These two things are wildly different.

Take Apple Computer. It costs them, say, $1000 to make a computer that they sell for $1200.

That $200 is profit - it is value created. The laptop is sold, and is gone. Apple can do this again and again.

But how does the Bitcoin network create profit? All the Bitcoins already exist, and always stay in network.

In particular, if you exclude crime like money laundering or currency smuggling, what value does the Bitcoin network have?

It's a wildly expensive, slow, and non-private payment system which lacks all the features of modern payment systems.

And of course it's wildly consumptive of energy - at least tens of thousands of times more energy than conventional payment systems.

It's been well over a decade. We should be seeing actual production cryptocurrency systems in use for some application other than unfounded speculation or crime. Where are they? No, I don't mean some experimental toy that is claimed will work in the future.

Bitcoin is yet another tool for the ultra-rich to steal from society.