[entelia09]

I remember reading a research paper estimating that coinhive made over $250,000 every month. What do you think about this?

[chroem-]

Coinhive was making that much in aggregate, but the websites running their client were not. It couldn't replace ad revenues, especially after the prices crashed, and thus people ceased using it.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

Hope this helps illustrate the point:

That $250,000 every month amount was made at the cost of way more than $250,000 worth of electricity.

[entelia09]

But it wasn't coinhive or coinhive's users who were paying for it. Website visitors carried the cost...

[Scoundreller]

And website visitors may have gotten website content that wouldn't have existed otherwise.

We wouldn't have as much web content as we do today if it weren't for web advertising. (Just another form of payment).

[JshWright]

We were all paying for it...

[nukemandan]

But the cost to remove ads here is very worth spending that electricity over my attention.

[criddell]

What about the environmental and other external costs?

I run an ad blocker most of the time because crappy ads and ad-tech uses a lot of bandwidth and battery. Crypto-mining is even worse for power consumption.

[littleboxes]

CoinHive. Not CoinHive's customers.