Written by Tom McKay on Gizmodo.
“What the buyer is really getting is less tangible: bragging rights, clout, a collector’s item, or simply a nifty new form of money laundering. And because of the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies, just attaching words like “token” or “blockchain” or “proof of work” to random crap can make its value skyrocket.”
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”According to CryptoArt.wtf, the Larry transaction used the equivalent of about 11 kilowatt-hours. That’s equivalent to the average electrical consumption of a European Union resident for an entire day—or approximately 21 miles (34 kilometers) of driving with a gas-powered vehicle, one month of laptop use, or a week and a half of desktop computer usage.”
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“Those figures don’t count, as CryptoArt.wtf noted, the energy cost of “production or storage of the works, or even web hosting.” Nor do they include the energy cost of reselling the NFT, and they don’t include the infinitesimal amount I just contributed to making the blockchain suck up even more juice in the future, which I’m assuming is incalculable.”