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A comment on Cryptocurrency chaos as China cracks down on ICOs. Parent comment

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.

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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.

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