PoW is designed to become less energy efficient as the network becomes more popular.
More than anything, this post was written as a defense to myself, family, and friends about why crypto is worth digging into deeper even if there's some bad stuff that goes along with it. I wanted something I could link to and say "hey, it's a little more complicated that it seems - if you're interested, you can take a look here".
You mention some lofty things that would be nice to solve like housing, but there exists no connection between blockchain and those things, and no information on how blockchain would re-organize incentives or even if it is the right tool for the job. I fail to see the defense here.
POS might be less resource intensive, but is prone to it’s own kind of centralization (e.g., those with the largest stake make the rules ,or decide transactions as the case may be).
So the author’s argument that blockchains don’t have to be as wildly inefficient as bitcoin isn’t wrong. However, so far, that improved efficiency introduces various degrees of centralization. Centralization in a system that is effectively marketed as being secure because of its decentralized nature.
If an entity owning 48% of the hashrate increases its computing power then would Bitcoin become more or less secure?