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Mining does some useful work: it keeps the network secure. So it's not entirely useless. I agree that the proof-of-work could be built on a more useful algorith
by sktrdie 13y ago
Mining does some useful work: it keeps the network secure. So it's not entirely useless. I agree that the proof-of-work could be built on a more useful algorithm rather then simply finding hashes smaller than a certain value.
Remember though that the proof-of-work calculation needs to be hard to generate and also easy to verify. If protein folding isn't easy to verify, it won't work as the basis of a decentralized consensus network such as Bitcoin.
- malandrew 13y agoExactly. The cost of all the energy used to mine bitcoins and process transactions needs to be compared to all the financial infrastructure we have in place today. Think of how many much of the financial infrastructure today would disappear if the world operated mostly on Bitcoins. If an when that happens we'll reap enormous savings and it should end up being more environmentally friendly because mining operations do not require locality. It's very easy to put a mining operation in a region/country with access to cheap, renewable energy, whereas lots of our current financial infrastructure is located in places where the energy consumed is dirty and expensive. I would love to see someone compare the energy costs of our current infrastructure and externalities vs how thing would be if Bitcoin or other compute intensive crypto-currency replaced all that.