expensive either. (Esp. if you go with these up and coming service providers, like Revolut, Wise, N26 - whichever makes sense for you.)

> it is unstoppable that people will seek this, regardless of anything, even legality.

Sure, there are use cases where legality doesn't matter. :) For most people it does, though.