Looking at this surprising "hit piece" from another angle: "This is a guest post contributed by Mary Ernst." Who is Mary Ernst? (no bio or link offered). Why would she say "I find it hard to hail a currency that requires intensive energy usage (which will only grow as the problems get harder) as the ‘currency of the future’" in the site that calls itself "the voice of digital currency"?
The facts of the issue have been probed at bitcointalk for weeks, ever since the Bloomberg hit piece in April. As previous posters suggest, consensus is that
BTC is hugely more green than the infrastructure for fiat.
Assuming this was written for some purpose, is the takeaway supposed to be "it's bad, very bad" or "it's bad but it's not as bad as Bloomberg claimed in April" or "it's not bad at all"? Nowhere does it say "it's not nearly as bad as fiat", which seems closest to the truth.
For me the interesting bit is the motivations - the calculus behind any such pieces. Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose?
And, once more, who is Mary Ernst, or rather which Mary Ernst wrote the piece (and why)? Anybody know?
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Mary/Ernst
