Yes, I loathe captchas, precisely because they come across to me as the server (owner) saying "I get to automate, you don't, loser". Plus, they run under control of a remote server, so they're nonfree. I'd rather get rid of them all.

But I'm also sympathetic to the needs of server operators who're getting overwhelmed by LLM bots. PoW as micropayment, offering something tangible to the server, besides granting access to the client, with alternate means for anonymous payment available, seems a lot more sensible to me than PoWaste: it solves two problems, rather than barely solving one while inconveniencing everyone.