you have a very good point,
ryepdx:
The collective computing power of our network is phenomenal. There are a massive number of GPUs and GPU clusters grinding away to create new bitcoins every day. But what if it were more profitable to pool together our resources and rent them in exchange for bitcoins? We would be selling bitcoins to people only to have them give those coins back to us later, and at potentially a higher price than we might have earned by mining those bitcoins.
right now (according to Bitcoin Watch) our network is hashing at about 141,891 TeraFLOP/s. the main page for the BOINC Project says that their collective network (all projects) comes out to about 5,334.78 TeraFLOP/s.
a staggering difference...
my only question is this: if we are going to rent out our TeraFLOPs to somebody in exchange for Bitcoin, where are they going to get the Bitcoin to pay us? we won't be hashing up any new ones...
maybe a few of us could stay on the Bitcoin network, just to keep it going? hmmm... difficulty drops to about 10,000... three or four blocks a day...
in the interest of solidarity - I VOLUNTEER!!!