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The computational cost of Bitcoin mining not only serves to bootstrap the totality of the BTC into the ledger but also is designed to protect the network. It is also a teeny-tiny fraction of the power required by the legacy banking infrastructure all over the world. It is not a waste.

1. I don't care how much electricity the banks use. That's why I didn't say banks are awesome and bitcoin sucks because of power usage.

2. The power of the network only really protects against the 51% attack. Why not have a crypto system that doesn't have such a ludicrous, energy burning arms race built in?

And of course it's a waste!

Can you imagine how much energy all those armored trucks use that ferry around dollars?

I'm not sure, but I can tell you that it's more energy than is required to ferry around bitcoins in armored trucks from now until the end of time (which is exactly 0 joules of energy)

Notice how much I didn't say "bitcoin is worse than dollars because". FFS.

That exists: see ppcoin.org.