You're talking about exceptional days with a lot of traffic though. I'm hardly surprised they were thriving. Kind of my point that miners will need a lot of traffic to make it worth their time once block subsidy fades away. Not once in a blue moon spikes. Where is all that traffic going to come from if it is expected that most users are going to transact off-chain on lightning, ark, ecash, etc in the future?
I need to think more about your last two paragraphs. Not sure if intermittent mining with excess energy would be enough to offset all the other hashrate that would be lost that would no longer feasible.
