If energy becomes much more expensive will that not increase the value of those Bitcoin already mined ? And how will people pay their gas/electricity bills anyway... In any case AI requirements are 5-10 years away and climate catastrophe after that: plenty of time for Bitcoin to triple in value...
I think there is a large segment that don't trust the $ (ie US govt) with all their money. Risks of printing too many, political risk ie a Trump dictatorship, freeze your account for whatever reason, WW3, etc etc They are not all gangsters or money launderers.
AI shows generational developments every 6 months. Compelling new use cases emerge literally all the time and it will be massively disruptive across all human activities and industries. The *very obvious* potential for great utility and huge profits will attract vast amounts of money, resources and talent. AI is already building better tools for building AI. The pace of development is going to be exponential and will be shocking.
In contrast, BTC has no underlying value and no utility. It's based on two ideas:
1) Someone will eventually find a single useful, high value activity it can be used for, at which point the market will correct to price BTC based on that. Whatever utility arises would have to be transformative enough to justify the $tn market cap it keeps giving itself -- really clever ledgers that revolutionise, erm, accounting practices, say, is not going to cut it.
Given nobody has come up with anything so far and nobody has a remotely compelling suggestion the chances of this happening I think are very low. If you have excess capital and a high risk appetite then speculative investments in AI related companies and start ups looks way more attractive.
2) BTC's extreme price volatility means it can be traded for profit. Absent of 1) though it is a strict zero sum with no underlying and vol and profit comes entirely from people being willing to put money in and subsequently lose it. If you want to make a case for BTC you have to start with this and explain what it is and where the value that justifies it's price is and where the money is coming from.
As a currency it is basically useless. It's commodity money and has all the problems that come with that. It also lacks all of the benefits of modern money that we use to manage developed economies and, to some extent, deal with economic problems. If you really think BTC has a currency usage then you might as well be in favour of the gold standard because as an alternative to modern, fiat money it would work in a very similar way.
If you want a hedge against the $ and a potential future Trump authoritarian regime and the collapse of western democracy then I would suggest for normal people your domestic currency (where all your assets and liabilities are) and for wealthy people a hard commodity that doesn't suffer massive volatility and has a long history of spiking when shit goes bad. Gold is the obvious example.