[Cryptography] Bitcoin compute power

[Nemo]

Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster at mykolab.com> writes:

> On 6/11/2014 5:53 AM, John Levine 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.
>> 
>
> ....unless you have access to a few supercomputers?  :-)
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27779030

He mined all of $8000 on his "few supercomputers".

The aggregate power of the Bitcoin miners is approaching 100 petahashes
per second. Note "petahashes", not "petaflops". And it appears to be
growing steadily at something like 1000x / year:

    http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

Given that most of the ASIC mining rigs are vaporware and/or scams (*),
how it is even possible is not too far from being an interesting
question.

 - Nemo
   https://self-evident.org/

(*) for a fun waste of time, try a search for "minerscube" and "scam"