I wonder if all the banks in the world consume more energy vs Bitcoin network? What if we didn't have these big institutions that employ hundreds of thousands of people to basically increment and decrement a counter in a computer. Imagine all costs that we wouldn't have to incur (e.g transport to work, operating buildings, etc). Today's banks seem very archaic.
The banks are also serving several orders of magnitude more people than the bitcoin network. The energy usage per transation isn't even close to being comparable.
Even with all of the inefficiencies of modern banking, by comparison cryptocurrency is like lighting oil wells on fire.
Purpose of any modern bank is to make money for its shareholders. It does so by taking money on one side and lending it on the other. Lending is inherently a risky business and that risk must be managed. It's unfortunate that in this process people who deposit money can lose it. Essentially, those people take risk of losing money for <1%.
There is also another aspect to banks which is to provide ability to exchange money. That part of banking doesn't generate a lot of revenue compared to loans so it receives a lot less attention.
