What risk was there with mining Bitcoins when difficulty was 1?
The problem with proof-of-work is that in order to make the ledger impeachable, people need to throw real-world value into a hole.
Most notably, that the time and electricity would be wasted if Bitcoin failed.
Right, so in the beginnings we're talking absolutely negligible.People throw CPU cycles at all kinds of activities more computationally intense than early coin miners and they do not consider themselves to be taking a 'risk'.
Never said it was a big risk. Just that they took it, back when it
was a risk, and as a result, they have seen gains.
I don't see a problem with that... but then, I'm a capitalist, not a communist.
The problem is that for the sake of defending your argument you are attributing risk to a non-risk taking activity. I bet nobody mining these coins for fun at the time considered they were taking a risk, and yet you now argue retrospectively that somehow they were.