I use crypto because the financial system does not allow me to make a transaction anonymously unless I use cash, that I can't use on the internet. Make the government remove its retarded KYC and anti money laundering laws that create state mandated invasion of privacy and I will stop. Crypto exists only because there is a demand not met by "real money". The answer is not to ban crypto but to make "real money" competitive again.
The majority of cryptocurrency mining is paid for by fixed inflationary rewards, not transaction fees. That means that the power used by mining isn’t directly dependent on the number of transactions being processed. When you hear “each Bitcoin transaction burns x MJ”, that’s a simplification.
Custodial cryptocurrency services therefore don’t consume meaningfully more or less power than non-custodial services. They both rely on the underlying protocol remaining functional, which is where the bulk of power consumption occurs.
