Ignore the millions of 1-ton chunks of metal that move 1 person slower than a bike on average. It's the bitcoin network's fault.

No disagreement about cars. Bikes and bike infra are cheaper, healthier and less deadly in all senses of the term. Electric bikes are great too. So are three wheelers.

But that is whataboutery: bitcoin is still extremely bad.

Both cars and bitcoin are insanely wasteful.

Ever heard of "whataboutism"?

Here in the UK we call it "whataboutery"

Yeah, but ask yourself: why are you reading this _now_?

The article is 2 years old. Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency ecosystem are near all-time high values. Shining a light into this article is probably a maneuver made by someone interested in decreasing the value of Bitcoin. It's possible that this person is a concerned environmentalist, but Occam's razor suggests that this person is someone that wants to buy Bitcoin at lower prices, or that shorted its value in an exchange and wants to increase the benefits before executing the options.

Maybe it's just because people care about the future of our planet and don't care about those crypto-stuff?

Assuming this forum has enough clout to swing the price of BTC is probably a bit of an overstatement...

Probably because the network is consuming more electricity than ever right at this moment.

Wait, you can short Bitcoin now?

Of course, find somebody to loan you some coin, sell it at current prices, buy some in a week when prices fall and return the coin to the lender, pocketing the price diff. Any fungible product can be shorted, all you need is a willing lender.

Assume my rhetorical question boils down to “is it possible to find a willing BTC lender with a decent enough size and non loan-shark rates”?

Or even “is there a consensus yield curve for BTC?”