Then there we're going to have to agree to disagree because from my point of view that has less than zero value. Energy converted to a usable form has value, energy used to create something with its own intrinsic value is fine but energy used to create something that has no intrinsic value is wasted
Then you just don't understand accounting convention. Unfortunately investors do and this matters to them because there is no other "convention" to measure value by. Even speculative value ends up on the books eventually either by mark to market conventions or, in the case of POW blockchains, through difficulty adjustments.
If you buy a tractor for $60,000, it goes onto your balance sheet at that value as a capital asset and then gets depreciated from there.
You're basically dismissing the value of "mining difficulty" on some nebulous philosophical basis it doesn't add "intrinsic value" to the coin. That's irrelevant because it adds a material value to the scarcity and therefore adds to the book value once it's mined. So you'd need to come of with some pretty categorical reason why a coin like Dash where only 40% of the exchange revenues from mining sales go towards difficulty adjustments upwards while 100% of our competitor revenues do.
You don't have one and that's what I'm saying the problem is (as far as new investors are concerned). All of Dash's "feature advantages" are worth nothing if half of the primary supply investment capital goes towards populating masternode balance sheets instead of backing the marketcap with higher marginal mining costs. We inherit the bitcoin protocol which is a store-of-value protocol. If we just want to create a feature-rich blockchain then you're better off with some modern token system like Tezos or something that's at least dedicated for that purpose. Dash is mobile bitcoin and therefore can only work with very high mining quotas.