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No, the high electricity cost in my country + the noise pollution in the house + how much I generally earn from the machine + my views on burning the world speculatively, discourage me from mining crypto.

Perhaps my position might change in future, but for now, I'd probably rather make the GPU accessible to those open-source distributed grids that train chess engines or compute deep-space related thingies :)

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I am not convinced that training AI to win at chess is any more moral than mining crypto. And the block chain is about as open-source as you can get.

Sure it is. With a chess AI you’re driving forward progress in neural networks, machine learning, and technology in general which pushes forward humanity in ways that are too numerous to count (even if you don’t buy into AI hype). With mining crypto, you’re hashing a bunch of things against a bunch of other things to make some imaginary things that people only assign value to because other people assign value to, in a tautology, ad infinitum. It’s a scourge on the environment and a waste of great minds, to the extent that those minds are devising new crypto, not to the extent that they’re buying a mining rig to mine crypto.

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