I feel that tension too. From the ethics side, I think there are serious problems with financializing any natural commodity. Consider how much human and ecological damage has been done to fill vaults with gold. Gold functions primarily as a token of value and valued too highly for much practical use. During the last oil glut, new oil storage systems had to be created just to hold the billions of barrels that investors wanted, but consumers had no use for. Moreover, cheap oil kept the global economy stuck on burning oil for extra years. So really bad things happen to people and the ecosystem when there is too much cash circulating in the economy looking for some store of value. We should not be using commodities to store excess fiat currency that can be create by central banks faster than use value of the commodities grow.
It is frustrating that bitcoin has a stupid "mining" operation, but I think it pales in comparison to commodity based schemes. Moreover, it does accomplish a few useful things. It exploits excesses of renewable energy and pushes computer technologies to become more energy efficient via learning curve effects. Additionally it motivates advances in cybersecurity. I also think there are opportunities to define future cryptocurrencies that capture the value of existing bitcoins without replicating the inefficiencies of bitcoin. For example, image a new blockchain that you could write cryptoassets to for a certain exchange into a new crypto asset. That is, suppose I could transfer my 0.001BTC to the blockchain for uBTC and get 1000 uBTC in exchange where uBTC has a lower transaction cost than BTC. This exchange transaction would take my 0.001BTC permanently out of circulation. So if the transaction cost is lower and the quality of security and other features are just as good or better, then every actively user of BTC makes the exchange to uBTC. But none of the value of the original BTC ever gets lost (except cases where users forgot password or accounts). Something like this ought to make for a compelling transition, and may be absolutely necessary if some security weakness comes into being. It trust there are much more clever crypto technologists than me who can figure this out. A key point though is with trillions of dollars worth of bitcoin and other crypto at stake, you don't just lose interest in the value that has already been tokenized, even if you invent a better token. You take care to transfer value into superseding tokens. Some really small cryptocurrencies could fall into disuse, but too much value is a stake with the larger ones. So in the long run, the most efficient and trustworthy cryptos will win and will perpetuate the value of bitcoin. Inefficient mining practices will be abandoned along the way.
It will be interesting to watch what happens to gold. The token value of bitcoin could eclipse the token value of gold. This could mean that gold prices will fall. If they fall far enough, gold mining comes to an end. Vaults full of gold bricks could begin to circulate to make more electrical components. Strip the token value from gold and the use value of gold will dictate how we make best use of it. Hoarding is perhaps the most absurd use of all.
I’m comfortable with fiat currency managed with MMT. To me golds value is as a manufacturing component, for which there are a number of things it is uniquely good for.
Gold to me is totally irrelevant to the monetary discussion. As is any other commodity not priced based off its demand as a manufacturing component.
So the only relevant comparison there is fiat money. Which from an energy and environmental impact standpoint is no contest.
The rest of the points you make to me don’t feel like they stand on their own.