[distances]

> One way or another all of that chip supply would be sold, and then it is a case of benchmarking the social value, load and efficiency of the different uses to some utilitarian optimum.

I disagree. Cryptomining created a new market that increased the demand. There's no reason to assume the same numbers of GPUs with the same utilisation rate would be in use if we didn't have crypto. Thus, it does have direct environmental consequences.

Not all of that electricity use is a total waste: a friend of mine uses part of his mining heat to warm up the apartment in the winter. It's an expensive heater though.