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Javascript Bitcoin Miner

forum.bitcoin.org

81–90 of 152 posts

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#81
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An economist's take on bitcoin: http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-id... Spoiler: bitcoin is a scam

He might be an economist, but he doesn't know anything about monetary history: The economic assumptions underpinning the Bitcoin ecosystem are laughable, and ignore hundreds of years of accumulated understanding of how currencies work with each other. Paper money is about 100 years old. That's it.

By "paper money" do you (and the article's author) actually mean "fiat money" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money) dating back 11th century China? It was in use as early as 18th century America.

The only thing about "paper money" that I can think of that is about 100 years old is the beginning of the departure from the gold standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard).

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#82
post #10

Neat! Distributed computing with JS is an awesome tech trick, some friends and I did something similar back during Node Knockout (MapRejuice: https://github.com/ryanmcgrath/maprejuice ). Curious to see what you guys think of the ethical side of it though - do you let this run on mobile, etc? This will almost definitely cause extra battery drain on mobile devices, you think it's fine to have this happen without user c…

BitCoin mining could replace banner ads. I have Flash on my mobile, which often uses lots of CPU usage for ads. You could argue this is the same.

I was going to say the same thing. Seems like an annoying flash ad uses a ton of CPU as well.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#84

Regarding angry visitors, I think it is completely fair if you just inform them of what is going on. In a way, this is the perfect internet model: I offer my content for free but visitors pay me with cpu cycles. It's superior to the ad-model because it pays according to time spent on the page regardless of who the audience is. It's too bad that it's infeasible because of the very low rate.

Yes, I'm glad someone actually picked up on this.

I'm watching Bitcoin with a curious eye, but this really nails a pretty novel and interesting aspect of it. That yes, you are paying the site owner for viewing their site, in a way that is (mostly) transparent to you and with billing already captured by your power company.

I haven't actually run it so I don't know just how badly it thrashes my machine, but assuming that can be worked out, this particular idea is the KillerApp(tm) of Bitcoing as I see it.

Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, one giant achilles heal:

If this really takes off and the mass of the internet uses it, then that means the entire mass of the internet can only be monetized at the set rate that Bitcoins are made. Which isn't much money.

But I still think there is something interesting here.. hrmm.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#85
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first though - it's a nice idea, but came at least one year too late. Just yesterday, I ran miner through the www.bitcoinplus.com website, and on my regular PC machine it generated 0.002 BTC in 24 hours. I am afraid the bitcoin mining is practically over, and the much more interesting question is - should I really invest my real money to buy some bitcoins? (current rate is about 7 USD). I am curious to le…

An economist's take on bitcoin: http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-id... Spoiler: bitcoin is a scam

Weren't "the economists" blamed for the global crisis in the first place?

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#86
post #77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's quite a bit of misunderstanding in that post, especially with respect to systemic weaknesses. And a lot of unsubstantiated claims and terrifying graphs (like that tweet graph as something desirable for currency inflation - what it also implies is your savings going up in smoke). I'd love to find an in-depth debate on Bitcoin from an economic standpoint, but this is not it. It's just more of the same half-unde…

BitCoin i svery similar to a gold backed currency. The fact that nearly all (?) currencies moved off the gold standard should tell you something of how economists view the gold standard.

and economists are always right?, how come so few saw the 2008 crash coming?

bitcoin is born out of a distrust with the current global economic status quo

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#87
post #71

Regarding angry visitors, I think it is completely fair if you just inform them of what is going on. In a way, this is the perfect internet model: I offer my content for free but visitors pay me with cpu cycles. It's superior to the ad-model because it pays according to time spent on the page regardless of who the audience is. It's too bad that it's infeasible because of the very low rate.

Why does time spent on the page matter?

It corelates to value derived from the page.

SO the people I deliver the most value to, I extract the most value from. // WIth an added bonus that I recieve more value from the people with more expensive computers (aka the wealthier viewers)

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#88
post #77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's quite a bit of misunderstanding in that post, especially with respect to systemic weaknesses. And a lot of unsubstantiated claims and terrifying graphs (like that tweet graph as something desirable for currency inflation - what it also implies is your savings going up in smoke). I'd love to find an in-depth debate on Bitcoin from an economic standpoint, but this is not it. It's just more of the same half-unde…

BitCoin i svery similar to a gold backed currency. The fact that nearly all (?) currencies moved off the gold standard should tell you something of how economists view the gold standard.

If you are a subscriber to Peter Schiff's views then moving off the gold standard was actually a big mistake. The comparison to the gold standard is actually what makes me think bitcoin has some legs

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#89

what if a virus or malware or an adware installs a bitcoin miner and starts mining on zombie machines? wouldn't that be productive?

It is technically the biggest threat against Bitcoin.

The mining process validates the transactions. Transactions are grouped in blocks. The blocks are chained in one big sequence and the miners validate the block chain.

Even if a rogue miner validates a block that steals coins, his fork of the block chain will not be validated by honest miners. As long as the computing power of the honest miners is above the one of an attacker, the block chain is safe.

A dishonest, big enough botnet could overpower the honest miners, fork the block chain and wreak havoc in the system.

--

The biggest threat to bitcoin is not technical, though, it is financial. The bitcoin market cap is currently of ~ $50M. If people with deep pockets and trading experience figure that bitcoin is a threat to their deadline, they can easily manipulate the market and crash it.

Re: Javascript Bitcoin Miner

#90
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An economist's take on bitcoin: http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-id... Spoiler: bitcoin is a scam

There's quite a bit of misunderstanding in that post, especially with respect to systemic weaknesses. And a lot of unsubstantiated claims and terrifying graphs (like that tweet graph as something desirable for currency inflation - what it also implies is your savings going up in smoke). I'd love to find an in-depth debate on Bitcoin from an economic standpoint, but this is not it. It's just more of the same half-unde…

The tweet graph is meant to correlate with desirable growth in money supply, something Bitcoin needs to be liquid. You can have growth in money supply without inflation.
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