Its crap like this that's going to force new federal regulations on us, that will probably be over-reaching and pegged to a bill full of questionable things. Its disheartening to see our energy usage drop because of the move to CFL's over incandescent, targeting vampire power appliances, moving from CRT to LCD, moving towards energy efficient chips, etc only to lose a lot of these gains because of some bitcoin stupidity.

uTorrent just did this by running a background miner bundled with the software. Considering how much extra coal we're going to burn for this, I think its going to become a regulation issue sooner than later. The industry's greed is begging for it.

I'd also be worried about a fire risk from these things. How hot do they get? How much ventilation do they need? How well do they handle a hot day in the American South without A/C? What kind of QA can we expect here considering these will be disposable tchotski's.