> what I meant by a waste of electronic computing power is that it does nothing for the world beyond pumping out more bitcoins. This is a deep, though common,

> what I meant by a waste of electronic computing power is that it does nothing for the world beyond pumping out more bitcoins. This is a deep, though common, misunderstanding of what mining is for. The purpose of mining is to achieve consensus and protect transactions against reversal. The dissemination of new coins is a wisely-aligned side effect. The computation here is computation spend making the history of Bitcoin secure and permanent. It's not a waste.