Does bitcoin mining solve any problem?

odolvlobo

legendary

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Quote from: Zerosum+1 on November 01, 2013, 04:28:36 PM

I do wonder whether the last Bitcoin will ever be mined. If difficulty is getting exponentially higher, and the downside risks to the currency remain strong, what are the odds of the resources required being applied to the task?
Supposing all goes well - what year will it be mined? It would make quite a good bet!

This will tell you all about it: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply

Zerosum+1

newbie

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I do wonder whether the last Bitcoin will ever be mined. If difficulty is getting exponentially higher, and the downside risks to the currency remain strong, what are the odds of the resources required being applied to the task?

Supposing all goes well - what year will it be mined? It would make quite a good bet!

hashcashcow

newbie

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yes mining solves my cash flow issues lol
gimme a shovel baby! lol

verloren

sr. member

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Franko + curecoin might...

a4fire

newbie

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It solves a big problem of trust and provides more liquidity for money (its similar to what email was).

jaberwock

legendary

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I creates bitcoin and bitcoin has value, it is basically like mining gold. It solves the problem proof of work in generating bitcoin.

indianplayers

member

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It makes the whole process more secure Huh

neurobox

full member

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Getting too old for all this.

In a unique way it's solving it's own problem, actually.. As block rewards eventually dwindle towards nothing, and only transaction fees are left to keep miners mining, the number of miners will diminish, and the difficulty will drop accordingly. Those who are left mining will still be using the most incredibly efficient hashing hardware possible, even if just as a service to others, which even if 10 miners were left would still be millions of times more powerful and secure than the network was at it's CPU-powered inception.

It's solved the distributed cryptography puzzle that powers it, by creating an industry focused on doing so.

People now work for machines.

Welcome to the singularity Wink

odolvlobo

legendary

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The block chain is full of entropy. That must be worth something.

neurobox

full member

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Getting too old for all this.

Even PrimeCoin (XPM) mining doesn't really solve anything of value, as it has to keep changing the question (the base, IIRC) to create a unique set of problems for each block. However, if you think of some noble concept that could be coined and merge-mined with bitcoin, please share. If developed, it could have little trouble being adopted. Unfortunately, quadrillions of SHA256 hashes of given bitcoin blocks and nonces have minimal value outside of finding the needle in the haystack that gets the prize.

hayek

sr. member

Activity: 370

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It solves the problem of fractional reserve banking

/thread

greyhawk

hero member

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Quote from: BitBlitz on October 31, 2013, 01:58:02 PM

It solves the unused electricity problem...

Right I forgot about that. So, yes, it solves winter.

BitBlitz

sr. member

Activity: 285

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Turning money into heat since 2011.

It solves the unused electricity problem...

greyhawk

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Quote from: bitcoin_builder on October 31, 2013, 01:54:44 PM

When we do mining in bitcoin does it solve any computational problem? I mean all these machines running around the world working to generate bitcoins, so the hashing work they do, does it solve any problem?
For e.g. some of you might have heard about GIMPS which is about finding next highest Mersenne prime number. Now to do that a software is run like bitcoin which does the computation for you. So basically people all around the world running that software to find the next Mersenne prime number. As you can see running that sofware (which does computation like bitcoin client) results in solving problem which is Mersenne prime number.
So is there some benefit of doing all this bitcoin mining other then it being used as a currency?

No.

bitcoin_builder

newbie

Activity: 23

Merit: 0

When we do mining in bitcoin does it solve any computational problem? I mean all these machines running around the world working to generate bitcoins, so the hashing work they do, does it solve any problem?
For e.g. some of you might have heard about GIMPS which is about finding next highest Mersenne prime number. Now to do that a software is run like bitcoin which does the computation for you. So basically people all around the world running that software to find the next Mersenne prime number. As you can see running that sofware (which does computation like bitcoin client) results in solving problem which is Mersenne prime number.
So is there some benefit of doing all this bitcoin mining other then it being used as a currency?

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