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Comment by watertom | Hacker News Reader

I can't wait until large firms, or very rich people start throwing a lot of money at mining and start co-opting cryptocurrencies

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As it stands, the rich have already co-opted cryptocurrencies.

Minting algorithms have mostly generated the majority of the entire supply in the first few months, allowing anyone with existing capital to purchase majority stakes or mining power.

You think they aren't? Mining is a multi billion dollar industry.

I think co-opting suggests attacks on the consensus mechanisms or figuring out how to exploit Satoshi's abandoned wallets.

Such a move would instantly make bitcoin worthless - it would be more profitable for the attackers to put the computing power to mining. The only kind of party that would pose such a risk would not be interested in direct profitability: states.

The term "industry" suggests they produce something, which in the case of bitcoin mining is questionable.

they produce security of distributed decentralized database and continued operation of payment platform on top of it.

There's nothing really produced as there's no product, the software is running a service.

Without the service, there is nothing.

Mining by definition produces cryptocurrencies, which is a 'product'.

Not after subsidy has played out. That's a temporary state of affairs.

Mining provides economic cost of reorg as a product, something people in the bitcoin space call "security."

and the payment system. you know, the actual thing that allows people to transfer a unit of value?

> there's no product

> running a service

i don't know how to put it for you mate.. service can be a product? you know, like this site where people friend each other and share shit nobody cares about, what's it called.. facebook?

And since when have service industries stopped being industries?

This is sarcasm, right?

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