The public ledger is irrelevant. I don’t need any credentials to sign up for 1 or 1k accounts. Yes it can be tracked, but someone with a modicum of skill could make it extremely difficult.

Bitcoin is not backed by violence like state currencies.

Backed by, no, used by, absolutely.

Gold was used as a currency for thousands of years but you can’t use it at a local grocery store either.

That is largely irrelevant. Like crypto, I can’t take it to the grocery store. It no longer functions as a currency. That is cool, but don’t conflate it.

Bitcoin’s value is backed by math and computers and that is somehow worse than the energy and violence used by governments?

My dude, don’t pretend computing and math are magic. We are breaking some fucking hashes. Your perception of value of a broken hash doesn’t translate into actual utility.

than the energy and violence used by governments?

Please pass me a dose of your soma.

Cool, cool. Which of my appliances requires 535.6 megawatt-hours to run? I mean, my house is about 10, so I may be missing something.