Is it possible for bitcoin mining computation to be “recycled” somehow? Like, used to help train AI? Or is that thermodynamically impossible?
Discussion
no, those computations are not useful for anything else. capturing the heat is really the best you can do.
there's also the question of bandwidth. right now the miner only needs to send a single number over the wire, the nonce, and only when it actually finds a block. the rest of the results are ignored. if you instead wanted to transmit those, you'd be sending trillions of numbers per second, and that will add up fast.
That’s how the scam named Hex began.
It’s better if that’s not possible. PoW has to be costly/wasteful (that’s what makes it honest)
Good point
The heat can be used to heat homes.
Here is a section about double insentive pow: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf