Re:Cryptocurrency chaos as China cracks down on ICOs
by eosophos on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @08:47AM
(#15237734)
> It's lost work though, and the amount of work is governed only by the level of competition with other miners, rather than the amount of effort involved insome external task
It's the cost of securing the network. It's not lost. Fees and rewards pay the miners for the cost of their computing cycles, to provide a secure, very difficult (near impossible) to attack network.
Re:Cryptocurrency chaos as China cracks down on ICOs
by Nursie on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @09:01AM
(#15237813)
It's the cost of competing for block rewards, which incidentally secures the consensus, yes. It's the price of decentralisation.
And it's still not an external task, it's a facet of running the currency rather than work that is independently useful.
And it's still conjuring money out of nothing.
It's lost work though, and the amount of work is governed only by the level of competition with other miners, rather than the amount of effort involved insome external task.
> Jpm can/does create wealth by moving figures around on reports, or by betting one asset against another, without any physical limitation on its actions.
That's somewhat beside the point.