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This is a genuine question with no snark intended (sometimes we need to clarify stuff like this on the internet hah).

What's the overall energy expenditure for all fiat production,maintenance, asset storage (gold), mining of assets etc?

There are some interesting developments in the crypto sphere moving away from high energy proof or work to a holding system (Proof of stake).

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I have no clue. But I don't doubt that systems as energy-intensive as Bitcoin would consume far more energy. Likely, orders of magnitude more.

I like to think of myself as caring about ecosystems. But after decades of work on decentralized electronic payment systems, Bitcoin is what we got.

I'm no expert, but I suspect that the Bitcoin protocol could be tweaked to make humongous mining operations unprofitable. But the chances of that are likely not so great.

I do hope that proof-of-stake systems will develop. Stake still means wealth, but at least it's not wealth that's funding energy-intensive proof-of-work.

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