I think it is actually a valid criticism of mainstream macroeconomics that they mostly ignore thermodynamics and energy. But the 'cryptocurrency is energy storage' just clearly errs far, far more in the wrong direction, given that (assuming PoW), the energy is permanently consumed in using it, and even more energy is consumed in transacting, with no energy actually ever being able to be returned.

You can't say that something that uses a huge amount of energy, and then lets you pay for even more energy to be used has "transferred" that energy, it's just unnecessarily consumed much more energy than was required...