[btcd]

Although interesting in its own right, Bitcoin's energy consumption is in no way a good basis on which to judge its social value.

Bitcoin is fundamentally an asset. A useful analogy is to think of it as gold. Gold can be used to make payments, but it is not convenient. Same goes for Bitcoin. But they are both useful as a robust way of storing value.

Maintaining the Bitcoin network costs energy, but almost nothing else. Given Bitcoin's price history, it's safe to assume that Bitcoin's total energy cost is a tiny fraction of its current market cap of around $150b. Now compare that to the social costs of protecting gold, which probably has an over $7 trillion market cap. Wars were fought and lives lost for its ownership.

In conclusion: a large and liquid crypto asset like Bitcoin provides a much more advanced solution of value storage and transfer than traditional physical assets. Its net social benefits should be orders of magnitudes higher than its energy expenditure.