The economic arguments that crypto-cultists use are pure nonsense. And a waste of time. They are unempirical cherry-picking and remind me of Marxism in creating a whole coherent world that looks enough like reality, but just requires only ignoring it.

But the real problem of crypto and Bitcoin is the irony that "Satoshi's" dream has been entirely undermined. PoW work as a PBFT algorithm in support of decentralization has entirely failed. When one totalitarian political system (China, in this case) has an effective monopoly on hash generation and block creation. then you have to focus on what its intentions are. A fiat currency in the hands of a western liberal democracy with extensive regulatory oversight is in way safer "centralized" hands.