It's a good point and I'd love to see an analysis of how much electricity an average bank uses or a country's payment system uses. But until now I haven't seen

It's a good point and I'd love to see an analysis of how much electricity an average bank uses or a country's payment system uses. But until now I haven't seen one. I think another point to note is that Bitcoin (and Crypto/DeFi in general) is really just a censorship resistant Casino, and I say this having worked in blockchain and crypto for the last 6 years. As such, the massive electricity usage is all the more egregious. On the other hand. Banks actually add a lot of value whether we care to admit it or not. They provide a working payment network. They provide credit when you need it etc. Yes, the banking infrastructure probably uses a lot of electricity too - somehow those mainframes need to be powered but I'd like to think we can all agree that society benefits from this. Where as, with Bitcoin, only a small few benefit but the cost of running the infrastructure is so high. Maybe a better comparison is how much energy the gold industry uses vs bitcoin mining?