Power companies can't regulate the price of Bitcoin because they don't control the price of electricity, which is determined by the government and/or the market.

Nobody ever regulates or controls the price of anything, except if they're the only supplier or the government.

It's not quite that simple, because you can't just exchange X bitcoins for Y watts.

Let's say you want 1000 BTC. You could get this by investing several thousand dollars in a mining rig, and then waiting a year. In that time, you'll likely succeed in generating your 1000 BTC.

Alternatively, you could buy bitcoins from an exchange for $3000. The current price of bitcoins is several times higher than the cost of the electricity used to generate them, because there's a significant initial cost to mining, in both capital and time.

So if I'm correct, this is based on the assumption that rarity creates value, correct? (which I am personally not convinced of). You spend energy to create a bitcoin, but you can't take a bitcoin and create energy. This adds value to the energy because it can create bitcoins (assuming bitcoins have any value), but it doesn't do the reverse.

Or is there something about the Bitcoin economy that I missed?