Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by hollander on Sunday October 22, 2017 @03:47PM
(#15528558)
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 visitors for that, and I have no idea if it works out.
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Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by aaron-lebo on Sunday October 22, 2017 @03:54PM
(#15528591)
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.
Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by trophycase on Sunday October 22, 2017 @04:15PM
(#15528695)
Profitability doesn't matter if you're not paying costs but getting the income.
Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by aaron-lebo on Sunday October 22, 2017 @04:23PM
(#15528737)
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?
by thinkloop on Sunday October 22, 2017 @04:27PM
(#15528761)
I believe the unprofitability is such that it can't even pay the expenses of serving the pages. Even if it could though, why would you opt for something that barely allows you to survive, rather than make a killing for all the value you are clearly providing?
Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by chenshuiluke on Sunday October 22, 2017 @04:15PM
(#15528697)
They wouldn't be using Bitcoin, they'd use Monero.
Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by sixo on Sunday October 22, 2017 @03:57PM
(#15528612)
It's free if it doesn't use your power though...
Re:Could cryptocurrency mining kill online advertising?
by drawnwren on Sunday October 22, 2017 @04:13PM
(#15528690)
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.