da not all crypto involves mining, which is the part that has excessively high energy consumption. all crypto works on the basis of a blockchain system, which in simple terms is a digital security feature for data.

bitcoin, the og crypto, is a data "block" that required high computing to decrypt, consequently generating a new block for the next person to solve. miners run these computations to unlock the data block, which then creates the next "block", turning it into a chain - hence the name. the difference now is that the new data block is no longer locked, and whoever solved the first block in the chain will have their digital signature in there permanently.

the reason crypto is hated on is bc each "round" of coin generation doubles or triples the difficulty of solving the first block. if the 1st round of coins take x amount of computing power, then the next squares x, then squares x-squared, and so on. escalating computing + each consecutive round halves the coin/token output.

this is overly simplified but basically many cryptos use this method and it's causing a shitton of energy pollution, but not all crypto necessarily has to follow it.