Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often admittedly energy-intensive in the computing involved. After all, cryptocurrencies, in part, have value to owners because they are scarce, and there is a cost involved in producing them. This cost, however, has been pointed out by critics of cryptos as evidence of a lack of true value for the currencies.

Similar arguments by critics of gold were made decades ago. They claimed a fiat/paper money standard was more economical than gold, which needed to be physically mined and stored. These changes, however, were confronted by Roger Garrison in The "Costs" of a Gold Standard. Garrison writes, "Comparing the resource costs of gold to the resource costs of paper does not settle the issue." Garrison notes additional costs society incurs under a paper standard: (1) the costs imposed on society by different political factions attempting to gain control of the printing press, (2) costs imposed by special interest groups who persuade controllers of the printing press to misuse their authority (print more money) for the benefit of special interests, (3) inflation-induced misallocations of resources as a result of misused monetary authority, and (4) costs incurred by businessmen in their attempts to predict what the monetary authority will do in future.