May I please ask whether an unlocked bootloader is still bad for privacy and the risk of data loss/theft, if the phone is enrypted?
My understanding is that while being able to mess with the phone (e.g. including installing a new OS) in the presence of an unlocked bootloader, a properly encrypted phone at least protects the data on it.
Did I get that wrong?

You’re dead wrong.
Have you ever heard of Bitcoin mining farms? Their electric energy consumption dwarfs a league of mainframes.
Am IBM Z16 may need several dozen kW at full load: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/systems-hardware/zsystems/Z16M-A01?topic=requirements-general-electrical-power
Fully equipped with 8 PDUs and 4 BPAs a single mainframe is limited to an electric power of 173 kW.

Well, the Bitcoin miners are estimated to use around 175 TWh of energy annually, which equals an electric power of around 20 GW : https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption/
This is several orders of magnitude above that of all the mainframes in the world - unless there are more than 116 million mainframes of that type in operation and running at full load.

But unless you use Monero or other crypto with similarly strong privacy all you do is leave a permanent trail for agencies to investigate.
Using shell companies on the Cayman Islands might be the safer approach.

…and the hate is strong.

I agree that scaling power comsumption is unsustainable - both ecologically and ecoomically!
But power consumption is no inherent attribute of crypto, but a design choice.
Bitcoin just refuses to adjust.
Ethereum did that not very long ago.

What I’m trying to say is: there are designs available that operate at a very tiny power consumption.
Don’t lump all crypto together with Bitcoin.

XRP is fast, but neither instant (usually around 4 seconds) nor without fees:
https://xrpl.org/docs/concepts/transactions/transaction-cost

The cherry on top is the skewed token distribution.
Thanks, but no thanks!

All of what you say applies to most cryptocurrencies.
But I’m aware of at least one digital currency that is

• without fees
• usually confirmed in less than one second
• eco-friendly because it requires no special hardware to operate the network and it uses very little energy

It has also zero inflation, is decentralized and designed with incentives that increase the degree of decentralization over time.
It also has no built-in limits regarding transactions per second.

Consumer protection without middlemen/centralization is hardly possible.

I’m hesitant to drop a name here, because I don’t want to come across as a shill, but if you’re interested we can discuss the attributes of this gem.

edit: ah, the good old “I don’t like what I see, but I have no arguments, so I just downvote without engaging” approach. Or does it just sound too good to be true?
You know what, I’ve changed my mind: https://nano.org/en

Zerg sides with Drag on this.
Just because something is legal, it’s not necessarily ethical and vice versa.
“Adjustment” is creating accountability by other means.

Maybe you’d understand better, if you or someone you love had to suffer from arbitrarily denied UHC insurance claims.
For some this action seems to be a drastic move to hold someone accountable for the pain he caused, who couldn’t be held accountable though other means.