@pluralistic : my take on this is that those datacenters consume lot of electricity. Most of it renewable. Which means that, after the bubble, we will drown in too-cheap-to-meter electricity.

In fact, electricity will often have a negative price. Which will put bitcoin mining into a new light.

(while the crypto market is a scam and current prices are scam, the bitcoin project, at its core, is not a scam at all and is truly important. But I agree that the core is well hidden those days)