They increase the usage and attractiveness of the Ethereum network. So while they don't directly cost energy, the Ethereum network expands to use all available energy priced less than the current token price (as all Proof of Work schemes do). Anything that increases the token price of Ethereum indirectly increases the energy use of the Ethereum network.

That is a second order effect at best. The loose fiat monetary policy of States also drives the price of cryptocurrencies -- far more so.

Is this also to blame for the energy usage of Proof of Work? I would say it has a bigger effect on fixed emission cryptocurrencies than stupid tokens.

Cut the money printing, save the environment?

The price of cryptocurrencies seems to have almost no relationship to stability and inflation of fiat currency. One would expect when bad inflation reports come out, and the stock market declines, cryptocurrencies would benefit from being an inflation hedge. But they don't. They often decline as well. It appears the rise and fall of cryptocurrencies correlate with the overall market's appetite for risk and speculation.

I very much disagree. I think the relationship is fairly obvious: https://usdsat.com/

You may not be familiar with the history:

"The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust" -- SN (2009)

Literally why Bitcoin was invented. You can choose whatever you want to believe regarding reported inflation numbers. I tend to believe the metrics that show very high asset inflation in since 2009. And fact anything desirable seems to get cheaper in Bitcoin terms over time.

Why do you think cryptocurrencies are popular places with very high (reported) inflation, like Nigeria and Turkey?

> NFTs are dumb, a grift, etc etc.. but they themselves use no energy beyond that required to create, sign and broadcast the transaction.

NFTs as a system don't work without a blockchain though, no one would be interested in an NFT space that didn't have minting or trading. I think people are using "NFT" as a shorthand to talk about those transactions you bring up.

It's kind of like saying, "gaming doesn't use a lot of energy, doing math on GPU does." I mean, technically right, but gaming is the reason people are doing math on the GPU. NFTs/cryptocurrency are the reason people are doing transactions on a proof-of-work Ethereum chain.

Interest in NFTs still drives interest in Ethereum so there’s a social aspect working indirectly.

That's like arguing it's not the voltage that kills, it's the current. Technically true, but practically useless.

That is not a good analogy -- Current and Voltage are related by ohms law.

The energy costs are not related to the number of tokens, how often the tokens are traded, who made the tokens or who sold them.