The author states without very specific evidence that "proof of stake" demonstrably works, and thus quickly dismisses the energy costs of cryptocurrency. I'd personally be very interested to hear more about that, since there is a lot of hand waving around proof of stake. The cynic in me says that it would already be broadly used, if there weren't fundamental problems with it. It does, however, seem like a handy way to support the idea, in the long term, wasting real-world resources isn't an essential element of crypto, which is of course very attractive to people who stand to make short term gains from crypto.
many of todays popular chains that are not BTC and ETH are currently using PoS, especially those interacting with web dApps and smart contracts. See Tezos for a real world example that “currently works.” ETH (the devs and community) is also heavily committed to PoS—most of the value and rewards now locked in the $33B staking contract cannot even be withdrawn before a successful merge of PoS occurs (likely some time in the next several months, but let’s wait and see).
The idea that crypto is inherently wasteful is inaccurate. PoW is extremely energy intensive, especially without L2s, but it need not be the only consensus mechanism for the future of these protocols.
