[hakesdev]

this is a straw man. The point is not its absolute energy consumption, but its energy consumption relative to other alternatives.

How much energy does it take to operate the current global financial infrastructure? The current global financial structure employs millions of people (who fly on planes, create waste, etc.), hundreds of millions of office square footage, data centers, etc.

Furthermore, there are cases in which consuming energy actually reduces GHG emissions, as is the case for consuming otherwise flared methane gas. See https://www.upstreamdata.ca .

[duskwuff]

The current global financial infrastructure serves roughly six billion people. The current cryptocurrency infrastructure provides much more limited services to far fewer people, and still uses an incredible amount of energy to do it (e.g. possibly as much as 0.25% of world energy for Bitcoin alone). In terms of energy consumption relative to utility, that's not a net win.

[quattrofan]

But what does it matter? Putting aside any moral arguments it's not like it can be fully regulated or stopped even if there was the will to do so.

[hakesdev]

lol...The global financial system HARDLY serves 6 billion. Why are so many concerned with "banking the unbanked"? And arguably, the end product for those that do get access is pretty bad (slow, high fees, inflation-ridden).

It's also quite patronizing of you to say who and how crypto serves others.

More data on the world's unbanked/underbanked. https://globalfindex.worldbank.org/sites/globalfindex/files/...