Cool, feel free to ask a smart question.

The event was a good time by all reports, with some learning, some fun, good food, drink and networking. We didn't sell out the house but had a respectable 25 paid attendees plus the presenters and staff. As the venue closed before sunset, the after-party moved on to a nearby Blue Moon pub and hung together until around 8pm.

Technical difficulties we weathered included a laggy slide clicker, a power outage halfway through Felipe's talk (apparently that's what happens on the borderlands of the old town when it rains) and the transition to a previously-tested HDMI hookup provided by the A/V crew failing on me at the critical moment for no explicable reason.

I would argue that the external value obtained via mining in the scenarios you described are simply not enough relative to the value of the btc themselves to put a threat to the security of the network. The point I was trying to make with the hypothetical scenario is that should there ever be an immense external value gained from mining, then the game theory security model is put at risk.

> If he's to bootstrap a currency out of this, will he make it open source ? If not, how will he get people to trust it ? Cause they want the magic pill so bad ?

Yes, the idea was that they want the pill so bad they will use his currency. I admit this is a scenario that I do not myself believe could ever possibly happen, so suffice to say I question whether making these unrealistic hypothetical scenarios helps me prove my point or reason about anything.

> Plenty of people's lives are just fine without this magic pill and they can carry on with plain old btc. Even if the main plug only takes his own currency, surely there will be a secondary market of bulk buyers that resell for straight BTC. How will this magic pill algo lead to him controlling enough BTC hash to mess with Bitcoin. Is he still using sha256 ? Is it something else ?

I didn't specify whether he uses sha256, but I imagine that if in fact one was to find some use out of mining, the network would need to hard fork to switch algos. In reality, it's true that in order to 51% attack you need 51% of sha256 hash power, which is not something one can easily obtain even if they have the ability to print fiat money to themselves.

As far as "waste" , Bitcoin's computational power expenditure yields at least two useful things 1) a block reward to he who finds the block and 2) security for the network.

Bitcoin's longstanding lead in computing is indeed a problem its enemies, for Bitcoin is here to consume their proverbial lunch and more, for Bitcoin preserves property rights while its enemies/competition do not.

@whaack Setting aside the soma example there and focusing on:

If miners were to get something of value from mining other than bitcoins, it would become more economically feasible for a group to perform a 51% attack.

Two historical counter examples came to mind : 1) outmaneuvering capital controls and 2) booking tax deductible losses while pocketing the BTC.

These are both "something of value" accessible to miners in various jurisdictions that aren't BTC qua BTC, yet an enduring 51% attack we've not seen.

Now to your example :

In this scenario, the results of this protein folding to the drug dealer are much more valuable to him than the btcs generated in the process.

How do you reason that a drug will be more valuable than money itself ?

He decides he has the best product on the market, soma, so he may as well issue print his own currency and accept it as the only form of payment to get his soma. His only currency competitor is bitcoin, and well, he can easily mess with the block history since he controls 51% of the mining.

If he's to bootstrap a currency out of this, will he make it open source ? If not, how will he get people to trust it ? Cause they want the magic pill so bad ? Plenty of people's lives are just fine without this magic pill and they can carry on with plain old btc. Even if the main plug only takes his own currency, surely there will be a secondary market of bulk buyers that resell for straight BTC. How will this magic pill algo lead to him controlling enough BTC hash to mess with Bitcoin. Is he still using sha256 ? Is it something else ?

While we agree that Bitcoin hashing isn't a waste, but in fact highly useful, I'm not to the point where I accept as fact that an external value gained from mining weakens Bitcoin security, maybe you could clarify your thought there and change my mind though.

In any case, Cheers !