[bgibson]

>It still expends resources, but does so in a non wasteful manner.

And this is a flaw. There is a law of conservation at work here, whereby to create one source of value, another has to be destroyed. You can't destroy that first source "in a non-wasteful manner". It's not actually destroyed in that case and you've effectively double-spent it and cheated the system in a way that has subtle ramifications on the incentives and security. Even in blockchain, incentives matter and there's no free lunch.

[Zenbit_UX]

You're missing a key piece of the puzzle... The block producers provide value to the users in their server resources but are in turn not paid by users.

Their incentive is in controlled network inflation, between 1-5% per year and paid to the 21 block producers running the network.

In block chain more than anything incentives matter, just look at bitshares if you want to see how a network can collapse if the incentives aren't calibrated properly.

[kosievdmerwe]

Value can be created. Cars are more valuable than the piles of metal they're made from.

[bgibson]

True, but to nitpick it looks more like this:

Raw materials + innovation + labor + capital + time = waste byproducts + new utility added to the world in the form of convenient personal transportation that is sometimes (hopefully all the time) worth more than the sum of its inputs (profit). But all of those inputs get consumed in the process and one thing of value is the result.

Dual purpose mining consumes the inputs but creates two things of value, such that the miner is able to hedge, and to recoup their losses if the cryptocurrency fails. The fundamental problem is that reduces the cost the of attacking the currency, rewriting the ledger from some past point in history, should the miner decide to attempt that. In order for cryptocurrency to be secure, it requires that the miner be fully committed to the currency and that attacks are maximally costly and risky, unhedge-able (at least within the system, they can always short on third party exchanges and whatnot, but there's nothing the protocol can do about that), such that the miner's highest expected value is follow the protocol honestly.

[LateRuin]

But are cars more valuable than piles of metal, plus other factors like wages, advertising, factory/office leases, etc. We have a word for this -- net profit.

[viraptor]

> whereby to create one source of value, another has to be destroyed.

Bitcoin cash would like a word, I expect. Sure, the value of both currencies would drift down until ~the same total value is achieved initially (or some approximation of that), but after a while, we essentially multiplied the value without destroying Bitcoin it was created from.

[tlrobinson]

It’s impossible to know what would have happened if there was no fork. Maybe BTC would be at $50k right now, and the fork actually net destroyed value.