Live data from Hacker News

Salon magazine mines crypto-cash with readers' PCs

bbc.com

111–112 of 112 posts

Re: Salon magazine mines crypto-cash with readers' PCs

#111
post #97
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems wasteful & fruitless. Better to evolve a micropayments model that works (because at least i can quantify what I pay)

In principle, yes, PLEASE!!! In practice, people have been wishing for a well-functioning micropayment system for well over twenty years and the best we have to show for it is PayPal. Flattr seemed like a good idea, mostly, but for some reason it tanked, too (AFAIK). Either people are not interested in creating one that works, or the problem is really, really hard.

I think the problem is simply hard. Micro-payments imply more infrastructure costs (more transactions) but lower revenue (because the payment itself is tiny, so the fee has to be tiny as well).

But look at Bitcoin's Lightning Network, it may very well become a valid micro-payment system. As far as I know it's biggest scaling roadblock is getting efficient routing.

Re: Salon magazine mines crypto-cash with readers' PCs

#112
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using that battery power does not 'let' anyone buy into the pyramid scheme. People buying monero or not is orthogonal to Salon mining it in your browser. Salon mining it does not in any way facilitate people buying it.

Monero itself is worthless for Salon until they exchange it to USD, either directly or through a chain of other cryptocurrencies. Either way, for them to get the USD, some schmuck somewhere needs to buy the coin.

That doesn't mean they're doing anything to cause that person to buy it. That person was going to buy that coin without Salon's help.
Post reply on HN