[Inyo-Mono]

I’m glad that I never fell for the BitCoin scam. I mean really, how can one realistically “mine” money from the internet?

[Deaf Smith]

I read mining as stealing other’s bitcoins that are not well secured in cyber vaults.

[DoughtyOne]

I picture some guy in a small dark back room with a visor saying, “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.”

That’s how you mine on the internet.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Real mining involves large numbers of people and/or huge equipment tearing masses of ore out of the ground and refining it into useful metals.

Internet mining is computers using ever-increasing amounts of energy to solve evermore difficult math problems. Those who solve a particular problem first win a coin. The problems are made ever harder so that the growth of the coin supply is approximately logarithmic.

This guarantees that the demand will over time outstrip the supply so long as the hype is sustained.

Besides the amount of power required to solve problems, there is also the amount of power required to energize all of the servers that maintain the encrypted coin information. Evidently every bit of information on every coin is stored on every server in order to guarantee the integrity of the coinage. This means that over time the amount of disk space required will grow exponentially.

There is a real fear that if cryptocurrency becomes a sustained form of currency that the world will quickly run out of sufficient energy to keep all the servers running.

So the idea that bitcoin, etc. are ephemera would actually be a good thing. There will be cries among global warmists to end cryptocurrency, not only because of the wealth hiding /tax evasion issues, but also because it could kill polar bears.