From Felix Salmon at https://medium.com/money-banking/2b5ef79482cb and Eric Limer (Gizmodo) at http://gizmodo.com/5994446/digital-drills-the-monster-machines-that-mine-bitcoin.
On one hand, Felix makes the point that the value of the bitcoin bubble seems to coincide with media coverage. On the other hand, I wonder how the price of bitcoin correlates with the “supply” of bitcoin, as people gets better and better at “mining" using more powerful machines.
Unfortunately, the “mining” of bitcoin does not directly add knowledge to society – other than providing incentive for people to come up with powerful machines that use less electricity. I suppose that is no different than mining gold – mining operations cost a huge amount of resources, while the benefit are mostly derived from gold’s perceived value.
Here is a more entertaining discussion about bitcoin on the Colbert Report at http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/18/177742944/adam-davidson-explains-bitcoin-to-stephen-colbert.