HackerNews is the first place I’ve heard about this, every time Bitcoin is mentioned someone will say it uses as much energy as 1/10th of the world’s concrete production and therefore it is destroying the environment.
I’ve only ever seen this view on HackerNews and some parts of Twitter.
It’s interesting to me because Bitcoin seems very much like a “hacker” topic that HN would generally like. So how and why did opinions change? Every time Bitcoin is mentioned, every reply is someone very angrily posting about environmental concerns.
Much of that electricity is not going to be from renewables, hydro, or nuclear, so generating CO2 and other GHG.
However, I suspect what makes it be perceived as particularly environmentally unfriendly is that there is no inherent societal value in the effort.
[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...