> mostly unusable currency

I suppose that's why it has grown in price in spite of its supply slowly increasing. Because it's unusable! (sarcasm)

> "problem" being solved

In essence, it takes scarcity to make scarcity. So, to get digital scarcity, you have to fork over scarce resources.

But I agree with you that the computing cost is excessive, and the reward function was not well calibrated.

On the other hand, the rate of the explosion in price could not have been foreseen.