There are 3 major benefits of Bitcoin that I can see: it’s private, you can easily transfer money, and it has a limit. However, the concept of Bitcoin mining seems to be an absurdity that confers absolutely no value. Ascribing value to the ability to solve complex equation seems to parallel the socialist notion that the value of labor should comport with the complexity of labor. Rubbish.
“It’s not the gold but the face of Caesar—the promise his image carries—that makes a coin money.”
This statement is true in the sense that fiat money does have value even when not backed by PMs. Fiat money is backed by taxation/and or the forceable extraction of resources from the people. In other words, fiat currency is backed by a gun.
Now if Bitcoin or some other crypto-currency could compete with the world wide gangster government fiat currency at the same level, we would have a winner. Perhaps, if Bitcoin successfully found a way to fight back against governments, central banks and agencies intent on the destruction of Bitcoin, we would see an unprecedented advance in personal freedom. Instead of the Bitcoin mining of useless equations, why not develop the means to hack and attack hostile forces?
The mining process serves a number of purposes in the Bitcoin system, none of which ascribes monetary value to the work involved. The bitcoin reward for "solving" a block is an incentive.
The value in the proof of work is securing the transactions in the system from tampering. It requires that any actor attempting to do so, to spend more effort than the entirety of the rest of the network. If they are going to do that, why not just use that expenditure to mine for the reward?