For me as a potential user of Bitcoin, all this pollution talk is actually dwarfed by one of the components of the argument: virtually all Bitcoin mining is in

For me as a potential user of Bitcoin, all this pollution talk is actually dwarfed by one of the components of the argument: virtually all Bitcoin mining is in China. As the Hong Kong debacle shows (politics aside), Chinese government can exercise its power very strongly and very swiftly when it wants to, and with little regard for international protests. That, and its use of technology to exercise influence, like selectively blocking the 996 repo on GitHub, the Great Firewall etc. suggests to me that Bitcoin, that holy democratic unmovable "store of value" is in fact owned by the Chinese government, which just hasn't exercised its option to meddle in it yet. In this light, most of the economic assertions about Bitcoin enthusiasts are just wrong. It is state-controlled, hackable by a single entity, and can disappear into thin air whenever. It is just that China doesn't choose to do that yet. And no, offline wallets don't help. You don't even need to think China is less trustworthy than the US to be concerned. Half the shout about Bitcoin is how trustworthy it is compared to the US dollar...