For context: The Pirate Bay is now launching a javascript-based Monero miner in all visitors' browsers to mine coins for them in the background (possibly as an alternative to ads).
I don't think we've reached that point yet. An iPhone doesn't last a single day if you use it the whole time, it would barely last for hours mining constantly.
Though I agree this monetization tactic doesn't work on mobile
1. My operating costs are more than $9/month. I don't know where you got that presumed feature but it's wrong.
2. There's nothing to implement. You include a library and a few lines of code to start it and you're done.
3. How would not doing something that could potentially make me money, even if only a little bit, save me money? That makes zero sense.
You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on AWS.
Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing how a card game simulator requires more than 8gb of memory and a decent cpu.
I'm also genuinely curious what kind of card game has such intensive server requirements because I just don't see it. Maybe you have a legitimate need to contribute to global warming, it just seems unlikely to me.
By the way, users will instantly close your game if you cause their cpu fans to spin up to 100%
Good luck with your doomed project :)
You'd have a better argument if the TechCrunch homepage didn't use 50% of my CPU just to render all the ads.
Of course inefficient ads are also horrible.
Of course, if it was a viable strategy, wouldn't some malware authors write the malware to do this instead of ransoming files? Has that been tried? Is it a thing?
There are malwares that mine crypto currencies, usually while the machine is idle as to not alert the user that something is up with their machine. However these profits are also quite low since you're using mostly low end machines.
Crypto lockers are of course way more evil, but they function just as well on low quality hardware so I can understand why malware authors do it.
If we're talking about a server for a card game you can just get a cheapo dedicated server and you'll be fine. Get a user or two to donate once a month and you will even run a profit. Or skip that Starbucks once a month.
It is being offered as an option, not being stolen.
> Get a user or two to donate once a month and you will even run a profit. Or skip that Starbucks once a month.
I want to make millions of dollars so that I can build schools for children, why are you limiting the value of my effort and creation?
It's a decentralized uncensorable poker game with no rake that makes money from light client-side mining of relatively cpu efficient coins - you don't think I can build a single school from that?
This makes sense, since the entire idea of crypto currency mining is to use CPU cycles to mine the crypto currency. While ads is just some basic tracking and graphics.
That's a huge "if"; it's my understanding that most cryptocurrencies are currently only efficient with ASICs.
How would you negotiate prices if your customers are not even aware how much they are paying?
I wonder why CoinHive isn't using WebGL for this.
> [...] There are solutions to run the Cryptonight algorithm on a GPU instead, but the benefit is about 2x, not 10000x like for other algorithms used by Bitcoin or Ethereum. This makes Cryptonight a nice target for JavaScript and the Browser. [...] Our miner uses WebAssembly and runs with about 65% of the performance of a native Miner. [...]
On the other hand, WebGPU looks exactly like the kind of technology that would make web-based GPU-enabled bitcoin mining realistic.
I assumed this whole notion of browser mining as a replacement for ads was just a laugh, but maybe not. Are there coins where it can actually make a noticeable amount of money?
edit: of course because the majority of users have integrated gpus, cpu mining will typically be faster.
Once they have the next generation off the production line, they take the used previous generation, box them up and ship them off to their customers, and then plug the new generation into their mining pools.
If we could trust ASIC manufacturers to not sit on the best hardware, you might be right. However, for the moment everyone can get their hands on CPUs and GPUs of roughly the same power, while easily accessible ASICs are several orders of magnitude slower than the current state of the art.
If you have cheap (or free) power, it's absolutely profitable.
EDIT: I see you meant CPU mining, not mining in general. My mistake!