Bitcoin mining is wasteful compared to some of the alternatives, solving useful hard problems as proof of work (Primecoin) or using a proof of stake system to remove the need for relying so heavily on energy wasting mining (Peercoin).
I do think that a hybrid proof-of-stake system is probably superior and more efficient. But bear in mind that capitalism involves lots of waste, from high-frequency trading, to plastic doodads that wind up in the trash, to the vast majority of advertising and marketing.
I'm absolutely in favor of a Star Trek / Buckminster Fuller neo-communism, if it can be achieved. In the meantime, we have to fail forward and innovate as best we can, and I think proof-of-work cryptocoins are far less wasteful in toto than the current global banking system. (What do you think it took in terms of energy and waste products to manufacture and distribute the dollars in your wallet?)
Note also that intentional wastefulness shows up frequently in nature: costly signals are honest signals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory#Costly_signal...
Maybe, maybe not, I don't think anyone's crunched enough numbers to make a reasonable measure of that yet.
> (What do you think it took in terms of energy and waste products to manufacture and distribute the dollars in your wallet?)
I doubt either of us know.
I'm a Bitcoin supporter, but one has to think there are useful hard problems to solve rather than just banging out SHA-256 hashes over and over. If that's true at all, then Bitcoin is wasteful.
I sincerely hope that a truly useful proof-of-work can be discovered. It would be a very big deal.
The problem is, the work has to be reliably verifiable, and easier to verify than just doing the work over again, which is why hashes are a good fit.
There are curecoin and gridcoin, which base a large portion of mining profits off Boinc credits. Kinda defeats the point of being decentralized though...
Do we think the same when we talk about all the vast amounts of energy and money spent trying to secure bank transactions? It's only a waste of money and energy if you consider that these things have no value.
Even if we only consider the protection of physical money and valuables: how much energy is spent in making these vaults? How much money does it cost to protect them? It's only worth it if you consider that what they protect is more valuable than the cost of protecting them. In the end, whatever is in that vault is just made of bits of metal and dead tree pulp.
"Primecoin network searches for special prime number chains known as Cunningham chains and bi-twin chains. The distribution of these prime chains are not well-understood currently as even for its simplest case twin primes their infinite existence is not proven. The distribution of primes has been one of the most important discoveries in arithmetic, and the study of prime chains traces its lineage to the work of Riemann and prime number theorem, with connections to the deeper nature of the seemingly random pattern of prime distribution. Prime distribution is not just an abstract interest of mathematicians. Riemann's study revealed connections between Riemann zeta function and prime distribution, whereas later on Riemann zeta function has been shown to be highly relevant in other scientific disciplines such as physics, thus the study of prime distribution is an important part of the foundation of modern sciences."