Quote Originally Posted by DinahDemiurge View Post
You seem to be confused. The proof of work mechanism is a competition to write transactions to the ledger, but has nothing to do with the transactions themselves. If you are talking about raw throughput, things like Segwit and Taproot reduced the blockweight of transactions, plus the lightning network completely demolishes Visa in cost per tx. Further, here is an article for you regarding environmental impact: https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-ene...tually-consume .
It has everything to do with transactions, since it's how transactions are verified on the blockchain. It's a ton of energy per transaction verified. Traditional financial transactions are verified with much less energy per transaction, like Visa.