The dollar system is built on eternal growth and the oil economy, and its proof of work is endless wars. I'll take bitcoin and monero any day; they're much, much greener than what we currently have.
A wasteless means of payment and accounting is wishful thinking, from my point of view.
We don't really use cash anymore, but a digital representation of it. This comes with a lot of electricity consumption on datacenters, among other waste.
For example: financial institutions have to waste a lot of resources just to keep the system "safe", for you, the government, etc. Requires extensive cybersecurity, bureaucratic and legal spending.
How much of a carbon footprint does the global traditional cash and banking industry produce per usd relative to the equivalent footprint of a cryptocurrency?
It's not just electricity, it's concrete and steel for banks and parking lots, employees driving to and from work, armored cars transporting cash, etc. Traditional cash is many, many orders of magnitude dirtier than even the worst cryptocurrency.
If you could assess the cost in pollution and other harms, you'd also want to assess the value in jobs and infrastructure and other utility. I'd bet cryptocurrency ends up being a far better tool all around, especially if institutional protections can be emulated - some sort of fraud insurance and so on.
Anyway, it's silly to neg on crypto because it uses lots of power. Total red herring.
It's a good ambition to make crypto more efficient, but the fuss is all FUD memeing from the usual suspects.
