"crypto is enormously power-intensive"
Automobiles are power intensive. Hot water is power intensive. Electrical lights are power intensive.
Lots of valuable services are power intensive. The question isn't whether a service is power intensive, the question is whether the benefit is worth the cost.
The fact that many people are willing to purchase cryptocurrencies means that they value access to private, censorship resistant, inflation resistant currencies more than the cost of electricity required to operate the network.
If there were a competing use of electricity that were more valuable, someone else would've paid a higher price for the electricity.
In addition, cryptocurrency networks have strong incentives to drive the cost of electricity down, since the lower their costs, the higher their market share and profit.
Already, crypto mining companies have developed power sources that would otherwise go to waste. For example it's impractical to run power lines from remote geothermal vents. But cryptominers can do just fine there.
Miners can also use "flare gas" from oil drilling operations that would also otherwise be wasted.
https://money.yahoo.com/wyoming-oil-gas-producer-mitigates-134700073.html
There are also promising alternatives to proof of work, such as the Chia networks "proof of space and time", which makes use of spare disk drive space instead of computing complexity to secure the network. Such systems, if they work as expected, will use much less energy than coins that rely on proof of work.
https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/podcasts/proof-of-space-chia-is-a-green-environmentally-friendly-cryptocurrency
Automobiles are power intensive. Hot water is power intensive. Electrical lights are power intensive.
Lots of valuable services are power intensive. The question isn't whether a service is power intensive, the question is whether the benefit is worth the cost.
The fact that many people are willing to purchase cryptocurrencies means that they value access to private, censorship resistant, inflation resistant currencies more than the cost of electricity required to operate the network.
If there were a competing use of electricity that were more valuable, someone else would've paid a higher price for the electricity.
In addition, cryptocurrency networks have strong incentives to drive the cost of electricity down, since the lower their costs, the higher their market share and profit.
Already, crypto mining companies have developed power sources that would otherwise go to waste. For example it's impractical to run power lines from remote geothermal vents. But cryptominers can do just fine there.
Miners can also use "flare gas" from oil drilling operations that would also otherwise be wasted.
https://money.yahoo.com/wyoming-oil-gas-producer-mitigates-134700073.html
There are also promising alternatives to proof of work, such as the Chia networks "proof of space and time", which makes use of spare disk drive space instead of computing complexity to secure the network. Such systems, if they work as expected, will use much less energy than coins that rely on proof of work.
https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/podcasts/proof-of-space-chia-is-a-green-environmentally-friendly-cryptocurrency