Where is exactly is the line? I don't know and I'm not convinced that that's an interesting question. I'd say that it's significantly below bringing entire new country's worth of energy consumption online for a financial scheme.
Your argument is effectively that we can never call anything an irresponsible use of energy. With the background of global climate change, I very much disagree.
I'm not saying we can never call anything an irresponsible use of energy.
What I am saying is that we can't by default call all new technologies an irresponsible use of energy either.
The fact that it uses energy is not justification alone that it is bad. We use energy to achieve utility for our species. The only way we could stop all our energy consumption would be to cease to exist.
So, why is Bitcoin an irresponsible use and other technologies are a responsible use? THAT is the interesting question. Volume alone can't be enough to justify it because many important technologies use way more energy than Bitcoin at only 0.6% of global use.
So it must come down to an opinion that cryptocurrencies aren't useful: that is the real disagreement here. It isn't about energy usage, but usefulness (per unit of energy usage), which is a highly subjective judgement. That is what I am trying to point out.
I never claimed you did. I am just saying that you haven't justified why Bitcoin is actually an irresponsible use of energy. What makes its usage level irresponsible? Why is it more irresponsible than other technologies which use more energy than it?
Your argument is effectively that we can never call anything an irresponsible use of energy. With the background of global climate change, I very much disagree.