> The work is useful only in the context of it being useful to preserve and propagate the distributed, trustless consensus. If you don't give a crap about distributed consensus, it's not useful.
So you don't care about Bitcoin, but you want to leech of the electricity being used to secure it in order to perform something which you think is useful? Right.
> The "printing" of money is a useful feature of national currencies
Theft is never a useful feature. There is always a loser. Money printing is theft - it is stealing wealth from those who have money saved, those who earn low wages, and those who own property. The beneficiaries of the printed money are those who first receive it - the government, the banks, the corporations who take loans from those banks. It increases wealth inequality. All of this is achieved without democratic consent - taxation without representation. Truly evil.
> which can temporarily support an economy in peril
The economy is in peril because nobody has credit, only debt. Bitcoin is credit. If you are sensible and accumulate credit, you don't need to bailed out when the unexpected inevitably occurs. The ability of your government/central bank to print money is what created their failure to begin with. If they had credit, they wouldn't need to print. The printing begets more printing. It can only go one way, which is for the printing to keep accelerating until it can no longer be sustained and hyperinflation makes the currency worthless.
They could attempt to reverse the process by reducing the currency supply during prosperous times, but you won't see it, because the people involved have self-interest and super high time preferences and are not able to think in the long term. Printing money is truly kicking the can down the road - an experiment which will end in disaster.
> or be used to keep currency values approximately stable
There is absolutely nothing "stable" about the dollar. Bitcoin is absolutely stable because 1BTC=1BTC, regardless of time and place. Its value relative to other commodities has more or less consistently increased over its 11 year lifetime. The value of the dollar is always changing. In its short 49 year lifetime, it has consistently lost value relative to other commodities. The value of other commodities changes in response to devaluation of the dollar. The trick you've fell for is to believe that they're adjusting the quantity of dollars to account for changes in other commodities - the reversal of cause and effect.
> By the way, your cryptocurrency ecosystem also appears to have a money printer, in the form of Tether, which is run purely for the benefit of its owners. But sure, that's far better!
Who is "your"? Cryptocurrency means nothing to me - I've called out these scams as much as anyone. Only Bitcoin matters. Tether has nothing to do with Bitcoin. It has something to do with companies which trade with Bitcoin and no more. Bitcoin is much bigger than any of these transient schemes which attempt to attach themselves to its brand. Bitcoin will survive all of these attempts to weaken it and these schemes will all be forgotten about.
> If you have enough money that a small amount of inflation is going to affect you, you don't keep it in cash, you invest.
Inflation affects everyone, whether it is a small or large amount. You still lose a proportional amount of purchasing power. You might argue that people with smaller amounts of money are harder hit that those with lots of money, because they don't have as large safety net if unexpected circumstances arise. Additionally, low earners do not see their wages increase in tandem with the inflation - it usually lags, reducing their purchasing power over time.
Also, "investing" is increased risk taking, where saving is intended to be a low risk method of retaining purchasing power over time. Low earners often cannot afford to take these risks, especially when their limited options for investing are markets full of fraudsters, and whose potential returns are still highly dependent on the monetary policy of the central bank.
Keeping earnings in cash is not an option for dollars, but it is for Bitcoin. This is the game changer. People are now able to make long term savings without making risky investments. They can ensure that they have a safety net for unexpected circumstances, and then better plan for the future.
> That's not what money is for.
The value of all commodities is subjective. Money is merely one kind of commodity. Its use is whatever the owner wishes it to be used for. Saving (accumulating capital) is a perfectly good use case for sound money.
