Don't forget money spent paying employees, executives, buildings, leases etc. Mining is just one of the costs of the whole crypto worlds. It's an amazing industry that keeps providing nothing of value (or you can argue it creates negative value) while finding creative ways to spend money on it.

Burning thousands of GPU hours just to update an ineffective database is surely the most prominent one.

Don't forget money spent paying employees, executives, buildings, leases etc. Mining is just one of the costs of the whole crypto world. It's an amazing industry that keeps providing nothing of value (or you can argue it creates negative value) while finding creative ways to spend money on it.

Burning thousands of GPU hours just to update an ineffective database is surely the most prominent one though.