sarah jeong

@GlennF I think financially it did line up for a bit, until the proof of work difficulty got so enormous that it’s just silly now

@sarahjeong Proof of work has to taper. Difficulty could reverse (has before) as people exit.

@GlennF Yes. But not clear that it will go back to a point where mining makes sense.

@sarahjeong Yeah. In my Economist piece, I argue it’s approaching marginal. it’ll be data centers and cheap power. No individauls.

@GlennF Have you seen the Laurie proposal from early on? For a more efficient network?

@sarahjeong Does it involve an alternative to SHA256? I haven’t seen it.

@GlennF No, it makes it not totally distributed. One sec, I’ll link it. It’s interesting to me that it had zero traction

@GlennF Here’s the proposal: http://www.links.org/files/distributed-currency.pdf …, it’s a follow-up to a critique: http://www.links.org/files/decentralised-currencies.pdf …

@sarahjeong Yeah, but speculative at the time, and now essentially impossible. Even at $1,000.

@GlennF well, particularly *because* it hit 1k. I don’t think anyone smart is investing in mining rigs now. But it made sense at one point