[firmbeliever]

Thanks for the reply. I'll check out Ethereum; I'm not at all familiar with it. Seems like you'd then be losing some of the - for lack of a better word - purity of the system. If I understand correctly, part of the point with bitcoin is that there really are no central entities, gatekeepers, etc. It's completely decentralized - of the people, for the people, by the people. But if you need a way to "pay" miners outside of what the system deals in, seems like you'd be bringing in some sort of central entity. Not that that's a bad thing, I just understood it to be part of what bitcoin was avoiding. And maybe it will make more sense when I learn a bit more. Thanks again.