[mbunch]

That's part of the reason why Bitcoin is seen as V1 tech that's being moved away from and other cryptocurrencies using variants of Proof of Stake (which consumes orders of magnitude less electricity but has other potential pitfalls) instead of Proof of Work have grown more popular. Ethereum, generally considered the #2 crypto, is planning to make the switch from PoW to PoS, for instance.

There are some people who still support large-scale adoption of PoW coins, though, and you are right that they're generally willfully ignorant of the environmental concerns. The only case I can see for those is something that aims for true trustlessness and anonymity like Monero, since most PoS methods make compromises around that.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Ethereum is still laying the groundwork for a switch from PoW to PoS and hasn't yet transitioned.

[akvadrako]

Ethereum has already switched to PoS? This is the first I've heard and I can't find any news about it.

[tenaciousDaniel]

It hasn't moved yet, op is incorrect. They just released the EIP (ethereum improvement proposal). It's going to take some time to get it to production.

[redbeard0x0a]

Ethereum is still PoW, they released an initial PoS that runs along side the PoW, "verifying" every 100 transactions or so.

The goal is to move entirely to PoS, but things take time.

[kimsk112]

Why has it taken so long? I thought this would happen in 2017.

[lostmsu]

Because there are still issues with the idea of PoS. Major one AFAIK is that there's nothing preventing miners mining a fork in addition to the "main" chain, which destroys consensus on which chain is the main chain.

[VMG]

What's the cost in PoS on working on parallel chains?

Does the cost increase in proportion to chain length?