[tonfa]

> Especially regarding the idea that it uses less energy than the current banking system.

I guess this one is pretty clear, OP was only comparing to gold/silver (I have no idea how it compares in practice).

To be comparable to banking, bitcoin should probably first reach the level where it can provide the same functionality (payment, fractional banking, etc.). (And then prorated as even if it were to provide the functionality, it would have to scale by several orders of magnitude to replace banking)