They aren't wasted because you get Bitcoins for them.
Nope, that's just a neat way of distributing the currency.
It's neat, but not efficient. A miner is left on as long as the bitcoins it produces are worth more than the power cost of producing them. In other words, in a (plausible) worst-case scenario, each bitcoin mined will cost just a fraction below the power burned to mine it. If the FED was working on that kind of margin, people might be even moar pissed
My point was that the Bitcoin network's main purpose is not creating/distributing bitcoins.
My point is regardless of intended purpose, miners are mining for profit. That's why millions of dollars are being spent on developing ASICs which will burn trillions of KWs of energy -- or the total value of bitcoins they produce, whichever's greater
Intent is only important to Baby Jesus.The original conversation was about wasted resources. The poster "Kazu" suggested that the resources are not wasted because bitcoins are created in the process.
The resources are not wasted because they power a network which allows anyone, anywhere in the world, to transfer value to anyone, anywhere in the world, without requiring permission from a third party. It also allows individuals to store value without risk of seizure. The more resources the honest nodes employ, the more resources the dishonest nodes will require to attack the network. Since I value the properties of the network, I do not consider those resources employed by the honest nodes to be wasted.
None of this has anything to do with coin creation and distribution, nor those who profit from it.
I didn't realize we were quibbling over semantics. Nothing is wasted if someone derives something from it, even when the derived value is the simple joy of knowing how much you have wasted.
If the convenience of sending a dollar around the world is worth a hundred dollars of burnt electricity to you, who am i to argue? Value is subjective, you're correct.