>>13831271It is and isn't.
Crypto is very energy inefficient "currency" and a mode of transaction. It simply takes vastly more energy to do one transaction with crypto than it does with a traditional bank transfer like say a visa. Currently bitcoin alone consumes 115 Twh of electricity (for comparison Sweden uses about 135 Twh) and combined with the other crypto currencies you are looking at about 1% of all the worlds electricity going into these things which is quite a big chunk especially considering how small of a market share they really have. If you consider that crypto essentially merely replaces traditional bank transaction you could consider it a travesty, basically just burning money and putting out extra co2 on the side. This is in contrast to what this guy strawmans
>>13837717Where an inefficient thing (internal combustion vehicle) is replaced by a more efficient thing (electric car) crypto does the opposite where it replaces the efficient thing with waste.
On the other hand the overall effect is still relatively small, the co2 emissions from crypto are still quite manageable and lot of the power is produced by renewable sources. Ideally emissions from crypto would be reduced but as they are now they aren't exactly top contributors either. You shouldn't fall into the meme of "small number good" though, you can split up each sector of consumption to smaller and smaller bits until each is under 1% thus nothing is a "problem" which is of course not how things work.
the tl:dr regards if you should feel bad is probably a little but there are degrees of sustainability here too. If you exclusively mine using surplus renewable energy (such as day time solar) you realistically aren't adding much co2 since that power would be otherwise wasted. If you mine around the clock then even if you are getting your power from a renewable source, you are merely displacing someone else who now has to buy fossil power since your consumption is pure extra.
