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It seems a shame that all the effort that people put into making padlocks is being wasted, what good does that really do?

Answer: padlocks, like bitcoin hashes, are a way of allowing people to collaborate without having to trust each other.

The rate of padlock production doesn't stay approximately the same when people double the amount of resources they put towards producing padlocks.

But the security of the bitcoin network also increases as the amount of computer resources put into mining increases.

> It seems a shame that all the effort that people put into making padlocks is being wasted, what good does that really do?

Sure, but if you could make it so a byproduct of the padlock manufacturing process was ice cream, wouldn't that be worth doing?