Thought provoking discussion but this piece would be much stronger if there was more research behind it. Perhaps Satoshi didn’t have the electricy providers in the threat model. That is a good realisation.

But if there was even a 51% attack by any of the pools, and they’d altered the chain to give themselves an advantage, people would notice and drop out. They’d still have to launder their money somehow, given that anyone would want to trust it due to their nefarious background.

They would also get prosecuted, as BTC has a dedicated futures contract, I’m sure the CME would find a way to go after them, as they are doing now against the exchanges for market manipulation.

Developers would likely force a change into the difficulty, given the bad scenario of no one finding a solution over a few weeks.

So its likely they wont have the guts to pull it off, to be frank.