"proof of waste" - I like the phrase, sums it up well.
If you drop the distributed requirement you can run an equivalent system on on a pentium 4 in someone's basement, without wasting GWs of power and spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
If you drop the distributed requirement you can run an equivalent system on on a pentium 4 in someone's basement, without wasting GWs of power and spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Huh? Exponentially? The difficulty level is rising exponentially, but that's owing to continued investment in specialized hashing hardware. I certainly don't think that the actual amount of electricity being put into hashing is still growing exponentially. It would only grow exponentially if the price of Bitcoin continued to appreciate exponentially, and that hasn't been the case in years.
Gasoline at least gets you from A to B. Burning cycles is much more wasteful. Bitcoin's proof of work/waste is really something like 'I can prove that it is statistically likely that I wasted a shit-ton of power heating this data centre, doing SHA hashes, trying to find one that has a high number of leading zeros.' That's pretty wasteful IMO.