theocs

Even if all PoW energy came from renewable sources, it's extremely wasteful and I'm sure we could have used that energy on something more productive.

That's not to say the allocation mechanism in PoW isn't interesting, but that's not really good enough in itself.

I've been experimenting with energy limited PoW, something called NuPoW [1], that reduces the reward if too much energy is collectively used. But this only works if you outsource the security to an underlying chain.

[1] https://nupow.fi/whitepaper/

They trade a token, sometimes called a stablecoin, that represent BTC as its underlying value.

Primarily two extremes for how this is done: Centralized, like WBTC (https://coinlist.co/help/what-is-wrapped-bitcoin-wbtc), and decentralized, like tBTC (https://defirate.com/tbtc/)

I think the wrapped BTCs, especially the decentralized approaches to it, are clever links that allow for the transfer of BTC value over to the Ethereum ecosystem.

It's a way of selling BTC for other tokens, extracting and removing its value over time, and instead investing it into DeFi and similar.

Or I just right click open it in private mode

Given that these tokens follow the ERC 20 standard, I don't see why other clients can't just integrate support if they want.