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

Kill...

[Known Nutter]

You couldn't kill online advertising if you nuked it from orbit.

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

[thegarbz]

WHich is why Google is making its browser combat it.

Or maybe it doesn't want to be associated with painfully slow browsing experience and a product which appears to peg the CPU.

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).

I prefer a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way of heating my house combined with a little bit of control over when I heat (i.e. not when the doors are open, in the summer etc.) I take it a 6 month hiatus from the internet is off the cards? In which case all you're doing is spending 10c more to cool your house.

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

Or we could do something such as throttle the website when it ties up the computer, and completely halt the process when the website itself isn't active. Kind of like what Google proposed.

google should be afraid.

No they shouldn't. The economics of mining on the CPU make even less sense than the economics of online adverts, especially when the end result is something incredibly unstable which could half in value overnight.

This was some pie in the sky idea that was trialled at one point. It is utterly pointless using this as a way to attempt to pay for websites.

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.

Re:Yes it could

[AvitarX]

Because ads earn about $0.001/impression. (link https://www.quora.com/How-much...)

so three impressions per a minutes (scrolling down a loud website) = $0.003/minute, this is across all devices, including relatively low power ones such as phones. (random estimation, not sure if the link is page view or ad view)

I pay .17/kWh (total electric bill divided by total usage, $.145 may be more accurate as it's the cumulative variable part).

We'll use 30 watts/minute for usage spike of a computer with any real power.

30 watt minutes = .5 watt hours = .0005 kWh = $0.000085 of electricity available to make up that $0.003 of ad view.

Sure these numbers include assumptions, but are 2 orders of magnitude too low. The only site where this makes any bit of sense is one that can't get traditional advertising.

Anyway, thanks for making be double check my gut assumptions, because I was just guessing until now.

Not the real problem

[phantomfive]

Advertising is a plague, but that's not the real problem: the real problem is that you can monetize users by showing them garbage, and then you won't believe what happens next: the garbage pushes out the good stuff so it's hard to find.

Nope

[markdavis]

>"Could it turn out users actually prefer to trade a little CPU time to website owners in favor of them not showing ads?"

No. And for a variety of reasons:

1) If it can be done, it will....
2) Which means they will BOTH show ads AND attempt to mine.
3) Browsers and plugins WILL give us control over this. Hopefully sooner than later.
4) Once people realize it is destroying their batteries, eating up electricity, slowing down their systems, creating heat, and kicking on louder fans, there will be a backlash.
5) I doubt there is enough money in mining, especially once people start blocking it.

No. Also no.

[Presence Eternal]

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.

The cost is 1000:1

[FeelGood314]

Mining using javascript is (depending on the coin) at best a 1000 to 1 cost to benefit. For bit coin it would cost between 10 million to 100 million in electricity to mine one coin. Golem might give you a better than 1000 to one cost but it will have other problems. If javascript could access your graphics card maybe you could mine one of the currencies that is optimized for graphics cards.

Realistically, running flat out my CPU is going to mine less than $5 per year. The only way I could make money on this is if I trick millions of people to mine for a me for a number of months.

Re:Not on mobile

[DontBeAMoran]

How do you expect me to mine coins in the background?

With a pickaxe, like the rest of us?

No

[dr.Flake]

From a pure economical perspective, simply no.

specialized APU's or GPU rigs will always be magnitudes more efficient than some JS script running in a browser instance.

so you end up letting 10.000 people pay the same amount in electricity that 1 person could achieve with his specialized rig. The price of electricity and hardware is the limiting factor in coin generation.

So , is my rig chums along for a year and produces a whole dollar worth of coins, others will have spend 10.000 dollar on electricity, to produce that one dollar.

For now it seems like "free money" for the site operator, it is not his electricity bill, but others are, and will soon realize the idiocy in this scheme.

As if it's an either/or proposition

[FritzTheCat1030]

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.

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.