~600K USD per block is not “small” :). Mining power is directly correlated to cost of electricity. Most mining is located in electricity-rich districts for good reason. It’s the only cost-effective way to sustain the network. Those regions are scarce across the globe, ergo in high demand.
I like how you get so close to the truth and then shy away into your biases. People are funny. Are you going to lead the crusade against Christmas lights?
I'm sorry.. this feels like whataboutism and it misses the point entirely. Christmas trees are hung for festive purposes, not monetary gain. With Bitcoin, electricity is a major cost input that drives miner actions. We see them move collectively to lower energy jurisdictions to keep mining activities as profitable as possible. Hydroelectric dams are the cheapest, most consistent source of energy. It's no surprise that miners move en masse to sources of hydroelectricity. And you can't just throw up a hydroelectric dam anywhere, it's very much a function of geography. Some places are blessed [1], others less so.
If you do have a salient point to make about the "truth," perhaps you should come out and make it. I'm sure a bunch of us would be happy to hear it.
I'm not understanding your reasoning, are you suggesting that wasting energy for "not monetary gain" is ok? It's not whataboutism, it's an expectation of consistency of thought/reasoning, how do you come to the conclusion that some activity is worth spending energy on and not others, I'm trying to suss it out.
Think about how the petro-dollar network is secured, how much energy it consumes, arguably more polluting than hydroelectricity (or another non-polluting/renewable source) used to secure a decentralized, permissionless, digital monetary network (it's not just a token, it's also the network and a store). Can you honestly tell me that you see no value in that system? if you do, what amount of energy use is justified, there has to be some number, right?
Compare it with gold, for instance, how much energy is expended in moving a billion dollars of gold from one location to another (based on distance), think about the amount of security it needs while it is being moved and stored, how much energy is expended while mining and smelting it.
Bitcoin seems to be an order of magnitude better than the existing comparable systems, there is a clear ability to choose where that energy can come from (unlike petro-dollars or gold). There's already enough natural pressure to move to renewable/stranded energy sources, a few years from now, almost all bitcoin mining will be from renewables/non-polluting sources and all this noise around bitcoin's energy use will be moot, what will you guys complain about then?
To me personally, the auditability of the network by ANYONE is the best feature, I have a node running at home that watches the network, and I can read the source code.
