>Or to look at it another way bitcoin miners will spend over $11 million dollars this year on electricity, which is 17.6% of bitcoin's market cap.
>In contrast the federal reserve printing budget is ~$650 million or 0.0812% of USD value.
The $11 million is for securing the integrity of the currency not printing.
The Fed may spend ~$650 million on printing but that doesn't include security costs.
How much is spent on...
Continually developing new measures to make the bills hard to counterfeit.
The Secret Service in their effort to stop counterfeiting.
Prosecuting counterfeiters.
What's the cost of counterfeiting that is successful?
Since mining is a true free market the cost to mine will always be dropping as miners seek to maintain or increase profit.
Eventually all miners will have free or near free electricity, the rest having been driven from the market due to their inefficiency.