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Re: Proof of Work -> atmospheric carbon

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Gilmore)
Mon Jan 26 10:23:18 2009

To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, gnu@toad.com
In-reply-to: <CHILKAT-MID-fe8337f6-2f9d-265e-4a2c-9535ff0028cb@server123> 
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:40:45 -0800
From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>

> > If POW tokens do become useful, and especially if they become money,
> > machines will no longer sit idle. Users will expect their computers to
> > be earning them money (assuming the reward is greater than the cost to
> > operate).

Computers are already designed to consume much less electricity when
idle than when running full tilt.  This trend will continue and
extend; some modern chips throttle down to zero MHz and virtually zero
watts at idle, waking automatically at the next interrupt.

The last thing we need is to deploy a system designed to burn all
available cycles, consuming electricity and generating carbon dioxide,
all over the Internet, in order to produce small amounts of bitbux to
get emails or spams through.

Can't we just convert actual money in a bank account into bitbux --
cheaply and without a carbon tax?  Please?

	John

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