I wasnt trying to quote directly, but to clarify, Greenspan (you?) wrote: At its core, Bitcoin is a proxy for another commodity we are all familiar with: elect

I wasnt trying to quote directly, but to clarify, Greenspan (you?) wrote: At its core, Bitcoin is a proxy for another commodity we are all familiar with: electricity You're right that tracking debts (or, to be more correct per cpervica's comment, tracking balances) and using resources are not mutually exclusive, but I don't think that resource usage is the scarce resource that bitcoin represents, as Greenspan (you?) suggests. I think the scarce resource is a set of values contained in the bitcoin ledger, and the mining needed to change their ownership is (as the second question puts it) an externality.