Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Massive amounts of electronic litter" and "amazing how technology has advanced" into a mad rush to waste resources and energy reminded me of this fire, and all the obsolete PC's and GPU's and ASIC's and coal power plants littering the landscape due to Bitcoin mining: https://www.coindesk.com/gallery-fire-destroys-thai-bitcoin-... https://qz.com/1055126/photos-china-has-one-of-worlds-larges... Bitcoin mining consumes…
That (i) is absolutely irrelevant to the discussion at hand and (ii) a completely fallacious argument, since Bitcoin mining amounts to less than 0.01% of the world's energy consumption, providing a useful service in return (compare with gold mining, which is actual mindless busywork and consumes way more energy than Bitcoin does.
Actually, it's 0.08% and rising. The energy for 1 transaction could power almost 6 U.S. homes for a full day.