The main point is that this hunger for resources without regard for consequences is the very core of life.

We did not exist back then. And cyanobacteria did not have a great plan of creating mammals.

Note that I qualified my statement. I didn't say that the great oxygenation event was objectively useful to the moon, I said it was objectively more useful to air breathing mammals than running difficult computations to control write access to a ledger.

The random waste from cryptocurrencies just turns into heat, so I expect it opens up ~zero new possibilities. Have fun though!

How would you even define 'more usefull' in this context?

How is cryptocurrency waste heat different from bank server waste heat? Only because crypto has a dramatically worse efficiency? I guess both my crypto wallet and my bank account are products of waste heat that produce zero new possibilities.

The comparison was to oxygen.

And then I'm separately making the claim that using proof of work won't set the stage for anything interesting in the future, no matter how much heat it generates.