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Ethereum, the second biggest coin by market cap and the network that allows for NFTs, completed their transition to proof of stake in 2022. Ethereum’s energy usage is now almost completely negligible.

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...

Since Bitcoin is completely decentralized, there’s no way to change the protocol without everyone just stopping using it, which miners don’t want to do.

> Since Bitcoin is completely decentralized, there’s no way to change the protocol without everyone just stopping using it, which miners don’t want to do.

That's completely wrong though. The protocol gets changed by a majority of miners accepting new protocols, as has happened many times before.

Not only that, when once there were 194bn BTC due to a bug, the miners "just stopped using it", rolled back, fixed the bug, and went forward from there. Blockchain is immutable! Code is law! Sure, unless it isn't.

Most other cryptos have migrated to proof of stake, which requires magnitudes less resources.

there are much more efficient ones out there without mining