However, if the ultimate utility of Bitcoin is to store trillions of dollars of value, transmit it into the future, across borders, quickly, pseudonymously, and without capital controls from coercive and corrupt governments, then energy-per-transaction is an inappropriate metric.

Bitcoin is the only asset with these properties, and it doesn't need many transactions to do what it does best.

If you find you're angry about Bitcoin's energy usage but you're not even more angry about the energy wasted by industries and technologies that have much less social utility, then maybe it's not the wasted energy that you're angry about after all.

And conversely too! letting corrupt governments and corporations transfer money with ease!

You would use Monero or physical cash for those activities.

Bitcoin is much easier to trace once you have a lead.

Note that my argument was pro btc - I can see underground demand sustaining its price in the long run.

This is such an old, tired take.

A somewhat trustworthy state having control over or transparency into money transfers generally is a very good thing. If your government isn't trustworthy enough, you have bigger problems than the currency.

The amount of energy used in equilibrium in Bitcoin mining is proportional to the price of Bitcoin (between halvings and holding the fraction of total mining costs spent on energy constant). If the price of Bitcoin rose enough that it had a 2TN market cap tomorrow, miners would have incentives to burn 3-4x more energy.

I agree that transaction-based accounting is flawed, but it doesn’t make the problem go away.

However, this does nothing for the overall energy efficiency of Bitcoin, which could be defined as transactions processed per gigawatt. If energy gets cheaper, that number only gets smaller.