Meaning there won't be sufficient return for serious miners after the initial launch period. Only the masses will bother once the masses are the majority of miners.
You are banking on the irrationality of the masses. Not necessarily a bad bet, but it is a square peg treatment again that involves wasting energy.
That was my most clever insight.
It is less clever than giving that value away without requiring the token of wasted energy.
It is not entirely irrational. People spend on hobbies. And they get some coin with this hobby or curiosity. And they might get it anonymously, so it has a value higher than the FX value. Also the future value may justify the ROI. Alas it is a complex dynamic, very difficult to characterize entirely.
It is the best I can think of for PoW; I claim much better than Bitcoin. You know well from our many discussions that I don't believe PoS and variants such as your Decrits can be secure, because I believe they all suffer from the order of the block peer selection not being driven by a random entropy that PoW provides. But I am not claiming that I am omniscient on this, and I wish you the best possible results in proving me wrong. You know well that I respect your intellect.
And note that the mix of ranges of irrationality of the masses is perhaps a gradient in this case, thus it might not be too far from reasonable, thus perhaps one could still obtain virgin coins anonymously from mining by reasonably overpaying.
Also I have suggested that those who are very serious, can install micro-hydropower on a small stream and perhaps they get a reasonable ROI that way.
Please note that the profitability of the initial mining would not be adversely affected by this observation. The mad gold rush would still apply.