[pcthrowaway]

Cars have the benefit of transporting humans and goods around.

It's more like saying a hypothetical car which moves itself by using gasoline as a propellant rather than fuel for its combustion engine would have negative value.

Sure, using fuel (of all things) for propulsion would be one way to move a vehicle, but it would be inefficient by design.

Bitcoin, at least, was created during a time where there was no alternative to security-by-inefficency, but PoS and other consensus mechanisms are pretty battle-tested now

[sanskritical]

Bitcoin has the benefit of being the first way in human history of being able to transfer value between two countries in a way that a corrupt bureaucrat, judge, or customs official can't freeze, reverse, or steal it. That's the benefit Bitcoin brings humanity, and to me, I prefer it to having a car.

Proof of Stake is an absurd security proposition. Stakeholders are immediately centralized. In every single PoS coin, the governance immediately becomes the exchanges because they always hold the most coins. They can and have used this to guide PoS coins towards governance unfavorable to the users, like as happened with Steem.

[UltraSane]

Bitcoin consumes 20 to 40GW to process 7 transactions per second. Using 30GW means about 4 billion joules per transaction. And transactions per second don't scale with more electricity. It is the least efficient technology ever created.