I don’t think this one should be as divisive as it seems.
The concept of money and currency is a social construct. History shows we’ve used livestock, shells, barley, and other instruments before moving to more familiar silver/gold coinage and paper money.
I don’t see digital cryptocurrencies as any different.
I think about my balances in my bank and retirement accounts. None of it feels real until you actually withdraw or spend something.
Clearly, people find value in things like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and that’s the only reason needed for them to be valuable.
I believe proof-of-work (PoW) is a reasonable reward system, especially with renewables continuing to proliferate. Perhaps if that energy used for the hashing algorithm was was used for something else, like Folding@Home, maybe PoW would have better PR.
I think proof-of-stake (PoS) is more problematic. While both systems are vulnerable to majority attacks, PoS only requires someone to buy more of the coin, while proof-of-work requires someone to purchase, configure, and run a massive server farm. The reasoning in my head says PoS only requires capital, while PoW requires capital and labor, which requires better execution and therefore is better in my mind. I hate the idea of just putting money into something and having it just print money for no reason (looking at you, landlords).