Bitcoin: The Only One of Its Kind

[humanage]

Is Bitcoin really the only way to make using your computer's power? Folding @ Home is sorta like it, but it's a charity thing with no profit(I guess you can count pride though). Has anyone seen something like Bitcoin mining before?

[cbeast]

Cryptographic signature have been around a long time. P2P file sharing is fairly new. They are like chocolate and peanut butter, it was only a matter of time before someone put them together. 

[Gabi]

Is Bitcoin really the only way to make using your computer's power? Folding @ Home is sorta like it, but it's a charity thing with no profit(I guess you can count pride though). Has anyone seen something like Bitcoin mining before?

Distributed computing is not limited to Folding.

There are dozens of other interesting projects out there

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

But well, except bitcoin and distributed computing i think that no, there isn't anything you can crunch on your computer.

[Gunny]

Is Bitcoin really the only way to make using your computer's power?

Yes.  Mining bitcoins is the only productive thing you can do with your computer.  If you're not mining there's nothing left but LOLCats and porn.

[BlueCorp]

We could mine while looking at LOLCats