Quote from: TPTB_need_war on May 20, 2015, 12:16:56 AM

Quote from: smooth on May 20, 2015, 12:14:45 AM

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on May 20, 2015, 12:11:10 AM

Quote from: smooth on May 20, 2015, 12:04:04 AM

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on May 20, 2015, 12:02:39 AM

Quote from: smooth on May 19, 2015, 11:58:51 PM

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on May 19, 2015, 11:51:22 PM

Also I have never seen anyone in the Philippines use a heating device for anything but cooking.

Electric water heating has a significant market share world wide, roughly 40%.

Afaik, electric heating of anything is incredibly inefficient compared to natural gas or propane. Thus this isn't making the world more energy efficient. This is for people who don't care about efficiency because they can afford the safey and lack of hassles of not using gas.

That's an strange way of measuring efficiency (yes I know you said "energy efficiency", I just consider that measurement somewhat irrelevant). If it has better safety and fewer hassles, that increases efficiency.

The fact is, for whatever reasons, 40% of the water heater market buys electric. Unless that changes, adding mining chips to that is essentially free mining.

Free for whom? Those who will spend outrageous amount to heat with electricity are receiving an insignificant amount of gain. You can give me 10 free pennies per month and I don't have the time to pick them up off the ground. They are not free for me to pick up.

Free in that of 100 customers in the world, 60 won't buy an electric heater. Fine. 40 will. If we divide those into 20 with miner chip (or even quite a few chips) and 20 without, both sets pay the same amount of electricity for the same amount of hot water. One mines Bitcoin, the other does not. Whether you think the 20 mining Bitcoin with no added electricity cost is a good or bad thing is likely going to depend on your opinion of Bitcoin, fair enough. But the fact of mining itself has no operational cost here, and I'm guessing that the chip cost can also be very, very low.

Did you crop my post or was I still editing it when you replied? I don't think you responded to my point at all.

I did not ask "free in that". I asked "free for whom?". Who gets something free that they even notice?

The network does. Difficulty goes up. Security goes up. Profitability goes down. Big farms fade away. Maybe. Who gets those Bitcoins does't even matter much. Burn them for all I care.

Of course 21's chips will probably just mine on a pool, which might make things worse than ever. I don't claim this is some kind of cryptonirvana. My comments were focused on the question of efficiency.

The rest of your post was most about whether this is a good thing. I don't know. I have nothing to say about that at this point.