[mrb]

1. See last paragraph in my post's argument 1. The point I raise is that it makes no sense for people to be so outraged and vocal about miner's energy use and apparently don't care about much bigger energy users/wasters by multiple orders of magnitude... At the very least this makes critics hypocrites as they themselves waste energy and don't to care about it (eg. driving a car with low fuel efficiency.)

3. It's not a fallacy. If X is worthwhile to society, and if the only one way to obtain X is to spend energy doing Y, and if alternative uses of this energy are not clearly superior (for example doing Z), then Y is not an energy waste. X = permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial network. Y = mining. Z = for example building desalination plants to provide clean water to third-world countries.

4. You seem to recognize the validity of this argument :) See the reference I give in the post: https://venturescannerinsights.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/the-... these are not mining companies.

5. This argument shows that even if you are unconvinced by arguments 1-4 and holds the view that mining is wasteful, you should at least recognize that it is becoming less and less wasteful over time.