That. Then, add all the energy consumed by the 24/7 monitoring and safeguarding of every single one of those facilities, and for good measure add to each cost line the energy cost of the whole chain of processes that selects, sets up and maintains enough of both humans and machines to accomplish that task at scale.
Our comments and questions along these lines don't seem to be too popular. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in the industry I'm in with my own locally unique thoughts and conclusions. It's very tiring.
Crypto only provides a small fraction of the functionality of the federal reserve or banks or credit card companies, so it isn't fair to compare energy consumption. (I know coiners basically don't want monetary policy so the fed has negative value to them but many people disagree.)
That's a fair point, but a similar point could be made about the efficiency and energy density of solar vs. coal. Definitely about wind vs. coal. So I'd say based on that the entire original point is mastabatory at best.