From the point of view of economic and societal impact, the ridiculously high and growing energy consumption of Bitcoin mining makes no sense. Smart people ever

From the point of view of economic and societal impact, the ridiculously high and growing energy consumption of Bitcoin mining makes no sense. Smart people everyday wonder, why are all these miners around the planet burning up all this energy every instant of the day? Is this really necessary? From a marketing standpoint, however, I think proof-of-work is a brilliant feature of Bitcoin. As mining becomes harder and costlier, requiring ever more specialized knowledge and energy, Bitcoin becomes harder and harder to obtain, and therefore looks more "valuable" to many human beings. Bitcoin's wasteful energy expenditure reminds me of the hypothesized handicap principle in natural selection: Many species spend a disproportionate amount of energy on "wasteful" features and traits (such as colorful peacock tails) to signal their worth and status to potential sexual partners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle . For the species as a whole, the expenditure is wasteful, but from the point of view of individual members of the species, the expenditure is not wasteful if it leads to mating! From the Bitcoin network's standpoint, the energy expenditure is not wasteful if it leads to greater perceived "value" and adoption (compared to other networks).