Bitcoin Forum

I like the idea of Bitcoin, with one exception... that the resources could be used for grater good, instead of wasting them. How about making "valuable" calculations, instead of calculations, for calculations sake?
What I am talking about is modifying the BOINC client (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) and getting Bitcoins for generated work on finding a cure for cancer or some other project.

The calculations are not wasted, they are an investment into the cryptographic strength of the system.  If people were willing to donate clock cycles to some other endeavor, they would do so.  For a great many; however, the thought of helping to defend an online currency system, for which each is personally invested, is a far reaching act of service.

Participating in bitcoin IS valuable. Unfair monetary practices and manipulation has caused a lot of injustice and even deaths just like cancer, the wars the US is waging right now would be impossible to sustain with an honest money system. So yeah I believe supporting bitcoin is very valuable use of the CPU time at my disposal.

I don't want to troll here, but why are you wasting your time on the internets instead of giving your time and effort to the starving communities around the world. Even that may not be a great enough good if you think of the food you'll be eating for the little change you'll do in the world...

I mean, better to be "wasting" cycles on something that may very well become an alternative economy system, or at least put a little leverage into forcing the governmental controlled currencies be managed more fairly, than folding proteins for the big pharma, although I'm sure the drugs they'll patent and sell with your help will be a greater good to the world, as a whole.

I've often heard these lines of reasoning when I was working for the OLPC initiative... Why waste time and resources trying to create a tool of education, i.e. a computer with a very connected nature, targeting communities that have very little or nothing of their own? Isn't, you know, food more important? Keep feeding them and that will certainly solve all the problems in the world quickly, I'm sure.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, I've done seti, folding@home and a few more, but bitcoin? bitcoin is not about philanthropic egos or greater goods of scales we aren't really equipped to grasp. It's all about the fairness and privacy of community markets, something all of us below the age of, what, 120 don't really understand and have been taught to loath.

More like under age 25. Market anarchists are a very young demography. We only got a few old market anarchists in their advanced age like Eric Raymond.

I think you misunderstood my point, kiba. I didn't mean agorists and market anarchists are all old, much the opposite. What I meant is everyone in my generation and the one before seems to assume taxes, mandatory disclosure of all transactions and overall giving up privacy for "everyone's gain" is obviously correct, and in fact the only way to go. Actually trading goods for goods, or otherwise having community controlled markets (which bitcoin and any other non centrally controlled currency, given enough critical mass, can facilitate) is something we, as a group of people, frown upon, just because we were taught that's how the drug lords rule the streets / kills investment in public schools / hospitals / security / roads, take your pick. We don't see just how expensive these things end up getting when the governments to them for us, I guess. Can't put a price on freedom.

There has been a similar thread elsewhere: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=721.0;all (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=721.0;all)

I guess the idea of producing useful work is good if it could be implemented. But this is difficult since there must be a "proof of the work" in order to earn your bitcoins. The question is who is going to provide this proof?

Proof of work bitcoins should satify (at least) two criteria:
a) must be verifiable by everybody (otherwise the verifying entity could gain control of minting if it turns malicious).
b) must be much easier to verify than the work itself (otherwise too much work would have to be done for verification)

I dont think the algorithms which run in the the BOINC client satisfy these criteria.

The "proof of work blocks" of bitcoin satisfy these criteria. But if you could find an algorithm that does something useful while at the same time satisfies these criteria then i suppose it could be included into the client. Maybe something like calculating the nth Pi digit, which is useful (for mathematicians I guess) and difficult, but i have no idea if it is satisfies the 2nd criterion. Also I don't know technically how the transactions should be included in the work.
But I believe that is is theoretically possible to create other useful work except the obvious which is the creation of bitcoins.

Apples to oranges I'm afraid.

That's like asking that we take the SETI data and apply it to Gene folding.

BitCoin works off a Secure Hash Algorithm, so we can't throw gene data or radio frequency data into it and build a working chain of proof.

No, but you could use it to seed a RNG. :D

Because what the world needs is more entropy... and I'm not even joking!

thank a lots.

Did it really take you 12 years to read the replies?