Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?
Drilling holes deep in the ground to dig up gold, would you consider that a useless waste of resources as well?