But the same applies to BTC with BlockFi / BIA.
Not true for Bitcoin. Neither owning your coins in a wallet nor leaving them on an exchange grows your amount of Bitcoin.
Can you give away your Bitcoin to some rogue, fully unregulated party claiming you get back more Bitcoin? Yes, in the same way I can give my fiat to some shady character in the streets. I may get back more fiat. Or I may be permanently parted from my coins.
These things are not the same. Bitcoin does not have interest built in. Not at bank level nor at central bank level. This is radically different from fiat.
Into an interest paying account - yes. A savings account like that may be the "don't even mention it" default for you and me. But not for:
- unbanked people in the US (~6%)
- and in the world (much larger https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/raw-data-unba...)
- people with non-interest-paying accounts for religious reasons
- people in countries where interest is ~0% or negative (https://dqydj.com/negative-savings-accounts/)
Nobody wants to help the environment. The typical US lifestyle would require 8 planets if it was rolled out across the world's population. Just leaving your phone plugged in uses more energy than all of crypto mining combined.
So don't preach about caring, nobody cares. They say they do, but don't. So yes, miners seek out cheap renewables, which is motivated by profit, not helping the environment. As said, none of us are better. We don't care. But if a profit-based incentive leads to renewable energy usage and helping the environment as a side-effect, I'm all for it.