What happens to Bitcoin if all the miners find better things to do with their computers? As I understand it, a lot of the calculations Bitcoin miners do is verifying other Bitcoin transactions. If a large number of them decide other cryptocurrencies or even other projects like AI or digging up the old SETI@home project are more profitable or interesting, will that cause Bitcoin to collapse because transactions become slower to verify? If every credit card transaction took a half an hour instead of seconds, people would switch back to cash pretty quickly.
I’m not 100% sure how the process works. However, I think that the ‘mining’ part deals with the introduction of new bitcoins into the system - analogous to the way gold ore is turned into new gold coins. Bitcoin transactions may be an entirely different deal altogether - more like verifying credit card transactions.
After the latest halving event, miners have been getting a shot at fewer coins as reward for work done. That encourages them look for other more profitable uses for their physical plant. As an aside, the hardware (chip sets) used to support AI might be different from bitcoin mining hardware. It’s just that the miners already have a large facility that can supply stable power with large amounts of cooling for machines that do other tasks for a better return on investment.
If someone who reads this statement knows for sure, I am very willing to become better educated.