Virtual currency speculators shut down cloud Proponents of virtual, encrypted currencies took another scalp on Monday when a gaggle of them flooded a cloud provider, causing it to shut off sign-ups for new users in some regions. Public cloud provider DigitalOcean was forced to stop people spinning up new servers ("droplets") on its cloud due to absurd levels of demand …
If you had said AWS and PrimeCoin, I would say you were on to something as they charge by the clock cycles. Companies like DigitalOcean are only going to make money on Pareto's Law where 20% of the servers are heavily used. If all your servers are running at 100% CPU 24/7, then it will get very expensive for them very quickly or they will have to change their business model.
allow zombie farmers to make money
I don't know about China, but that will be tough in the US this year, as persistent and widespread drought conditions have led to most of our zombies withering on the vine. Even the small crop that survived are small and can barely shuffle or moan.
Even if Congress finally gets that farm bill passed, it looks like a very poor year for domestic zombies. And the knock-on effect will likely be higher prices for the whole range of undead.
I don't know if Bitcoin (or any other) is a scam or not.
However, I have (under instruction from my far more knowledgable brother) set up a bitcoin wallet, been 'gifted' 2 (or so) bitcoins from that brother, and then sent them to someone else. In return I've received a used computer graphics card through the post.
I'm not making any money from these things, but as far as used for transactions it's ticked my boxes and I don't seem to have lost out any where. So it can't be ALL scam.
I wish I was clever enough to understand it as well as my brother. Sigh.
You can trade interesting pebbles for goods and services if you find willing people to trade with. Bitcoin has limited value as the non Bitcoin places to trade it are very limited. It has all the problems of a small country currency with the disadvantage of it being more difficult to exchange for a more useful trade vehicle.
It isn't a scam, it is more of a stamp collecting & trading club.
Not even that. Stamp collecting is relatively popular so I suspect you could trade them more readily. And they are certainly easier to convert into a more recognized currency. I think you're looking for something on the order of depression glass collecting or maybe pachinko machines.
It seems a new coin pops up ever week. I am on Digital Coin which is doing well since it's launch last month. Mining takes a while and I have not accumulated enough money to spend it on anything, £17 so far using a Radeon graphics card. I think it's a bit rude to use DigitalOcean's generous promotional offer in this way but then they left themselves open to this by selling cycles too cheap. BitCoin and LiteCoin are the established currencies and the rest are just getting in on a good thing. Whilst there is a large pool of CPU power behind a coin and whilst people hold the coin then it's position is secure. BitCoin probably has fewer devices mining since the faster ASIC miners mean there is no point in using a PC to mine. The PCs have moved to LiteCoin. I am a few pence short of receiving a payment from my BitCoin mining pool so I am stuck with having to mine that if I want a return on investment. Our pool has not found a coin in a week.
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Unless there are law explicitly banning the use of virtual coins, I don't see why they wouldn't allow it. Outside of criminal law prosecutions, it shouldn't be their concern what you use their equipment for. Maybe if they got into some sort of optimization for particular work there would be a business case for it, but even then the business case should be focused on the pricing strategy not prohibiting non-criminal use of their systems.
I grant that as a private company they have the right to do either. But if they follow your model they deserve to be laughed at.
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