[Cryptography] Bitcoin compute power (was Re: Aggregate signatures)

[John Levine]

In article <0D013E18-0C3F-4855-8672-57CE35B09520 at gmail.com> you write:
>On Jun 11, 2014, at 8:53 AM, "John Levine" <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>> It is my impression that mining has been unprofitable for at least a
>> year.  People keep doing it because they hope the coins they're
>> hoarding will increase in value enough to be retroactively profitable.
>
>Is this just a matter of fixed vs marginal cost?  (Once you have bought the rig,
>your marginal cost for continuing to mine coins is more or less the cost of
>power.)

That's part of it, but there are cloud mining pools you can buy into,
and they seem to lose money for participants, at least according to
(anecdote coming) my nephew the bitcoin enthusiast who admits that
he's consistently lost money in them.

Butterfly and VMC say they're backordered for their high end machines,
so the supply of suckers hasn't dried up yet.

R's,
John