This is hipocrisy and I wonder why nobody else has written about it. They are greedy themselves but speak against others for the same thing. And furthermore, their mining benefits only them, while companies produce the products that support the entertainment of millions, help scientific research, create jobs and so on.
One of the biggest pension funds in Canada has invested
millions of dollars into mining start-ups. The income generated from venture start-ups in tech helps provide support to hundreds of thousands of government employees in retirement, helps them pay medical bills, donate $ to scientific research due to a healthy pension, and creates portfolio investment jobs. This is just one example that undermines your entire main premise that mining is a selfish activity that benefits no one but the end users.
http://www.omersventures.com/Portfolio.aspx
Inside their ventures portfiolio we find:
"Our mission is to accelerate the development of a better financial system. We build and support bitcoin and blockchain companies by leveraging our insights, network, and access to capital."
http://dcg.co/
"OMERS Ventures is the venture capital arm of OMERS, one of Canada's largest pension funds with more than $65 billion in net assets. Established in 1962, OMERS provides defined pension benefits to local government employees, retirees and beneficiaries throughout Ontario. The OMERS Primary Pension Plan "The Primary Plan" is a jointly sponsored, multi-employer pension plan with nearly 1,000 participating employers in 2015 and 2014, and approximately 461,000 Primary Plan members in 2015, compared to approximately 450,000 in 2014."
You also seem to not understand what a virtual currency is.
How To Use Bitcoin To Shop At Amazon, Home Depot, CVS And More
"Now, though, users of the controversial peer-to-peer digital system can spend their cryptocurrency in brick and mortar stores including Home Depot, CVS, Kmart and Sears as well as online at web retail granddaddy Amazon.com."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoc...-amazon-home-depot-cvs-and-more/#9b2621d6cd47
This alone shuts down your entire point about digital currency and the industry associated with it being a waste of resources, energy and so on.
In simplest terms, there is no hypocrisy whatsoever. People and organizations accept currencies in exchange for goods and services. Currency has value. Anonymity has value. When transactions take place, they are validated on both ends and someone has to do the validation.
If you are going to start critiquing virtual currencies,
it better come with substantial analysis not random criticism that can be broadly applied to most human activities -- waste of resources, waste of human energy and the earth's resources to deliver electricity to mining rigs -- because guess what so is video gaming, media consumption, Internet, sports, etc.
Do you realize that the $ earned from mining currencies does NOT need to be spent on PC hardware? That means unlike straight up PC parts purchases, mining is actually better for the world because not only does it drive PC purchases, but the $ earned can be used to help society or further drive the world's economy. Therefore, mining currencies actually has both the human consumption and income generation components associated with it from a
consumer's perspective.
This means:
Customer 1 buys a PC and uses it in a conventional way.
Customer 2 buys a PC and uses it the same conventional way + mines.
Customer 2
adds more economic value to the world because the mining component itself has additional jobs, industries and additional income associated with it.
Taking this further, it then means that a Graphics Card that can perform all the conventional tasks but can also mine well also has more intrinsic value to the world.
What's next? You are going to tell
tens of millions of people in the world that using their computer for various BOINC projects is also a waste of society's energy, resources and destroys the environment due to excessive energy consumption?
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/projectStatsInfo
On the side note: What is a bill? What difference is there between $10, $50, $100? How much each is worth? Decentralized currency may in future benefit the whole mankind.
According to the OP, the implication in the opening statements is that virtual currencies have no real value to the world, only to the selfish people who mine the currencies and then somehow find naive consumers who purchase and then exchange the coins on the open market with fiat currencies. Every second there is a transaction (flash).
Bitfinex = over $200 million USD alone
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
Does that mean the stock market, foreign currency exchanges have no value to the world too? People over there make $ "out of nothing" too!
Let's add casinos and strip clubs too. All those people gambling their $, drinking and looking at naked people -- instead all of them could be working "real jobs", helping the poor, saving bees, polar bears, etc.