What about the other thousands of other public blockchains, many of which are extremely similar (DOGE, BCH, LTC, ...)?
> In a world headed toward web 3.0, generative AI content & virtual reality
... Metaverse anytime now.
> there is tremendous value in a trustless and immutable peer to peer system.
Personally, I think there is much more value in trusted systems.
> In fact, I think we NEED it
... because the world didn't work at all prior to 2009?
> and should as a society happily bear the power consumption
In contrast, I think if we were to eliminate Bitcoin and other crypto, we'd save 1% of electricity with very few negative side effects, but a significant reduction in crime, frauds, and scams.
> already we cannot trust that a digital picture is genuine.
Solutions to this problem might well involve digital signatures and hardware enclaves in cameras (installed by trusted centralized camera producers which could publish the public keys of each sold camera once), but I don't see how public blockchains would add any value. The signature of the picture embedded in the picture speaks for itself.
> My bet is that we are headed toward a future where blockchain is ubiquitous.
Gott forbid.
> When you order groceries, the origin of the produce and raw ingredients are all embedded in blockchain.
Apart from the fact that I don't see the benefit of that, the oracle problem makes this impossible, I fear.