Quote from: CrashBitz on February 11, 2016, 09:47:43 AM

Great to see such a pre-eminent organisation releasing papers, and in draft, for free.

Not having yet read the paper, but commenting purely on the picture:
The similarity isn't accurate: An individual of moderate means can still afford to contribute meaningfully at the ASIC level for BITmining, unlike gold mining.
Basic infrastructure for an ASIC can cost about $1k with a moderate-low ROI, but still some ROI, unlike Gold mining at the pit mining level. Even 1 truck, or digger is so unfathomably beyond reach of the average joe it is just ridiculous.

The scales just do not compare.

Crash

Information age vs industrial age.
The cost of computing power dropped so much in a few decades -- we can buy a $5 computer, or get it for free with a purchase of one magazine issue.

(However, technically, a person can still get lucky gold panning.)