[PhantomGremlin]

If you go back 20 years, there were plenty of available CPU cyles that were unused. They could productively be used for stuff like SETI@home and Folding@home.

But newer CPUs, screens, storage devices, and therefore entire computer systems have gotten very very good at not using power when they're idle. Probably a lot of this was because of the EPA Energy Star program.

What you advocate would probably increase total power consumption. Dedicated ASICs used by the "power hungry mining operations" are overall more energy efficient than using otherwise idle cycles on general purpose CPUs.

[sigmaprimus]

Your explanation sounds reasonable. I suppose there would also be an added power cost in the increased network overhead.

I'm currently running a 2 core node on the Monero network using the official GUI. It doesn't noticeably affect my PC performance but then I'm not a gamer. Supposedly I have a 1 in ~5000 chance/day of writing a block for which the reward is currently worth about 250 USD.

I could join a pool or use Nicehash and actually earn a few dollars a day but I found XmrRig and Nicehash spin up my cooling fans and my reasons are more altruistic than for profit, though it would be awesome to win the lotto.