I did not see any real pro crypto argument in this text.
Nothing is really proven in practice and everything is in ideas.
Meanwhile scammers are taking money from enthusiasts and existing blockchains are burning up a huge amount of energy.
“Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'”
"Wash dryers consume more electricity than Argentina."
"Steel foundries consume more electricity than Argentina."
What is the point? Comparing global electricity usage of a single sector and comparing it to the usage of a whole country is meaningless.
On a yearly basis, (US) Christmas lights use more electricity than Montenegro or El Salvador.
It doesn't say anything about the worthiness of Christmas lights, but it makes them a much smaller gain if you eliminated them.
US clothes dryers account for 60 billion kWh / year and by and large rely on direct heating elements. Switching to a heat pump design could apparently cut that in half: https://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/pt_awards/SEDI_Fact_S...
It's the old saying about no silver bullets. There's a lot of small but meaningful low hanging fruit we could take advantage of that begins to add up in a big way.
... and it benefits much, much fewer people.
That's analogous to the pro-air-travel disinformation argument: "air travel is only 2% of CO2 emissions". It is only so because air travel is only adopted by a small minority of people: that doesn't stop it from being insanely carbon-intensive.
These facts don't provide a defense of one or the other as "not that bad"; these give us multiple opportunities to make small but meaningful reductions in waste with relatively little impact on the quality of life of the world at large.