Not taking side on the issue but this article sort of misses the point. The first half of it is focused on demonstrating that unlike packaged goods, producing electricity does not result in packages needing to be put in the trash which is a fact nobody ever challenged to the best of my knowledge. I never even heard of this interpretation of the waste criticism. But the author goes on and opens the Webster's dictionary at the "Wasteful" page to continue his argument.

The other half is an augmentation of the line that the electricity used for mining is actually used by the mining computer, and very little of it evaporates as heat. Moreover heat inefficiencies are not intended by miners. As a result mining is as legitimate as any other business activity and mining bitcoins should not be considered a waste of energy. While in this case an opponent may possibly exist, I am left unconvinced by this demonstration.

The real discussion is that as of today, the raw materials required to produce electricity are in limited supply and in decreasing amount. Provided this limited supply and this decreasing amount, a structural increase on the demand will result in a pressure on price which may have a negative impact on society and the economy. An other concern is that as of today, efforts are made to decrease energy consumption because energy production has a negative impact on environment with the current state of the art technologies. The waste discussion comes from the fact that the energy footprint of the bitcoin network may seem unnecessary to some since alternatives exist to transfer value.

The author fails to consider the issue from the other side of the table and does not even know who or what he argues against. He misunderstands what the opposing view is. Throughout the article a lot of energy is spent defending positions that nobody ever challenged and this for sure is a waste.

>This is very different to electricity, because physical resources are consumed that the consumer did not ask for or need

This entire article is glossing over the fact that the vast majority of electricity produced is from converting a physical resource into the electricity being wasted. Excessive wasteful packaging is stupid, and so is using excessive amounts of power to make Dunning-Krugerrands.

You could certainly place your miners near energy sources such as hydro, solar, or geothermal, but that doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin mining is, by definition, a measure of wasted electricity.

From the article: "Whatever use you choose to put the electricity you pay for to, if you are satisfied, then the electricity has not been wasted."

That is far too selfish of a view for the author to take. Electricity is a finite resource; only so much of it can be generated and available at a given time.

Selfish or not, it appears that it's going to happen. We're on course for that, anyway.