I wonder, if people in the developing world could decide between using this enormous amount of electricity for "crypto", or using it to power desalination plants (facilities that turn seawater into drinking water) which one would they chose?
Just FYI: 25% of the worlds population, that's almost 2 BILLION people, do not have access to safe drinking water.
Lets say we spent every dollar spent on video games. But once we start draining money to these countries human greed starts to activate and only few amount of money will reach to hands to poor. When I was kid my parents used to tell me for every donation of 100 only 10 goes to poor people (can't verify). But if we go to visit poor country we will realize money is not that big problem. The biggest problem is greed, corruption and malfeasance.
Stable financial instruments.
>it's not hard to see how cryptocurrencies can help in this situation: faster easier and cheaper transactions
Transactions speed can vary and/or be tied into the transaction fees one is willing to pay.
How does that make the life of people who already don't have enough disposable income easier?
Actually, we don't even need to send the rays from where the crypto miners are located. The sun already provides more than they can. We just need to install the receivers (solar panels).
But who am I to preach, I'm part of "people" in the above sentence...
Doing good only leads to you being exploited.
At this point I only judge people on the harm they avoid doing to others. Just don't make a world a worse place and we're good.