I’m concerned that the computing power collected by these mining firms may be repurposed for criminal or unethical behavior. DOS attacks, Bot attacks on social media, identity theft, election thefts, etc.
Well, for most of those type of illegal operations you don’t want to actually own the computing power you are using. Because then they’ll trace it right back to you and you’ll go to jail.
Hackers would much rather use YOUR and MY computing power to do those things, and leave a more twisted path for the investigators to follow when they try to trace the attacks back to their origin.
“””I’m concerned that the computing power collected by these mining firms may be repurposed”””
On the other hand the massive amount of electricity being consumed to do this computer mining might lead to lower electrical prices for the rest of us.
That’s not how ASIC miners work...they’re not general purpose computing devices. It would be cheaper to build new server farms than to try to repurpose the miners.
Well, that is unlikely since profitable machines in this game were purpose built for “mining”.
Old machines go to the landfill as soon as it becomes unprofitable to sell their output to the next idiot.
Not only is crypto a ponzi but also a massive waste of hardware and resources...