Paul Krugman Was Right About Bitcoin and I Said It First

Timothy Lee says that Paul Krugman got it wrong about the resources being wasted in the process of bitcoin mining. Krugman wrote a column based on a NYT piece about a massive bank of computers located in Iceland (low cost electricity) that is devoted to developing complex algorithms that allow the owners to get a large share of newly minted bitcoins.

Lee's complaint against Krugman is that this mining is actually part of the Bitcoin transactions process. The correct answer to Lee is, so what?...