I don’t think GP misunderstood what miners do. What I believe he means by wasted cycles is that the final product in crypto doesn’t have any practical purpose a

I don’t think GP misunderstood what miners do. What I believe he means by wasted cycles is that the final product in crypto doesn’t have any practical purpose aside from what was agreed on by convention. For any other purpose it’s a wasted effort. This calculation power could instead be used to try to find new practical knowledge, like protein folding to use on new medicine etc.