> BTC is a trash-grade asset because it's practically useless and proof of work is extremely expensive for BTC holders (and environmentally damaging)

A permissionless settlement network open to anyone in the world, with a sensibly staid development policy is as useful and valuable as... well, check whatever the market participants value it at.

I suggest you read more widely and deeply to build an understanding of energy production, consumption, transmission, the externalities of each step across then environment, society, and civilization.

Bitcoin incentivises efficiency in energy production (and use in it's narrow sector) and the development of increasingly more efficient energy sources. By virtue of having no marginal cost per energy unit produced, renewables are the most cost efficient now and only more so as the days march on given renewable's technological headroom to grow.

> programmatic public chains, especially Ethereum, are cost-efficient and extremely useful.

Don't forget naively complex, and liable to usurpation by the ever next fast growing challenger networks for the same at present hyped up use cases.

> They will become one of the foundations of the global economy

Not with ever shifting goalposts, issuance rate, and pre-mine shaped like this https://www.lynalden.com/ethereum-analysis/#Ethereum%20Monet...

Along with an inability to map to and represent the assets, subjective agreement, and legal richness of the outside/real world.

> proof of stake is more egalitarian than proof of work because while the rich get richer in both, only in PoS do the rich get richer at the same rate as everybody else, whereas in PoW there are significant mining economies of scale

In PoW the compute and energy rich participants of the network get richer, these miners are not necessarily the same as the monetarily rich. They are rewarded further riches in exchange for their service in producing unforgeably costly proof that they have explored a given mathematical space and that as a side effect a statistically likely amount of time has elapsed and concomitant quantity of computation has occurred such that the history of the network is ever less likely to be able to be edited.

> significant fee revenues that accumulate to token holders

What is the value proposition for the people that are paying that fee?

At a high level, reduced transaction costs (paradoxically, given Ethereum's reputation for high fees), an inherently global market, and state-of-the-art financial services and property rights management, especially because of the rapid pace of permissionless innovation.

Yield-farming ICO pump and dump rug pulls.