Let's take the example of video games: bitcoin uses about 150TWh of electricity. From EIA.gov's stats, it looks like residential computer usage is estimated at 36 TWh across the usa (2.4% of residential usage, 1.5T kWh residential [0]). Let's assume all residential computer usage is video games, so it's using a nice 1/4th bitcoin.
So, what's different about these uses? Well, let's say that we manage to make electricity 5 times cheaper by, say, building a fusion reactor or a ton of solar panels. In that scenario, those computers playing video games still use the same amount of electricity, and their power bill goes down. Not a problem for computers/games.
However, if the price of electricity goes down, that's actually a problem for bitcoin. Bitcoin is using 150TWh of electricity, which sorta means to perform a 51% attack, you need 75TWh of electricity (I know, it's more complicated than that). Now that electricity is 5 times cheaper, cool, someone can attack bitcoin for 5 times cheaper right? Well, we can't have that, so bitcoin now has to use 750TWh to have the same security it had before.
The same thing happens for improvements to ASICs or any other improvements pretty much. If bitcoin is cheaper to mine, that just means more mining happens and the cost of mining stabilizes back out.
On the other hand, if a game can be optimized to take less electricity, or use fewer servers, of course that'll happen. Like in almost any venture, accomplishing the same work for cheaper is good when it comes to video games.
That is the difference I see. Crypto isn't just wasteful, it's adversarial to the point where it resists improvement.
If we reached some energy utopia where electricity could fulfill 100% of all non-crypto uses on the planet at no meaningful cost, bitcoin would have to use so much energy that electricity still couldn't be free, or else it could be attacked with the free electricity. I cannot think of any other use of electricity that has this adversarial property.
[0]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect...