Maybe a bespoke (mostly) decentralized implementation that requires more power than mid-sized countries isn't worth it; especially if it's throughput is 7 TPS.

You could also say "more power than 3 large US cities" and your statement would be equally valid, yet much less impressive. It's about as useful as talking about "mid-size rocks". Fist-sized? Refrigerator-sized? Bus-sized?

Did you know that China curtails more hydropower than the global electricity consumption of Bitcoin, than entire "mid-size countries". China literally lets water flow through the dams without generating electricity with the turbines, because they have a hydropower surplus that they can't redistribute through their grid. When you start realizing things like that, you realize Bitcoin's electricity consumption is, fortunately, still a drop in the bucket, compared to the immense waste from, well, everything else.

How much power does the existing system of mining, storage, minting, accounting, etc cost? Let’s compare.

What percentage of financial transactions even involve coinage?

You know, I hear this repeated a lot, but I never see anyone put up numbers. I would be very curious to see your math.

Cybersecurity is a problem that affects all computer related industries not just cryptocurrency. North korea doesnt rely on hacking just crypto. Lazarus group has been around and targets many infrastructures. You cant blame crypto for the field of cybersecurity. Its been a problem long before crypto existed.

> It’s a fact that North Korea relies on hacking it for funding critical imports at this point…

A fact? What are the #s that they are bringing in from hacking, versus the $4.8 billion/year they bring in from exports to China/Africa?

$1.8B lost to crypto hacks in 2023. Hard to say how much of that is North Korea, but it's a nontrivial amount.

Lost is also not necessarily equivalent to successfully laundered.

the fact that there's a whole crowd here that think the old guard actually got hacked by dastardly crypto punks instead of just their own incompetence with scheduling a tweet