It's absolutely not the case that nobody was thinking about computer power use. The Energy Star program had been around for around 15 years at that point and even had an EU-US agreement, and that was sitting alongside the EU's own energy program. Getting an 80Plus-certified power supply was already common advice to anyone custom-building a PC which was by far the primary group of users doing Bitcoin mining before it had any kind of mainstream attention. And the original Bitcoin PDF includes the phrase "In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.", despite not going in-depth (it doesn't go in-depth on anything).

The late 00s weren't the late 90s where the most common OS in use did not support CPU idle without third party tooling hacking it in.

Back when Bitcoin was released, nobody was giving a thought to computer energy use.

It didn't take long before people saw that energy was a major factor in cost of operations of the network.

It was a poor design decision

One that is fiercely defended by people who invested into the implementation. So it may not have started with it being anticipated, but not it is and people are actively choosing to perpetuate this use of energy.

If I were looking to assign blame, I'd start with the coal and gas operators who are digging up fossil fuels that would otherwise remain in the ground just to fuel their bitcoin mining rigs, those who peddle specious arguments claiming that it somehow isn't a problem, those who turned the whole thing into a machine for separating the gullible from their money, and those who've built the shaky, buggy, mostly proprietary, convoluted, half-finished, untrustworthy, horrible mess that is the software ecosystem surrounding the whole cryptocurrency sphere. Perhaps none of that could have been foreseen by whoever designed bitcoin. On them we can instead put the blame for the failure to make it anywhere near sufficiently scalable, and the ridiculous choice of mechanism for the bitcoin monetary policy which serves to make it function only as a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and not a durable currency. Regardless of who's to blame, it's got to go.

Perhaps there's already an alternative out there somewhere which is actually useful and not based on avarice, fraud, unsustainable resource usage, or unsustainable hype, but if so it's currently hidden under such an enormous pile of shitcoins that it's impossible to identify. At least the internal combustion engine was good at doing the thing it was supposed to do.

A small plot of land with good soil and a steady supply of fresh water, a good education, and a sturdy pair of boots.

Back when Bitcoin was released, nobody was giving a thought to computer energy use.

VT for long term
Money Market Funds for short term

It means that despite being fifteen years old, it still takes more electricity for a single bitcoin transaction than to drive an electric SUV from Florida to California, cost per single transaction has still spiked over 50 USD twice in the last six months, and it remains too prone to wild inflation and deflation for any serious business to actually price anything in.

In other words, it has the same inherent value it always has, none at all.

It's a bit too traceable for that though.

You can't get fooled again?

The prices don't mean anything if no one is paying it, which if something is at said 'record breaking' levels, means there is at least 1 fool out of the 2 involved.

It's still just a pyramid scheme in the end, because if I'm trading ammo or a sandwich or pigs or something, at the end of the day if no one wants to buy them from me I can still use them myself.

With crypto, there will by definition be someone holding a valueless and unusable item at some point. Whether or not the opportunity to make money in the time before that happens outweighs being involved in a pyramid scheme, is what everyone has to ask themselves (and be judged for depending on their answer).

You can argue about whether all money is the same in this regard, but there have been hundreds of crypto coins that have failed since the last fiat currency died.

Do you know anything about financial markets?

I'm at a beginner level in Investments and stock market.

Study and you’ll understand everything you could do with it.

I'm already learning about Investments and stock market. Maybe, once I finish that I could consider this. But, I don't see much value in crypto so won't bother.

Perhaps, if my perception changes in the future I could reconsider. Just not in the near future.