1000+ Bitcoin companies have been created. You may disregard everything else, but this fact alone make Bitcoin not "wasteful". We get more than just transaction

1000+ Bitcoin companies have been created. You may disregard everything else, but this fact alone make Bitcoin not "wasteful". We get more than just transactions and SHA256 computations out of it, since already thousands of jobs were created at these companies. http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ So far no one has been able to come up with a useful PoW that leaves the properties of Bitcoin intact (notably decentralization, and trustlessness.) That is why it has to be based on abstract puzzles like hashing data. Some thoughts as to how implementing a useful PoW might be done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8963209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8963209 Also, Bitcoin miners use only a fraction of the electricity used by a thing that is literally useless on a technical level: Christmas decorative lights (6.63 TWh/yr in the US, probably 20+ TWh/yr in the world). This helps put things in perspective. If Xmas lights use 4x more electricity, you should be 4x more mad at Xmas lights.