Regarding crypto-currency a question I have is why should the computer power used to hash code be...

[G+_Harold Crews]

Regarding crypto-currency a question I have is why should the computer power used to hash code be wasted on non-useful information? It would seem much preferable if it was used to network thousands or even millions of computers together in order to do something actually useful. There are companies that rent out their computing power after all. Why wouldn't a cryto-currency firm do the same then compensate the miners in the cryto-currency? 

[G+_Mark B]

Outstanding point and it costs real energy to generate this crypto-currency.  The electricity required to produce these virtual coins (mathematical strings of gibberish) increases exponentially as GPUs are put to continuous high usage. It's a complete waste of energy and an appeal to the lowest common denominator of greed: getting something for nothing even though it's an illusion of nothing when people neglect to consider the energy costs not to mention the adverse carbon footprint impact.  Why a Jesuit Priest would tout such a enterprise is beyond me.

[G+_Mark B]

Instead of dubious virtual mining for coins, perhaps the Padre could offer a more altruistic enterprise such as BOINC - to quote the Wikipedia, "The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world."

[G+_Harold Crews]

Mark Freedman that is what I'm getting at a merging of networked computing and crypto-currency to increase the number of participants in the network.

[G+_Dave Hart]

The difference between users obtaining some sort of credit in exchange for supporting a virtuous endeavour thru BOINC and virtual mining is that in the first case someone else still controls the "mint". With Bitcoin & similar the algorithm is the mint.

 

It's not a bad thing if minting a currency is inherently difficult if you believe that political interference in the monetary process should be minimised.

[G+_Harold Crews]

Dave Hart I don't have any personal objections to crypto-currency but I don't think that there is necessarily a direction connection to the production of new coins and the mining or hashing itself. The hashing could be of other code as determined by the currency firm and the compensation of coins depending on the amount of hashing done by the participant. Hashing that would be profitable for the firm ought to be easily substituted for the hashing used to produce new coins directly.

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

Harold Crews Mark Freedman -- I am completely with you on that point. Remember that mining &crypto in a pool is essentially the same thing we did with SETI@Home. I would feel much better if the "work" that went into mining coin$ actually had some tangible, useful work behind it.