I like Bitcoin except for the Proof of Work part. It has led to an arms race which causes tons of electricity to be wasted around the world.
I think the only reason for Proof of Work is to make it seem like "mining" is some expensive activity. But it doesn't have to be. It's a bit silly, actually.
In practice, PoW just winds up "electing" the next miner who you hope will compile all the transactions they see into a block. That's a single point of failure, they can charge inordinate fees, they can be DDoSed, and so on.
I love how mining is essentially transaction clearing but nobody calls it that because it might sound like there was actually just a proxy for financial system at the bottom.
Miners are just another form of payment system like Visa. You have to pay them transaction fees to process your payment. Sometimes it's reasonable, sometimes it's insane.
The benefit is the miners are fungible. If one miner wants to enforce unusually high fees or restrictions on what kinds of transactions can be sent (such as which countries can send funds between each other, etc), then it just means that if that miner mines a block, some transactions have to wait an extra block to get mined by a miner without those extra restrictions. And it will be more profitable for that miner because of the extra transaction fees, so in practice miners don't impose extra limits.
I think the only reason for Proof of Work is to make it seem like "mining" is some expensive activity. But it doesn't have to be. It's a bit silly, actually.
In practice, PoW just winds up "electing" the next miner who you hope will compile all the transactions they see into a block. That's a single point of failure, they can charge inordinate fees, they can be DDoSed, and so on.