&gt; &quot;That electricity cost is a lot better for the environment than the standing armies required to secure fiat money.&quot;<p>There are better alternatives to brute-forcing hashes and generating nothing but waste heat in order to mine cryptocurrency. At least those cycles could be put toward something useful, like the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Gridcoin uses proof-of-research in BOINC as the basis for compensation.