the way i see it is like this: bitcoin is an administrative tool to help facilitate the transfer of products more efficiently. Society invests a lot of energy in developing and maintaining such tools, for example currency and tax accountants. This is because the faster wealth can be exchanged, the faster new wealth can be created. This makes investing huge resources into inherently worthless services -like banks- worthwhile. They don't create any wealth but instead help people save time. This time is used to extract wealth from the earth and thus increase the overall quality of life. IF bitcoin helps to extract more raw products than was invested in the process of maintaining it, then it can't be criticised for waste more than the banks, for example. Edit: I am NOT merely finger pointing. A knee-jerk reaction would be to condemn btc as being entirely wasteful and therefore bad, but the reality is more nuanced.