> is that right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin [...] the best option for the collection of arguably the most brilliant minds tha

> is that right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin [...] the best option for the collection of arguably the most brilliant minds that have ever walked this planet is to work for Google, trying to get people to click more on ads That's more about the fact that it's not measured in terms of dollars and shareholder return. Would it be beneficial to have this electricity being used for other things or have those engineers do other things than optimize an ad click factory? Probably, we could use this electricity to have cheaper power for lower income households, or those engineers could work on improving other things. But the market doesn't necessarily pay for those things, and if the system is geared towards optimizing for more dollars, then the only one gets is more dollars with all the non-priced externalities dumped onto the society at large.