It would still be environmentally ruinous (insofar as the energy production where miners live remains ruinous, which I guess is the foreseeable future) but at least the PoW would be actually contributing to tasks we wanted to do anyway that require large amounts of work. Hence the heavy emphasis on ‘somewhat’. I’m not saying it would be justified, but it would be far far far more useful to society.
“Less of a net negative” is still a net negative if it requires a massive and ever-growing bloated blockchain to verify every accumulating transactions for the vague and non-enforced promise of FOR SCIENCE™ benefits.
If we can find an alternative to expensive PoW, wonderful!
At present the alternative is not doing it because it’s still a net negative when it comes to wasted energy and environmental damage.
Alright, what about Bitcoin is fraudulent? We agree it’s bad, but that doesn’t make it fraudulent (i.e. a scam)
Sea lioning at this point is very bad form and I’m quite confident that you’re not going to accept any example or definition I give because you’re already sold on your particular investment, but fine.
Let’s start with the actual fucking fraud done with it, from phishing to theft to holding data hostage and demanding payment to decrypt that data before it’s destroyed, as is a growing common “use case” for Bitcoin when it isn’t being used for human trafficking and the like. You can piously claim in some pedantic “CODE IS LAW” thing that there’s no fraud in the code itself but splitting hairs like that doesn’t remove the incentive (or the risk, or the ongoing caseload) of fraud done with, around, and even against your favorite investment vehicle.