I agree! Let's start with the most useless "use" first, AKA crypto, and then once we have precedent we move into more and more uses.

If we move to renewables, who cares what they do with the energy?

I dont care what source of energy you're using, to provide for any shitcoin.

Shitcoins are climate-destroying ponzi schemes. They're a negative-sum that the world ends poorer with the more they're made/generated/mined.

I see! How does that differ from, for example, owning stocks? Or real estate? I literally don't see a functional difference. Sorry I realise this seems antagonistic but I really want to understand the vitriol.

Apple, along with a bunch of upstream suppliers, brings together some glass, some plastic, some metal, and create an iPhone out of it. The value of an iPhone is greater than the value of the raw materials. Thus, it's a positive sum game. Same goes for owning a stake in Apple the company.

One person buys a Bitcoin that another person sold, which is zero sum. But miners burned real energy paid with not-Bitcoin to process it, thus value exits the system. Thus it is negative sum.

Ok, Im not sure why youve chosen Apple but I'll bite. Those resources aren't actually renewable. And mining that stuff certainly costs the environment more than the value of this conversation we are having on those devices warrants. And at the end they're tossed in landfills. You might disagree, but so would a crypto enthusiast.

I do understand your point though I think. Waste in general is bad.

Aluminum is renewable. So is glass, of course. And no, Apple is actually doing all they can to keep old iPhones from being tossed in landfills, including designing custom robots to disassemble them so that the components can then at least theoretically be recycled.

You don't need to mine more aluminum if you're able to use recycled aluminum in your products. And Apple does.

So Apple is perhaps not the best choice of a company to pick on in this particular part of the argument.