It's not a zero sum game.

It's not a "waste" of computing power at all, in my opinion.

- If BTC did not exist, this computing power would not exist. The demand for this power is in addition to other forms of demand. This isn't taking away power from any other field, it's simply new power being added for a new cause. - The technology derived from this "arms race" can benefit far more than this field.

Why wasn't the moonlanding a "waste" of money, talent and science? Because of the training it provided people and the tools and technologies they developed, etc.

Absolutely. I had a CS professor who lamented how much more time students spent playing games than studying, but acknowledged the fact that the video games industry is a gigantic stimulus to the computer hardware industry. Because games are always pushing the envelope of graphics and resource consumption, there is a reason for companies like Intel, Nvidia, ATI, AMD, etc. to produce better hardware. This hardware has led to benefits in the scientific computing realm, and may not have been developed without the bankrolling from gamers.

Can you briefly explain how the development of the custom ASIC's for BitCoin mining are of utility outside of their purpose built role? I don't understand that line of reasoning.

How many people are learning how to build ASIC's right now? Designing them, improving them. Scaling their production up. What kind of contributions are those teams making to the wider field of application specific circuitry?

What future benefits will these now-trained minds create with what they learned here?

What future technology will be built in some small way on the advances made in this field?

Future success isn't random, and it isn't driven by random new geniuses. It's built, person by person, experience by experience.

The men at NASA who got us to the moon learned skills that very few humans have been able to learn since. Their skills last a lifetime and have been brought to countless businesses and ventures.

I think the same thing here: the people, the skills and the technology are all beneficial to develop because we simply cannot know how they will be used in the future.

We can only provide a menu of options for the future, our future selves must build something new from that menu.

But if we do not provide a full menu, our future selves will not have what we need to succeed, and we may not even realize it.

> The technology derived from this "arms race" can benefit far more than this field.

Sure, I guess...

> Why wasn't the moonlanding a "waste" of money, talent and science?

The moonlanding was a major advance for mankind, independent of all the long-term benefits that have since arisen. You're comparing that to bitcoins?

You seem to not understand the potential benefits of widely adopted censorship-resistant (decentralized) currency. Try living in Argentina where the government is inflating your currency, while prohibiting you from moving your assets to USD. Try living in China where the government will seize your bank account if you are a business deemed too successful and if they deem they need a share of your profits. Etc.

That comment is pretty relevant, actually ... I (unfortunately) know actual human beings who feel that the moon landing, along with all current mars missions, were and will continue to be a waste of time and money. I'm completely baffled by it, but the fact remains that there are people that consider it no more valuable than bitcoins themselves.

What about the electronic power and human work that goes to operating banks? By that logic, the alternatives to Bitcoin are much more wasteful.

Edit: What I was trying to say, that maybe wasn't quite clear, is that Bitcoin mining isn't wasteful because it helps protect the integrity of the Bitcoin network. Other methods for holding and transferring money requires trusted third parties, who also "waste" (probably much more) energy, time and resources to operate.

Thats a fair point but why should I believe in bitcoin not another crypto ledger? The idea is fine, and the idea of a validatable record is great, but why should I support this one?

That's a complex topic with no clear answer. Philosophically, Bitcoin leaves much to be desired. But Bitcoin is the only realistic choice. The others (Litecoin, etc) just don't have enough momentum to be viable right now. Network effects make Bitcoin the only cryptocurrency with any short-term value.

However, regarding the philosophy: Bitcoin is a deflationary currency. That's a remarkable choice, because the prevailing economic wisdom is that inflation is a good thing because it keeps the money flowing rather than being hoarded. So most people probably wouldn't support Bitcoin's economic theory if given the choice.

It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

That could be said in the time of CPU, GPU or FPGA mining, but since these ASICs do nothing but Bitcoin mining, I think computing power is only wasted when they aren't running. In other words, I don't think they qualify as "computing power" for anything but Bitcoin mining.

But even when they're running all they're doing is pointless "mining bitcoin". And these ASICs are worse because they can't be re-purposed to do anything else.

All that computing could have gone to Folding@home and done some actual science. Instead it's just burning power and creating heat.

The same's true of mining equipment used to pull worthless diamonds out of the earth and the pollution it creates. The "problem" is the pointless mining generates valuable stuff in addition to waste heat.

...and keeping Bitcoin working, and possibly enriching the ASIC's owners. So it's not just burning power and creating heat.

> 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.

All the work effectively makes bitcoin more and more secure, so it isn't waste at all. Potential 51% attacker has less chances to succeed the more miners there are.

Conversely, if these fancy chips become the standard mining kit, they will push regular hardware out even more. This means if you want to do a 51% attack there are much fewer individual people you need to compromise.

A 51% attack isn't based on the number of people, but based on computing power. If 30 people control 60%,then they control everything.

The more miners, the bigger the double spend required to compensate attack cost, the bigger the chances of it to be noticed.

I believe bitcoin is at the point where it is a financial loss to even try to compromise the network, even in case of success.