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Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

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Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#21

Post by jstanley »

ColanR wrote: post #19
thinkloop wrote: post #11

Like others have mentioned, the economics are not good, mining is too competitive to be done on commodity hardware. Consider that over half of browsing now happens on mobile, and it becomes clear that very few people can participate.

That's not actually true - some coins are designed to be used on "commodity hardware". Monero is one, and it's what Coinbase uses. Last I counted, my estimate on profitability was 0.006 cents / computer / minute. https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/62m5mu/eli5_why_can...

In what way does Coinbase use Monero?

Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#23

Post by drawnwren »

sixo wrote: post #16
aaron-lebo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, To be clear, literally mining Bitcoin without specialized equipment is so wildly unprofitable to be an idiotic business model and that's obvious after five minutes of Googling.

It's free if it doesn't use your power though...

But it's not free when compared to advertising. Case in point, this article hypothesizes about botnets mining cryptocoins - but botnets are already frequently used to exploit advertising payment channels.

Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#24

Post by 3pt14159 »

Disclosure: I own Bitcoin, Dash, and Sia, but I've sold most of my Bitcoin.

I'm surprised I even have to spell this out for people, but here goes:

Mining stops the double spend problem just like market makers solve the liquidity problem: A little bit is great, but at scale it's divorced from the public good it provides. We don't need the amount of mining that is going on in Bitcoin right now. It's just wasted cycles because of the economics of the damn thing.

What fundamental good does spreading any PoW to millions or billions of devices accomplish? Nothing. That is why cryptocurrency mining will never take over advertising.

What should take over advertising (if anything) is micropayments built into the browser. Maybe with some sort of probabilistic or web-of-trust mechanism on top to prevent the bookkeeping burden from overtaking the payment amount.

The problem with advertising is that it rots peoples minds and makes certain classes of goods compete on brand instead of competing on quality.

Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#25

Post by trophycase »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #15
hollander wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if it's not economical on commodity hardware, be it a smartphone or not. If I have a website that is visited by enough people to mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, while at the same time the cost of hosting the site is less than what is earned, what does it matter if the mining power is not efficient? If I care more about money than about environment, it's a good business model. But you probably need a lot of v…

mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, To be clear, literally mining Bitcoin without specialized equipment is so wildly unprofitable to be an idiotic business model and that's obvious after five minutes of Googling.

Profitability doesn't matter if you're not paying costs but getting the income.

Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#26

Post by chenshuiluke »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #15
hollander wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if it's not economical on commodity hardware, be it a smartphone or not. If I have a website that is visited by enough people to mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, while at the same time the cost of hosting the site is less than what is earned, what does it matter if the mining power is not efficient? If I care more about money than about environment, it's a good business model. But you probably need a lot of v…

mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, To be clear, literally mining Bitcoin without specialized equipment is so wildly unprofitable to be an idiotic business model and that's obvious after five minutes of Googling.

They wouldn't be using Bitcoin, they'd use Monero.

Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#27

Post by aaron-lebo »

trophycase wrote: post #25
aaron-lebo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mine me a (part of a) bitcoin, To be clear, literally mining Bitcoin without specialized equipment is so wildly unprofitable to be an idiotic business model and that's obvious after five minutes of Googling.

Profitability doesn't matter if you're not paying costs but getting the income.

It does matter if you are: making pennies (Bitcoin on commodity machines is this way), are turning away users, or are using it instead of advertising.

There's also the bit about stability, you might have a business model that's profitable one month or worthless the next. Who wants that risk?

Re: Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?

#30

Post by KVFinn »

3pt14159 wrote: post #24

Disclosure: I own Bitcoin, Dash, and Sia, but I've sold most of my Bitcoin. I'm surprised I even have to spell this out for people, but here goes: Mining stops the double spend problem just like market makers solve the liquidity problem: A little bit is great, but at scale it's divorced from the public good it provides. We don't need the amount of mining that is going on in Bitcoin right now. It's just wasted cycles…

>It's just wasted cycles because of the economics of the damn thing.

I think a lot of people miss that mining is zero sum when over the threshold that the network needs.

For example if mining hardware costs dropped by one half, people catch up and mine with twice as much computing power, the network increases the difficulty of mining by two, and the same amount of bitcoin is distributed and secured as was before the hardware innovation. You aren't mining more 'efficiently' with advances in computing power at the large scale.

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