Average Joe has a manual labor, his physical energy is converted into labor, which converts to fiat currency. The food that Joe ate also require some amount of energy to grow and become Joe's food.
PoW mining converts raw electric energy into a digitally transmissible currency
Producing fiat currency through manual labor uses a mix of renewable resources, and value is provided. You can't just dig in the ground and get paid for it. You have to do something that improves someone's business or life.
Producing crypto is just turning coal (or whatever) into numbers. There is no intrinsic value created in that chain.
If the crypto loses value, you may have even destroyed resources in the world for no reason. It's a net-negative.
Producing crypto keeps a secure ledger, claiming it's just producing useless numbers is the same as claiming that a TLS session is just playing around with numbers.
The value of fiat always goes to 0, resources have been destroyed in the world for no reason
If I convert the same amount of energy into crypto, I have nothing with intrinsic value.
And before you say that fiat has no intrinsic value, consider that most people have fiat debt (loans, taxes, wages, etc.) that they can pay off with it. Currently very few people have any crypto debt.
If you convert energy into crypto, you have crypto, may not have intrinsic value for you. right now it's worth 42k usd for somebody
which of those have/don't have intrinsic value: - gold, silver and other precious metals - stocks - options - house - car - fiat - cryptos
In the case of stock, you have a legal stake in an ongoing enterprise.