
Bitcoin now computes more hashes in 6secs than there are grains of sand on Earth - seebitcoin
https://seebitcoin.com/2016/06/understanding-bitcoin-the-childhood-game-that-rules-the-network/
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mombul
Impressive. Never really got into the bitcoin game and have a lot of
questions, like the purpose, who it benefits etc.

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cloudjacker
It doesn't solve relatable problems for most people

but it is pretty awesome if you notice a reason to use it

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axonic
Imagine if they were all running Boinc instead. We might have cured Zika
already.

Gridcoin pays cryptocurrency for 'mining' through a proof of work concept
using Boinc credit.

But who cares where the carbon emissions from all that mining go? Someone
else's atmosphere, no? At least a productive output would offset the needless
waste.

A quote: "Researcher Sebastiaan Deetman came to the conclusion that at
bitcoin’s current level of expansion, it will require 14 gigawatts of
electricity to run by the year 2020 — an amount of energy equivalent to that
of a small country, like Denmark. At the current time, a single bitcoin
transaction requires as much electricity consumption as the daily consumption
of approximately 1.6 American households."

via [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/04/03/bitcoin-could-
consu...](http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/04/03/bitcoin-could-consume-as-
much-energy-as-denmark-by-2020/)

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Fej
The amount of energy wasted by miners is atrocious. I wonder how many tons of
CO2 have been pumped into the atmosphere thus far as a result?

It just seems like a colossal waste, using all of this computing power to
solve pointless math problems.

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cloudjacker
> The amount of energy wasted by miners is atrocious.

that awkward moment when you quantify it next to something else, like
incandescent lights

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JoeAltmaier
But there is actually no limit to what can be pissed away mining imaginary
points. There is a reasonable limit, and actual utility, to lights.

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cloudjacker
There is actual utility to what the miners get, and it usually worth more than
their cost of electricity.

