Clearly, there is demand for the monetary good that is bitcoin, and the block space on which it resides.
Rather than flinging indictments against bitcoin for its energy use—again, a proxy for the value moving across the network—it would be far more productive to question the sources of energy that produced the electricity that is consumed.
"Bitcoin is good, because people want it. Complaining about bitcoin's energy use, doesn't make sense because miners are selling something people want."
But this doesn't make sense at all. I could simply substitute bitcoin for X and energy use for Property(X) and the argument still runs through.
This is classic is-ought fallacy. Bitcoin is popular, so it ought to have all the properties it does, because if it didn't have these properties it wouldn't be popular and being popular is isomorphic to being good. Nonsense.
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"Bitcoin is good, because people want it. Complaining about bitcoin's energy use, doesn't make sense because miners are selling something people want."
But this doesn't make sense at all. I could simply substitute bitcoin for X and energy use for Property(X) and the argument still runs through.
This is classic is-ought fallacy. Bitcoin is popular, so it ought to have all the properties it does, because if it didn't have these properties it wouldn't be popular and being popular is isomorphic to being good. Nonsense.