Why are they wrong?
As another poster here shared, a single transaction uses upwards of hundreds of kwh. That kind of energy that moves thousands of pounds hundreds of miles, or power a typical US household for almost an entire month.
I believe the research is useful, but to base an international currency around it with these costs is not
Bitcoin is capable of handling 4 transactions a second. If you've created a financial system that consumes more energy than Argentina and can't actually handle the transaction requirements of a decent sized mall, then I'd begin to wonder what definition of "solid" you're using.
> Also you shouldn't look at it in terms of energy/transaction, the energy consumption isn't a function of transactions.
We can look at energy consumption per block, but there's no way to slice and dice this in a way that doesn't make Bitcoin look like a massive waste of energy compared to competitive systems.
People speculate on loads of assets which have no real life utility. For example, art or classic cars.
Also, Bitcoin has value and if you wanted, you unlock it and spend your money without even selling your asset, there was a discussion the other day about defi, highly recommend checking out MakerDAO if you want to have a practical use for your Bitcoins.