I should clarify, Proof of Work/Stake for Bitcoin only matters if Bitcoin is actually being used as a trustless and anonymous payment system for regular transactions.

I agree that there are other parts of the full crypto ecosystem that are leveraging blockchain more effectively. I don't know how optimistic I am about them overall, but at the very least on the technology side of things they certainly have a lot more potential to turn into real payment systems than Bitcoin does, and I don't mean to disparage the people working on them.