Third, ''In addition Proof of Work funds the development of chips which literally are the equivalent of the paperclips from the grey goo problem. '' I'm afraid I infected you with this dark 'meme' but you pulled it out of context. The paperclip maximizer argument of Nick Bostrom is flawed in one very important point direction: which commandment has higher chances for successful execution? 'Live!' or 'Live for ... !' ?? A paperclip maximizer smart enough to survive long enough to do its is job, inevitably will abandon the 'for ... !' part of its commandment. Paperclips get maximized as much as there is demand of paper to clip. Same with BTC - it lives for provision of monetary services. The best we ever had - long topic I'll develop it in series of posts later ... no demand no food for the 'grey goo'. The other thing - on cosmic scales - paperclip infinitization of btc asic mining , i.e. all the mass-energy and spacetime to be turned into btc miner - again it is not so apocalyptic because btc protocol does not utilize pure randomness. pure randomness is infinitely expensive. run long enough and the glitches away from randomness make enough room for entire meaningfullness universes to ride the process.