Simply comparing the costs of #Bitcoin mining to the costs of paper #money production is flawed. Instead, we need to compare the total (direct and indirect) costs of both monetary systems. To make such a comparison, we must consider not only the significant damage that periodic #economic downturns inflict on the economy, but also the entire range of costs associated with the existence of an elastic, fully fiduciary, and state-controlled monetary standard.

The true costs of a fiat standard that must be taken into account include:

1) the costs imposed on society by various political groups in their attempts to establish control over the printing press;

2) the costs incurred by various interest groups in their attempts to induce the controller of the printing press to abuse its powers (i.e., print more money) for the benefit of particular groups;

3) the costs of inflation-induced misallocation of resources in the #economy that result from the monetary authority's concessions to interest group pressure; and

4) the costs incurred by entrepreneurs in trying to anticipate what the monetary authority will do in the future and in hedging against the probable, but uncertain, consequences of the monetary authority's irresponsibility.

Taking this into account, it is not difficult to see that the Bitcoin standard is cheaper than a fiat standard.