This is not the case. I wasn’t comparing anything to gold (or whatever other asset). The energy expended is cited as a reason for the value of the token, but t

This is not the case. I wasn’t comparing anything to gold (or whatever other asset). The energy expended is cited as a reason for the value of the token, but the utility of that energy, even if it were a near infinite amount, is still zero, because it’s already been expended. It’s a fully sunk cost. The magic that people try to conjure by saying the cost of mining means it’s valuable is provably not true. That energy isn’t stored as value in the token, it’s gone. To use your analogy - I’m not saying the value accrues to the miner of the coal/gold/whatever. It accrues to the owner. The asset in this case is not the token, it’s the energy. The re-deployment of that energy to other use cases is not a transaction between the purchaser of the energy and the owner of the token, it’s a transaction between the purchaser and the energy company. In dollars.