It's not zero sum, but it's not infinite either. It takes hardware - chips, boards, sheet metal, plastic, etc - to build mining rigs. It takes huge amounts of e

It's not zero sum, but it's not infinite either. It takes hardware - chips, boards, sheet metal, plastic, etc - to build mining rigs. It takes huge amounts of energy to power them. Those are finite resources and using them for digital goods precludes using them for physical goods. Low value-add physical goods production decline until their price rises to be worth producing vs mining. Why make concrete or aluminum if the energy can be more profitably spent on coins? The problem is that this drives commodity inflation in exchange for more digital goods that don't actually make us more comfortable as a species. Proof-of-work currencies feel like machinery of grey goo.