[danShumway]

If you're arguing that the energy usage of cryptocurrencies are justified because they provide security, that's a different argument than that they're equivalent to the energy usage from games.

They're not, those security guards you're hiring have an outsized impact on the environment. Argue that the impact is justified if you want, but don't pretend it doesn't exist or that it's comparable to the energy output of much larger systems that service more people.

Cryptocurrencies on proof-of-work chains use a massive amount of energy; when you break down the energy-to-output, it dwarfs other systems like traditional gaming. The argument that cryptocurrency energy usage is the same as gaming usage really kind of flies out the window when you say things like "energy is security."

I mean, that's a pretty big difference between cryptocurrency and gaming. In gaming, we don't feel better about the ecosystem or more secure specifically because we're spending more energy, the energy is not security for us.