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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.

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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!

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