Yes Bitcoin consumes a lot of renewable and often limited renewable energy. Like water energy in Canada or solar panels etc. Just because they consume renewable it's not helping us.
The amount of free or cheap energy we have around the globe is limited. Your Bitcoin miner makes more money than anyone who just needs to consume it.
And the natural gas plant in NY IS NOT renewable!
Regarding my example in Texas, you not just ignored my natural gas power plant which got turned on again for Bitcoin you also ignore that for the Texas grid having to PAY Bitcoin miners to stop is horrible for consumers.
There is no inherant motivation for a Bitcoin miner to play nice. The opposite happens even if they just consume random energy they just use even more because they don't move that heat to someone to heat with but use AC to blow it out of their buildings.
Bitcoin is not stable. It moves around as any speculative asset. When inflation was low, prices spiked because people started to gamble. As of now Bitcoin has not proofen to be stable in any way. It's therefore NOT helping the poor as you suggest.
You say Bitcoin is a great alternative for Visa and co. Just that 1. Bitcoin fees vary and I have payed plenty! Of fees. Often enough more than I ever paid for visa. Your argument is again invalid.
And sure let's create a proper digital us dollar to optimize it. Why not? But Bitcoin is not doing this at all!
Btw do you also know what visa does but Bitcoin actually can't? It does insurance and fraud protection. Bitcoin has none if it. If I transfer super securely Bitcoin to a seller and the seller doesn't give me my goods, I will not have anything.
The way smart contracts try to solve this is ridiculous: I would need to block the same amount of value on a smart contract and get it after the transaction. A rich person could literally bankrupt a poor person.
Guess what a solution for this would be? Escrow. What is escrow? Trust. What is trust? Proof of stake.
No one wants to change the inflation rule. No normal person should ever be able to control this. The expertise for it is a sub field in itself. If everyone would vote, everyone would get cheap money until the system breaks...
What the central banks do is critical and has not been magically be solved by Bitcoin at all.
An exchange is not the same as a bank. And normal Bitcoin bros tell you to NOT use exchanges. Why? Because everyone will run to the same few, which then again need to be regulated as we have seen . You basically would then replace the existing finetunes and regulated banking system with an regulated and finetunes exchange system. You wouldn't have won anything.
I'm traveling around the world too. I have not seen anyone accepting Bitcoin in the last 20 restaurants at my current rural France holiday. Where do you do holiday? Srsly? Tell me at least 5 places which took Bitcoin directly.
The current fiat system is not perfect but it's the best proof of stake system with a ton of features, it's finetunes by all of us for over a century now and it works.
I exchanged my euros in Iran for their currency. No one of those people had a smartphone to do Bitcoin transactions.
And no the third world person can't just exchange their 'not so good currency ' easy nilly into Bitcoin and no as long as Bitcoin is unstable as shit it's not a good way to get your salary in it.
My friends in Ukraine (8 years ago) were very very happy to have a stable euro income in comparison to their local currency