Curious - crypto mining processes transactions, right? How does the electricity usage compare to a data center used by a large bank?
Obviously the bank can do things in a much less computationally intensive way, but my point is would this happen if a bank decided to use some computationally heavy process in its data center to make its transactions more secure and it used the same amount of power?
The bank would have to either find a way to make significant profits from that heavy computation or reduce the computation; CPU time is an operational cost and banks exist to make profits. Crypto mining is designed to be inefficient; it's a security feature, not a bug.
And if the global banking system was pulling 2% of global power consumption the shareholders would be fetching the pitchforks and torches. I have no numbers off the cuff but I don't see a world where banks would be dumping crypto levels of money into power and server use.
Different set of circumstances I believe and would likely be tackled differently.
I don't think there are currently many/if any Bank's that require a data center to draw as much power as required by the cryptocurrency miners.
Furthermore, does this Bank serve the people of that country? Does that Bank provide jobs for people in said Country? Does the benefit of such improvements in security greatly benefit the immediate customers in said country?
Many more questions would need to be asked to answer that question.
The article points out that these miners use a disproportionate amount of electricity, whilst providing little to no jobs to the local economy.
Whilst we don't have the numbers here, it is a safe bet for the company to withhold energy capacity for the likes of electric cars and heat pumps etc.
The bank would put the energy on the "expenses" side of its accounts and look for ways to reduce it, whereas cryptocurrency advocates seem to believe that the more waste the more secure it is.
(Arguably the use of AI for anti-fraud detection might start causing a bit of this problem)
Obviously the bank can do things in a much less computationally intensive way, but my point is would this happen if a bank decided to use some computationally heavy process in its data center to make its transactions more secure and it used the same amount of power?