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by Maybestring 2923 days ago
>No sci-fi writer predicted bitcoin mining.

Diamond age had a distributed tuple space, which was kind of similar in effect, enclaves that made their living off of work their computers did for digital pay.

1 comments

Of course, the standout thing about cryptocoin by comparison is that there's no real useful work resulting from all the absurd amounts of electricity being used to mine it.
Don't so easily underestimate the longterm utility of money outside government and corporate control.

Centralised money, like dictatorships, is only good when benevolently ruled.

For the majority, money is wielded more against than for their interests.

I'm reasonably skeptical of cryptocoin but I think it's absurd to judge utility of a work product so soon.
They have some utility, if you're willing to ignore the majority use case (get-rich-quick schemes), but ultimately, they're like decorating by hanging pictures on quadcopters instead of nailing them to the wall. The pictures are technically hanged, but it's kind of a dumb use of energy.
Yeah, it’s only been about a decade right? :|