All this mining is ultimately meaningless

[laowai80]

99% of alt-coins will never be used to buy anything.

How do you know? And even know exactly the percentage of never-to-be-used coins? Are you Nostradamus?

[selavy59]

Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Do any of the alt currencies attempt to tackle this, or are we still a way off actually utilising these CPU/GPU cycles for the good of our species and/the planet.

 I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort............... I happen to agree with you on this point. Just one reasonably powered computer could do all the hashing required. The difficulty would be low to allow for 10 minute block discovery. It's people's greed that has pushed the difficulty up so high that an enormous amount of power is now needed to generate blocks. Of course there needs to be more than one computer to secure the blockchain but the op does have a valid point.

[hilariousandco]

99% of alt-coins will never be used to buy anything.

They're used for trading for other alts and that's all most of these coins are currently used for at the moment. I was surprised that Sexcoin has actually got some merchants to accept it, so some of them to become worth something, and that's what people are banking on.

[Hugroll]

Don mine alt coin and don buy ASIC , in long term you will be profit .

[Eri]

99% of alt-coins will never be used to buy anything.

How do you know? And even know exactly the percentage of never-to-be-used coins? Are you Nostradamus?

(seriously, no offense) its because we understand bitcoin and related subjects on a level higher then you, this isnt something people can really teach you, you have to kinda learn it on your own. we understand virtually all alt coins are worthless. the people that dont understand why this is and find 'bugs' in bitcoin then go on to 'fix it' in an alt coin. but there was nothing broken to begin with and their 'fix' has consequences they dont understand. This holds true for all altcoins ive looked into so far(except one). ive since stopped bothering, its a waste of my time and its better spent helping people that want answers.

Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Do any of the alt currencies attempt to tackle this, or are we still a way off actually utilising these CPU/GPU cycles for the good of our species and/the planet.

 I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort............... I happen to agree with you on this point. Just one reasonably powered computer could do all the hashing required. The difficulty would be low to allow for 10 minute block discovery. It's people's greed that has pushed the difficulty up so high that an enormous amount of power is now needed to generate blocks. Of course there needs to be more than one computer to secure the blockchain but the op does have a valid point.

Then what happens when someone develops ASICs and your two computers are overpowered by 10,000% because they still use CPUs?

the more processing power the network has, the more processing power an attacker would need to overpower it. ASICs are so much faster, cheaper and more efficient then what came before. the network is far stronger then it was before. Nobody can develop an "ASIC" and easily blow away our network because we already have ASICs, if we were still using CPU's then any entity out there could have developed as ASIC and overpowered the network easily.

[Blackswan122]

99% of alt-coins will never be used to buy anything.

How do you know? And even know exactly the percentage of never-to-be-used coins? Are you Nostradamus?

(seriously, no offense) its because we understand bitcoin and related subjects on a level higher then you, this isnt something people can really teach you, you have to kinda learn it on your own. we understand virtually all alt coins are worthless. the people that dont understand why this is and find 'bugs' in bitcoin then go on to 'fix it' in an alt coin. but there was nothing broken to begin with and their 'fix' has consequences they dont understand. This holds true for all altcoins ive looked into so far(except one). ive since stopped bothering, its a waste of my time and its better spent helping people that want answers.

Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Do any of the alt currencies attempt to tackle this, or are we still a way off actually utilising these CPU/GPU cycles for the good of our species and/the planet.

 I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort............... I happen to agree with you on this point. Just one reasonably powered computer could do all the hashing required. The difficulty would be low to allow for 10 minute block discovery. It's people's greed that has pushed the difficulty up so high that an enormous amount of power is now needed to generate blocks. Of course there needs to be more than one computer to secure the blockchain but the op does have a valid point.

Then what happens when someone develops ASICs and your two computers are overpowered by 10,000% because they still use CPUs?

the more processing power the network has, the more processing power an attacker would need to overpower it. ASICs are so much faster, cheaper and more efficient then what came before. the network is far stronger then it was before. Nobody can develop an "ASIC" and easily blow away our network because we already have ASICs, if we were still using CPU's then any entity out there could have developed as ASIC and overpowered the network easily.

Maybe not to Buy anything.....but they are very useful to MOVE money very quickly.....That's their advantage....plus it's cheap...

[jongameson]

if bitcoin mining is uselss.  well so is gold mining. 

[laowai80]

the more processing power the network has, the more processing power an attacker would need to overpower it. ASICs are so much faster, cheaper and more efficient then what came before. the network is far stronger then it was before. Nobody can develop an "ASIC" and easily blow away our network because we already have ASICs, if we were still using CPU's then any entity out there could have developed as ASIC and overpowered the network easily.

Ok, what about PoS coins.
You don't need no ASICs there, check out NXT.
NXT doesn't need any mining power in hardware, and that's the beauty of it.
You can't destroy NXT network, unless you buy all the coins in existance

[Blackswan122]

if bitcoin mining is uselss.  well so is gold mining. 

Gold mining is very similar...The price is dropping so soon it won't be profitable to mine it (same effect as difficult has on Bitcoin and the rest of the bunch) ....$1000 and below and it's not worth it well around there anyway. They will still mine it though waiting for the upturn (just like Bitcoin miners will....). You can't put Bitcoins into teeth and jewellry that's the difference.

[iPaulito]

BTC mining and whole infrastructure connected with that is the most valuable part of BTC in my opinion.

[jaked]

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Mining should not do anything useful.
Being useful in some way means that it gives an edge for some miners over others, and thus increases the risk of some group controlling half the network.

For example, if scientific institutions can make a useful product by mining, it'll make this activity effectively cheaper for them, and incentivize them to control as large portion of the network as possible. If this happens, decentralization is lost.

So, contrary to intuitive thought, mining should perform utterly useless work.
That is, useless except for the purposes of securing the network.

[bryant.coleman]

if bitcoin mining is uselss.  well so is gold mining. 

Gold mining is very much profitable in certain parts of the earth. That is why in Brazil alone we have hundreds of thousands of illegal Garimpeiros. Some governments mine gold, even if it is non-profitable. This is to reduce the reliance on imports, and to preserve the Forex reserves. Such factors (imports / reserves) don't apply to Bitcoin.

[AnonyMint]

There are coins that are trying to do that. Primecoin for example is looking for prime numbers.
In any case mining is essential for bitcoin to work so you can't really call it a waste.

It can't be secure because all such work is preimageable because it has to be known to someone a priori. The Bitcoin proof-of-work can't be known a priori.

What exactly it can't be secure? The proof of work scheme that primecoin uses?  

The reuseability of proof-of-work claims that it is unlikely that known primes can be reused.

However unlike strongly irreversible astronomical entropy quality of a block chain of cryptographic hashes in proof-of-work, I don't think we can be sure that the NSA or someone can't develop an algorithm that exploits factorization or some mathematical property of common factors for preimage attacks on searches for primes that are multiples of the block hash.

In short, I think there is too much mathematical order in the search for primes. Whereas cryptographic hash functions are designed to maximize entropy with diffusion and confusion.

It is not a risk I would be willing to take with my money, given for example that the NSA secretly had differential cryptoanalysis for a decade and could crack most encryption but the public didn't know it.

For example quantum computing breaks public-key cryptography based on discrete logarithm factorization, e.g. RSA. But it doesn't break cryptographic hashes, so Lamport signatures remain secure.

P.S. Also I doubt the security due to lack of botnet resistance.

[zimmah]

Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Do any of the alt currencies attempt to tackle this, or are we still a way off actually utilising these CPU/GPU cycles for the good of our species and/the planet.

OK, forgive my ignorante here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of dollars and other fiat currency being printed daily, we the human race are using tons of ink and paper to print worthless bills? I say worthless because money serves basically no purpose, am I right in understanding that?

Seriously the ink and money would be much better used to print text books filled with knowledge, so that students that read those books may eventually become the doctors that cure cancer or the scientists that make great breakthroughs for the benefit of all humans. That kind of things.

Do any of the fiat currencies try to accomplish this? Or are we still letting them walk away with printing money purely for their own profit, while still increasing taxes and at the same time decreasing the service they provide?

[empoweoqwj]

Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Do any of the alt currencies attempt to tackle this, or are we still a way off actually utilising these CPU/GPU cycles for the good of our species and/the planet.

OK, forgive my ignorante here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of dollars and other fiat currency being printed daily, we the human race are using tons of ink and paper to print worthless bills? I say worthless because money serves basically no purpose, am I right in understanding that?

Seriously the ink and money would be much better used to print text books filled with knowledge, so that students that read those books may eventually become the doctors that cure cancer or the scientists that make great breakthroughs for the benefit of all humans. That kind of things.

Do any of the fiat currencies try to accomplish this? Or are we still letting them walk away with printing money purely for their own profit, while still increasing taxes and at the same time decreasing the service they provide?

Not  to mention the coins that are still minted .......

[jbreher]

... primes that are multiples of the block hash...

Don't make me say it.

[2bfree]

Ok, so forgive my ignorance here, but am I right in thinking that as a result of Bitcoin and the literally hundreds of alternate currencies springing up daily, we, the human race are using BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of processing cycles to calculate worthless sums? I say worthless because the hashing is mostly wasted effort, am I right in understanding that?

Surely the logical next step here is to make this ENORMOUS BOTNET calculate something useful? I'm thinking of solving science questions, SETI, fighting cancer, or any other distributed software projects, that kind of thing?

Do any of the alt currencies attempt to tackle this, or are we still a way off actually utilising these CPU/GPU cycles for the good of our species and/the planet.

Look we have unlimited energy so don't worry, just from solar and geo energy we can go forever. The petro cartel will not let it and the parasites who rule play this global warming BS while flying in private jets and living in mentions. So if a billion of computers are burning less then 1% of electricity to give hope of killing the fiat evil central bans then lets burn that electricity! BFree!

[Lauda]

Ignorant people, as always.

[whtchocla7e]

... primes that are multiples of the block hash...

Don't make me say it.

They're called block primes. Don't you know that man?

[Peter R]

... primes that are multiples of the block hash...

Don't make me say it.

[sarc]Yeah, those prime numbers that are equal to an integer times the block hash[/sarc]