Personal Finance and Investing

I'm about $1400 deep into crypto in the last month and am currently up $500 even after the last few semi-tragic days.

Ethereum to the fucking moon right now, baby!

Can someone explain to me like I'm an idiot how bitcoin "mining" is bad for the environment? Or what the hell it even means to mine bitcoin.

I still have no idea what any of these things (bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin, etc) are in the first place.

No one does becuse they aren't real things.  Congrats to everyone that's allegedly made a bunch of money on this, I guess.  There's no way it doesn't eventually crash though, right?  People talk about crypto like it's just going to keep growing forever, and the dollar is gonna crash and burn and if you don't have everythign invested in bitcoin you're gonna be homeless.  I obviously don't know shit about it, so maybe I'm missing the boat /31 but how exactly is this supposed to be sustainable?

I knew that much. They're still not real things though.  I guess dollars aren't really "real" anymore either, so maybe I have no point.  But I still don't understand how an investment in what I interpret to be literally nothing can just continue to grow forever.

Oh I definitely support dabbling in it if there's money to be made.  I just don't get the people who are seemingly all-in on it being the future of money.