[TeMPOraL]

> If you think energy conservation is more important, other chains don't have this cost (proof of stake).

Those chains don't exist yet in any meaningful sense; at this point, AFAIK, it's not been proven that an energy-efficient PoS system even can be created theoretically. If it turned out it could be done and then if it was done, I'm sure lot of the negativity would disappear.

The underlying sentiment behind pessimism, at least for me, is that it seems that in the blockchain ecosystem, all the incentives are aligned in such a way to have the market push us into stupidly wasting huge amounts of electricity, storage and bandwidth for no tangible benefit. No need to wait for energy-efficient PoS or other things - you can earn your money right now.

[wildsatchmo]

There are actually lots functional proof of stake coins like byteball and NEM for example (but I share your skepticism about long term viability of proof of stake BECAUSE it doesn't cost anything). I think the energy "waste" isn't waste because it serves a purpose. For someone to forge a transaction they would need to control a huge amount of hash power which would cost a fortune. On the other hand, there's always ideas like gridcoin that use that hash power to do scientific computations at the same time (best of both worlds?).