NYC is getting its own city coin in line with the incoming mayor's crypto hub vision

[Ford_Prefect]

2. The amount of energy consummed by systems which mine and facilitate crypto currencies

Last edited Wed Nov 10, 2021, 04:54 AM - Edit history (2)

make this an UNwise investment. It is neither carbon neutral as some enthusiasts have alleged, nor a wise use of energy as such. The entire enterprise rests on off-shoring computing and power costs while significantly increasing overall consumption.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/27/bitcoin-mining-electricity-use-environmental-impact

The Guardian Sat 27 Feb 2021: Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries'.

The cryptocurrency’s (Bitcoin)value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use.

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Now that over 18.5m bitcoin have been mined, the average computer can no longer mine bitcoins. Instead, mining now requires special computer equipment that can handle the intense processing power needed to get bitcoin today. And, of course, these special computers need a lot of electricity to run.

The amount of electricity used to mine bitcoin “has historically been more than [electricity used by] entire countries, like Ireland”, said Benjamin Jones, a professor of economics at the University of New Mexico who has researched bitcoin’s environmental impact. “We’re talking about multiple terawatts, dozens of terawatts a year of electricity being used just for bitcoin … That’s a lot of electricity.”

Proponents of bitcoin say that mining is increasingly being done with electricity from renewable sources as that type of energy becomes cheaper, and the energy used is far lower than that of other, more wasteful, uses of power. The energy wasted by plugged-in but inactive home devices in the US alone could power bitcoin mining for 1.8 years, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.

But environmentalists say that mining is still a cause for concern particularly because miners will go wherever electricity is cheapest and that may mean places that use coal. According to Cambridge, China has the most bitcoin mining of any country by far. While the country has been slowly moving toward renewable energy, about two-thirds of its electricity comes from coal.

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In simpler terms:

...if Bitcoin were a country, only 30 other countries would use more electricity. It would surpass the yearly power needs of the UAE, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Belgium, Austria or Israel.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-bitcoin-need-more-energy-than-whole-countries/a-56573390
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Mining involves the calculation of complex mathematical equations and it is extremely energy intensive, requiring powerful and expensive computer equipment. Data from the University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index shows that the Bitcoin network now consumes a whopping 142.59 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity each year, a figure that is higher than many countries.

Putting the figure into perspective, it could power all of the kettles used to boil water in the United Kingdom and the European Union for 32 years and 4.5 years, respectively. It also represents 0.57% of global electricity production and accounts for 0.65% of global electricity consumption. In fact, if Bitcoin was a country, it would be the 27th largest consumer of electricity on the planet in May 2021. Its annual electricity consumption is higher than Norway's 124 TWh and more than twice the level of Bangladesh's 70 TWh.

It is also substantially higher than the amount of electricity used by some of the world's largest technology companies. According to a further comparison carried out by Visual Capitalist, Google's GOOG -0.1% annual electricity consumption amounts to 12 TWh while Facebook's totals five TWh. Bitcoin still uses less energy than the world's data centers, however, with their yearly electricity consumption totaling 205 TWh.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2021/05/05/bitcoin-devours-more-electricity-than-many-countries-infographic/

I'm reminded of the early days of the internet when some people invested and lost quite heavily because they didn't understand what they were buying and how it could generate income.

In the case of Crypto I can see there are some potential benefits to moving money around which allows the users to bypass local taxes and other regulatory activity. That's useful to the clients but bad for the community at large.
IMO it is a very energy expensive way for a select group of investors to pull value out of the national infrastructure without paying an appropriate fee, like the way Mining and Oil companies pay pennies on the dollar to extract natural resources from National lands, and in the process dodge the cost of environmental impacts.