Saying that BTC provides nothing other than itself is too reductionist -- indeed the Playstation Network also provides nothing other than itself, the ability for users to play online games with each other. If bitcoin crashes tomorrow, it will still have enabled censorship resistant, peer to peer value transfer for millions. People use it to pay for games, buy things, sell things, donate and preserve the value of money earned in depreciating fiat.
I would argue that BTC has provided significantly more value to its millions of users in its 12 year history than Playstation Network; What is PSN really -- a matchmaking service, and social contact platform. What is a global, peer to peer, censorship resistant, non-government fiat backed economic system worth?
> People use it to pay for games, buy things, sell things, donate and preserve the value of money earned in depreciating fiat.
This is where the argument about energy usage per transaction comes in, namely that Bitcoin is terribly, terribly inefficient at providing this value. From the OP:
> A single bitcoin transaction alone consumes 621 KWh, or half a million times more energy consumption than a credit card payment.
Comparing Bitcoin to a credit card payment isn't really a fair comparison. (Since if people really like the credit card model so much you can build credit card like things on top of the Bitcoin network) A more apt comparison would be to an international wire transfer which costs $15-$40 and takes a few days to complete.
You would have to equalize for speed and transfer fees (because people consume a quite a bit of energy doing things faster and obtaining money) and then somehow come up with some way to calculate all the necessary energy for a wire transfer.
I would argue that BTC has provided significantly more value to its millions of users in its 12 year history than Playstation Network; What is PSN really -- a matchmaking service, and social contact platform. What is a global, peer to peer, censorship resistant, non-government fiat backed economic system worth?