Slashdot Mirror
Could Cryptocurrency Mining Kill Online Advertising? (linkedin.com)
"Could it turn out users actually prefer to trade a little CPU time to website owners in favor of them not showing ads?" writes phonewebcam, a long-time Slashdot reader.
Slashdot covered the downside [of in-browser cryptocurrency mining] recently, with even [Portuguese professional sportsballer] Cristiano Ronaldo's official site falling victim, but that may not be the full story. This could be an ideal win-win situation, except for one huge downside -- the current gang of online advertisers.
By "current gang of online advertisers," he means Google, according to a longer essay at LinkedIn: Naturally, the world's largest ad broker, which runs the world most popular browser (desktop and mobile) is keen to see how this plays out, and is also uniquely placed to be able to heavily influence it, too... As it happens, Chrome users can already do something about it via extensions, for example AntiMiner... If cryptocurrencies have a future - and that's a big if (look at China's Bitcoin ban) - it could well turn out that their role just took an unexpected turn.
By "current gang of online advertisers," he means Google, according to a longer essay at LinkedIn: Naturally, the world's largest ad broker, which runs the world most popular browser (desktop and mobile) is keen to see how this plays out, and is also uniquely placed to be able to heavily influence it, too... As it happens, Chrome users can already do something about it via extensions, for example AntiMiner... If cryptocurrencies have a future - and that's a big if (look at China's Bitcoin ban) - it could well turn out that their role just took an unexpected turn.
You couldn't kill online advertising if you nuked it from orbit.
Beware of the Leopard.
Whatever the future of these currencies, mining is drying up fast, so no. Also buy a cheap electricity meter and check out what hashing does to your power bill. You may think twice about wanting to have your processor running full tilt for sixteen hours a day. Throwing an extra two hundred dollars a year at your local coal plant is a pretty damn stupid way to support websites you like. Use blockers and donate to those sites you couldn't bear to be without.
I love how this keeps coming up as if crypto-mining is going to happen INSTEAD OF advertising. Kind of like how cable came about and you would pay for the service instead of having commercials. Sure, maybe some advertising goes away at first. But it will come back as bad as ever.