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Bitcoin mining is not valuable for anything other than creating Bitcoins Bitcoin mining ensures the validity of the blockchain. Bitcoin is valuable as the unit
by quarterto 13y ago
Bitcoin mining is not valuable for anything other than creating Bitcoins
Bitcoin mining ensures the validity of the blockchain. Bitcoin is valuable as the unit of account by which things can be entered into the blockchain. Good luck trying to convince people that a distributed, consistent transaction ledger has no value.
- NateDad 13y agoBy the same token, what value does gold mining have beyond "creating" gold?
- graeham 13y agoGold has value and use aside from as a currency.
- NateDad 13y agoIt has some very niche uses, but they're incredibly limited and would not put gold's value at even 0.1% of its current value. The bitcoin protocol has quite a lot of potential uses (see master coin and colored coins), even if actual bitcoins were worth nothing monetarily.
- XorNot 13y agoA Bitcoin is not anything useful by itself. You can't melt that hash down and plate electronics with it. But you have hit on an important point, because throughout history almost every empire bankrupted itself at one point or another when it made a big find of gold, and quickly mined and spent a lot of it presuming it was rich...and instead, tanked its currency valuations and found itself much worse off because not only had they inflated the hell out of their currency, they'd not adjusted any of their tax rates to match.
- mkempe 13y agoFurther, if or when Bitcoin transactions with scripted contracts become commonplace, mining would support the long-term existence and enforcement of such contracts.