Comment by liamwestray

Energy per transaction is the fundamental metric of efficiency in market systems.

Literally every single product and service boils down an exchange of currency for some embodied (goods, services) or pure energy (electricity).

Banking services are an exchange of currency for the energy embodied in protecting the accounting system and providing secure access to money.

Crypto mining uses several orders of magnitude more energy per serviced individual than the entirety of the global banking system combined.