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The bigger problem is that everyone has a incentive to run their computers day and night cranking out solutions, which burns up lots of natural resources and pr
by byrneseyeview 18y ago
The bigger problem is that everyone has a incentive to run their computers day and night cranking out solutions, which burns up lots of natural resources and processor time for a zero-sum result.
- blastomere 18y agoThe economics in this regard are the same as for gold. With gold only the most efficient gold mines can make a profit, so only those profitable operate -- nobody tries to mine all the gold in the world. With bit gold, only those with the most efficient processors and most spare time will be able to make a profit, so again there will just be a handful of a few powerful computers, or many small computers but just using the spare CPU cycles (like SETI@home), solving the mathematical puzzles to generate the bit gold.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoBut an algorithm is easier to share than a gold mine. Fixed and marginal costs are lower. If you could find gold by scraping your bathroom tiles or filtering water for gold dusta gold standard would be terribly inefficient.