Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by SkyMarshal on Monday February 18, 2019 @02:09PM
(#19193312)
Yes that’s a thing. The problem for cryptocurrency is there’s no free lunch, and to gain significant security of a public ledger you have to spend some resources to do so. Bitcoin spends electricity, Chia.Network is working to spend unused disk space instead which is an interesting approach. Others like Algorand, Dfinity, Ethereum 2.0 etc are working to hopefully prove that rule can be overcome with less resource-hungry sources of cryptographic randomness. Hopefully they’ll succeed, but overcoming that rule would be a significant technical accomplishment, and not a given.
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Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by stale2002 on Monday February 18, 2019 @03:33PM
(#19194155)
> The problem for cryptocurrency is there’s no free lunch
There absolutely is a free lunch.
In renewable energy, there is a massive amount of "free" energy that is not being used for anything, and is literally being thrown away, because it can't be stored or used during the time of day that it is generate.
That energy is free. There is zero downsize to spending it on guessing number. It might even be negative value energy, actually.
Did you know that sometimes energy prices go into the negative, and people will pay you to use it? Something to do with the electric grid, and difficulty of destroying energy, I am not sure.