Why would they mine it at a loss relative to the market when they could just buy it at whatever the current market price is, if they think it's going to go up in the future?
I don't think that's a solid argument. Some coins were structured such that there would be a finite supply (21M in the case of bitcoin IIRC). The health of a coin seems to me to be its transaction volume, and somewhat related its ability to be directly exchanged for physical goods or services.
So back to a previous user's suggestion: instead of buying energy to mine coins at a loss, one could instead buy the coins at a lower price which seems on many levels to make more sense than to continue mining.
There's a whole wasteland of people mining to keep coins alive. But not very many people. If ten people are running one graphics card each, out of nostalgia or just in case it catches a rocket to the moon, this is no environmental catastrophe, any more than a personal Minecraft server is.
Exactly! Which is why we expect the energy expended on mining PoWETH to drop to zero as the coin dies due to lack of interest, which was the upthread point you were arguing against.
