When power plants mine crypto, they are offloading costs to people that gain no benefit in the form of pollution. Therefore there is a reason for everyone else to care.
Crypto mining is not free of harm to uninvolved bystanders.
You should always consider how much energy something consumed and how relevant it is for our society.
Bitcoin has no future and is not replacing or solving a real problem. Right now it only increaes droughts and crazy weather.
Mining gold is totally different than bitcoin. Not sure why you would even argue in this direction.
Gold can be recycled which reduces the co2 footprint / makes it more and more useful. Gold also creates emotions and supports our society structure as a symbol on rings.
It's critical for scientific discoveries and for computers.
And still we need to make sure we mine gold as co2 efficient as possible with as little impact to nature than possible. Equal to bitcoin just that bitcoin doesn't do any of what gold does.
My ring is a token to my love to mi wife and will be recycled in 80 years. Bitcoin is producing co2 when mined and whenever transfered and the base system needs to run 24/7 even if none is doing anything on the network.
Die Bitcoin die
This is why there is advocacy for a lot of eco-friendly behaviors, including those you mention.
But the problem of cryptomining is on the heavy side of the harmful behaviors -- and potentially extremely harmful if the frenzy is not curbed, as hinted by this kind of news.
Maybe we just get on with decarbonizing the energy system, make sure everyone is paying for the energy they use, and then we don't have to worry about making moral judgements.