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.

Comments

Yes it could

[goombah99]

WHich is why Google is making its browser combat it.

I would love to be able to use this to pay websites if that meant either better content or less adverts. If my computer is a 100 watt computer then even going full blast for 10 hours it would be worth ten cents of electricity. (And since I heat my home with electricity actually no cost at all in winter).

While it's a horribly inefficient way to make a micropayment to a wed site, all micropayment systems tend to be very inefficient. So it's just one possible way to do micropayments.

And if I find it's tying up my computer then I just leave the web site.

The thing that might turn out nice here is that perhaps it will become a true stepping stone to a micropayment based low-advertising low-tracking world. Right now everyone avoids pay sites cause there's free stuff out there somewhere. But the real reason is I don't really want to limit my self to a few sites, so I can't just subscribe. One could imagine that there might be a way for sites to band together in the millions as collectives. I then pay $100 a year to the collective. The sites then get micropayments from the collective as their use meters. That I'd do.

But to get there we need to get the idea that you are always paying for the site. whther it's ads, tracking, selling your data, patreon, or subscriptions. you pay. We just need a better micropayment system to make it all homogeneous.

this might be a step in that direction.

google should be afraid.

Re:Yes it could

[AvitarX]

An article here estimated that the pirate bay could get $12,000/month from this technique, that barely covers operating expenses.

Perhaps the Pirate Bay can't get more from ads, but I'm willing to bet a more "legitimate" site with similar traffic could have higher value ads.

So:
1) this barely covers expenses of a site
2) it doesn't even close to cover what ads from a traditional site could.

It's not the way of the future at all.

Simple math

[fluffernutter]

Mining only, a website makes $X,
with ads and mining, a website makes $X+$Y.
No, online ads are not going anywhere.

Re:Nope

[Billly Gates]

I would rather be at the mercy of Google than of Russian cybercriminals with a $600 a month electric bill to pay for their wealth.

My guess is they are making legitimate ads but with Javascript so they can earn money both ways.