Or, you know, you could just turn the computer off while you're not actively using it. It saves you money and does a small little good thing for the environment too.
Some founders of altcoins apparently don't understand this and try to buy hashpower to artificially increase the hashrate, hoping to increase the price of their coins. If there is no demand for their coins, an ASIC farm is no different from a Rasberry Pi.
An altcoin that has insufficient hashrate is highly vulnerable to attacks and if its price were to rise, those attacks would become profitable.
Therefore, you need enough hashrate to make attacks unprofitable right away. A Raspberry Pi is not going to cut it.
(But, isn't there some majority attack? So maybe I want an ASIC farm as a way to protect my investment...)
This is exactly why there was no effect on bitcoin price when the reward rate halved. The value of the coin drives mining behavior, not the other way around.
The environmental impact is also negligible if the power you're using is coming from solar or wind.
"100% efficiency" should be the Carnot's theorem efficiency limit...
It uses primarily renewable resources or is repurposing pollution directly. This is the only economical way to mine. The vast majority of mining power is done this way, upwards of 80%. How much energy is being used is a purposeful misdirection.
There are several valid points of criticism against Bitcoin. I wish more effort is put into it to criticize it along those fronts.
Nonsense, every bitcoin mined is unnecessary for the environment.