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.