25 Bitcoins issued per block. Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency being mined.
There are industrial players mining Bitcoin because they are so valuable. The time for mining Bitcoin is way passed for the individual.
There is an entire ecosystem being built right under your feet but you can’t see it. Just as with your inability to envision networked home appliances. Just because you don’t see it coming doesn’t that it is not coming. Beleive me FRiend, it’s coming.
You said:
“Although I think your complaint is that there are so many computers currently working together on bitcoin that adding one computer can’t make much difference.”
I have no complaints, I’m a volunteer not a victim.
I meant “your complaint” about my argument. Not your complaint about bitcoin. The only thing you’ve said that was close to a “complaint” was that building a bitcoin miner was the hardest thing you had ever done in your life, harder than even being a marine. But I didn’t take that as a complaint, just as a statement of effort. I agree with you that hard work is not something to complain about.
I’m not clueless about technology as you suggest; my dismissal of the idea of a refrigerator having a drone deliver milk and eggs to my house is one of efficiency, not capability.
There are many things that we could do today, and many that we can imagine doing tomorrow. Being able to do doesn’t mean it makes sense to do it.
I’m not sure if something like bitcoin will ever make sense; for the sake of this thread, my objection is to the idea that bitcoin today has a utility for the common person as “money”. I look at is more as a speculative investment, something I clearly don’t want from the cash in my pocket.
As someone who does probably half my consumption on the web, often through proxies like paypal, or site-purposed currency like the “notes” we spend in “StageIt”, I do have some understanding of the utility of such things; I presume that when bitcoin is mature enough, or when something that replaces bitcoin is mature enough, the big players like paypal and google will incorporate the concepts into their structure.