Energy cost is the foundation of all price of product and services
Consumer wanna low price product, then engineer has to find a way to produce gadget at lower cost. The thing with industrial grade product is, it required to undergoes a special chemical treatment process. The entire manufacturing process of both the consumer and military grade products is roughly the same, (they goes through the same cleaning, chemical bonding, cleaning again, and chemical bonding again...) but consumer product often got cheapen out on certain process, that one process usually required a lot more energy cost, due to some of the chemical is absurdly expensive to buy from retailer or to produce, these chemical require high energy and high temperature to produce in the laboratory, the high energy cost must come from burning petroleum fuel, because no other fuel can generate more energy than petroleum, which often depended on to feed and power every family household in a country, every car burn petrol, every kitchen burn petroleum gas.
Nuclear power plant you said has more energy? No doubt nuclear is efficient but it would never be possible to used to power every household, nuclear energy could at best just enough to power some heavy industrial use, never would be enough or practical for household use. Due to that every product or service is having to price in underlying energy cost, a cheap product goes through very cheap manufacturing process which spend less total energy cost, there is nothing the end user can do to rectify/fix a product, to prolong the life shelf, product is purposely intended in factory to made to be obsolete in very few years, to save energy cost, the lower the energy cost the crappier the end products, but for what end game? Who know, manufacturer doesn’t want to go bankrupt, consumer doesn’t want to spend more, keep fighting.
You want quality product, pay high price, which would ensure the product is made adequately with proper manufacturing process(let’s rule out some scam attempt or rip off bootleg), but that’s often a wishful thinking, consumer would always be consumer in mindset, they would argue to dead just to get bargain as little as a few penny just for f@@k sake, so the final consumer product is as good as what it is priced, the low energy cost products.
Look at flash media as an example, in 2008, you get a 2gb at $100 dollar, but in 2020, you got 128gb at $100, you would quickly to believe you actually get a lot of bargain from the deal. isn’t it? And actually defy the rule of inflation, and the manufacturer are idiot for selling more chip at loss than ever? And in 2020 the manufacturer selling at hundreds times more loss with 128gb than the 2gb in 2008??
That’s not true, the $100 you spend to get in 2008, is at best the same the $100 you spend to get in 2020, the chip is shrinking from micrometer to nanometer, you may get the more disk space, but to think you get the same fair deal, to think the 2gb from 2008 is same BUILD quality than the 128gb from 2020 besides an order magnitude more disk space, is very childish, but that’s also how manufacturer keep getting away and consumer keep falling for the delusional thinking and buy into the inferiority, the 2gb is build to last forever, even after a few decade and all the ageing and corrosive is taken measured, the 128gb you get today hardly survive a few weeks of heavy use, that’s what you get for what you pay for.
Also the consumer appliance like smart phone, tablet, battery, toys, foods, snack, soft drink, toothpaste, dvd, video tape, table fans, TV set, sound bars, chair, toasters, oven, water heater, etc...
The underlying cost to produce bitcoin is also the the reason it’s priced. As a service provider, bitcoin serve as a financial need to transact value across border, but it also spend high energy to pull off the transfer of value. I would safely assume energy cost to produce one bitcoin is always the only parameter/fundamental to price a bitcoin in term of dollar. I dunno about all other shitcoin which promise low energy high tps and best fundamental, the lower their energy cost the shit-tier the coin is, the price of them all should be zero.
Also can be said with gold. The total energy required to produce an ounce of gold, gold is often the highest melting point among all metal, the highest energy cost required to heat the gold to melt it down into liquid and product gold bars, is the sole reason gold bars has to be priced very high, there would be no other academics study which could suggest/convince otherwise.