I know. That bothers me too, to think that we'd have all these computers churning bitcoins instead of computing gene-folding and whatnot. However, you could ar

I know. That bothers me too, to think that we'd have all these computers churning bitcoins instead of computing gene-folding and whatnot. However, you could argue that mining for gold or diamonds is even worse. You ruin the land with strip mining, you get "conflict diamonds" responsible for a lot of human suffering and at the end of the day you just have more precious useless metal that you store in a vault.