[shostack]

On a related note... What stops companies from doing things like adding a background mining script to a website that uses people's browsers to do the mining?

I'm not very familiar with the tech behind BTC mining so there may be some obvious reason that isn't feasible. I was always surprised some evil company like EA hasn't added it to wait screens when matchmaking for various games. They could install whatever they want, target machines likely have solid GPUs, and they are sitting around waiting.

I also wonder about the legal aspects of this. Would someone need to opt in this? Is the energy cost of something like this legally distinguishable from sites that say... load a bazillion tracking tags and eat up your data cap?

[r1ch]

ESEA (a counter-strike matchmaking service) tried this. It didn't go well.

https://www.google.nl/search?q=esea+bitcoin+scandal

[shostack]

Interesting. So my takeaway from that is that they weren't really up front with getting consent and opt-in for it, and that it is still legal and valid if they were to have gotten that?

[huehehue]

There used to be a site that let you (voluntarily) do this. Can't find it now, and wouldn't be surprised if it shut down.

Anyway, it made the average computer sound like a jet engine. That, and the fact that the average computer is nearly useless compared to a dedicated mining rig, makes browser-based mining probably not worth it.