Ultimately the money comes from people buying in to Bitcoin and many of them are not aware of the power consumption or the fact that it's possible to achieve number go up with virtually no energy.
The people buying Bitcoin don't need to be aware that it costs 6 GW of power, any more than they need to be aware of the electricity costs associated with the manufacture of plastic, electronics, or other goods and services.
If we as a society feel like there is too much energy being consumed, we should regulate the production, and let the market come to equilibrium on a fair price for the cost of electricity. If you don't like the fact that coal plants are spewing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, regulate the coal plants, not Bitcoin. Regulation of electricity will increase the cost of electricity, which will naturally reduce the total amount of electrify that Bitcoin uses - Bitcoin's energy use is proportional to the price of energy, not to the actual quantity of energy.
> The people buying Bitcoin don't need to be aware that it costs 6 GW of power, any more than they need to be aware of the electricity costs associated with the manufacture of plastic, electronics, or other goods and services.
But people do need to be aware of the environmental costs of such things, because society does not account for negative externalities.
> regulate the coal plants, not Bitcoin. Regulation of electricity will increase the cost of electricity
What if society actually thinks it's reasonable to discriminate on energy use? What if we want to provide cheap-ish energy for end-consumers, for essential services like the medical sector, but not for cryptocurrencies?
I think a more thorough societal discussion about what our goals are given tight carbon budgets is what they're getting at, not the individual decision of someone to mine it.
