"Just because mining Bitcoin uses energy, doesn?t immediately mean that it?s wasteful, to come to that conclusion would require a value judgment of the activity to begin with."
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Several years ago, a fund manager from Hong Kong who was considering an investment in my fund shot at me, ?Did you know that mining Bitcoin uses as much electricity as Belgium"?

As if somehow, I was personally responsible for Bitcoin?s energy consumption simply through my firm?s trading of cryptocurrencies.

?It?s actually the energy consumption of Italy (at the time),? I demurred, but I don?t think he was getting the point.
While attention-grabbing headlines drawing false equivalencies between the amount of electricity it takes to secure the Bitcoin blockchain, with the energy consumption of whole countries make for great clickbait, they gloss over the subtleties and nuances surrounding the question of just how energy-intensive are cryptocurrencies.  

Somehow, investments in cryptocurrencies in general, and Bitcoin in particular, have been singled-out as ?uninvestable? for failing the ?E? criteria among investors with strict environmental, social and corporate governance (?ESG?) concerns as part of their investment mandates.  

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