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New Plugin Allows Developers to Turn iOS Devices Into Bitcoin Mining Bots

Exponentially increasing difficulty in the Bitcoin network will make this only marginally profitable.

Neat idea, though.
 
iSee said:
Isn't that 4800 = 1 desktop? And mobile devices are a lot more computationally efficient than desktop copupters.
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Not really. The wattage is much lower but performance per watt is about the same on bitcoin mining. A GPU will do much better. And an ASIC will do better than that. For maximum efficiency you need a massively parallel array of units that can do bitwise operations. Everything else is just wasting energy (even using an architecture based on instructions loaded from memory, for example, is a total waste) A mobile CPU doesn't really fit the bill there.

The nature of bitcoin is such that eventually only the most energy efficient method of generating coins will beat the cost of electricity to power it. So this whole ideas is wasteful and stupid.
 
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unplugme71 said:
And I wouldn't want my battery to drain and have to charge 2-3x daily to save $0.99 for an app - or even a $3.00 app.

The cost of electricity to charge my device multiple times a day would eventually cost more than what I saved.
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To charge your phone once everyday for a year would cost around 12 cents...
 
This is just like the gold rush--the only people that really got rich were the ones selling the tools to the miners. If you're hoping to make money with your apps mining bitcoins, look for another endeavor.

That said, I'm sure all those android owners bragging about their faster CPUs have some cycles to spare 😀
 
While a clever idea, on a phone--where power is at such a premium, and the design is so heavily oriented around power efficiency--this seems like an exceptionally terrible idea. I desperately hope (and rather expect) that Apple won't let anything running this through the App store.

On a desktop system where you weren't battery limited, it would be a much more "fair" tradeoff. Of course, the irony for the end user is that having their CPU maxed out would eat more electricity, which costs money, so the game is no longer "free to play" at all (the same is technically true on a phone, but the power used is so small its negligible). I wonder, in fact, if the mining operation is even cost effective in terms of power draw on a desktop--do you get more pennies in revenue than you use pennies in kWh?

Freyqq said:
How many iphones does it take to equal the processing power of a modern desktop with a beefy GPU? Well, we can try to guess.
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You don't really need to. Using the Geekbench 3 results as a ballpark, a server with a 2x 8-core Xeon E5-2687W (about a year and a half old, 20MB cache, 3.1GHz, power draw for each CPU of 150W, total 300W) can score about 48,000 (though 40,000 looks more common). An iPhone 5s scores a bit over 2500.

So the big-iron server is, ballpark, about 19 times faster than an iPhone 5s.

Comparing it to a high-end 2013 4-core 3.5GHz i7 iMac, the iMac scores around 15,000, so the iMac is around 6 times faster.

GPU acceleration could change those results, and the specifics of Bitcoin mining may lend themselves to work well with some particular architecture, but in general those give an idea of the speed differential.

The A7 is, notably, an exceptionally fast ARM cpu, but in any case depending on how you look at it, it either takes a lot of phones to equal a half-kilowatt server, or the iPhone is a really, really fast phone.
 
It was bad enough that the Google toolbar did (Does?) install one of the @home clients on computers without being very clear. It's also a shame that Sony stopped supporting folding@home. The PS3 was getting good numbers for a while.

But running a cruncher on a device? Seriously? There are millions of phones, sure, but millions of monkeys with typewriters doesn't mean you'll get a Shakespearean manuscript either.
 
Anonymous Freak said:
Does anyone have a list of Unity-based apps?

I want to know which ones to avoid updating... I really don't want what should be a low-power-use app to suck down all my battery...
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There is a list of 2 in my signature. But you can be certain they will not include Bitcoin mining, and it will be the same for most other Unity apps, if not all. As has been mentioned in this thread, the rate of return is too low, and more importantly, the effect on the user experience is too great.

More monetization options would be great, but they need to be at least as good as what is out there, and this one isn't.

It would be fantastic if more players were willing to play for games, but so few do when there are so many great options that are free to play.
 
It will never see a user's iPhone. First, iPhones just aren't powerful enough. The dev will never earn as much per phone as they would from an ad impression per month. They'll never get their $80 back

Second, Apple will never allow apps that kill the battery and make the phone get hot, it will make Apple look bad to people who don't know better.
 
Kernel Panicky said:
So my understanding of Bitcoin in a nutshell is it is essentially like Folding but for profit and primarily aimed at mobile devices? Anything I'm missing?
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Bitcoin is a decentralized electronic currency. Transactions are processed by a distributed mining network owned collectively by the users of Bitcoin (rather than a government or bank). The mining/transaction processing network secures the entire system by requiring a user who wants to cheat (spend a coin twice for example) to control more than 50% of the network. Miners are "paid" by the system for their services processing transactions (typically as a small fraction) and securing the network. Mining involves performing cryptographic calculations. This is done most efficiently on specially built bit coin mining chips, but can also be done less effectively on GPGPU hardware and even less effectively on generic CPUs.

As a currency it can be exchanged for other currencies or used to buy things from merchants who accept bitcoin.

Bitcoin has some benefits and drawbacks compared to traditional electronic payment systems:
Benefits:
- Fast transaction clearing (~15 minutes) after which they cannot be reversed or charged back
- Anyone can create an account and move money themselves. No ID needed, no paperwork, no permission from the government.
- Funds cannot be moved without the account key. Governments can't garnish wages or seize funds. Payment processors can't withhold or delay transactions or freeze accounts. There are no geographical or political restrictions on moving money.
- Raw transaction costs are very low (largely because you aren't paying for bank tellers and fraud protection)
- Divisible in much smaller increments (with low transaction costs, allows fine grain micro payments)
- Hard (not impossible) to uncover the identity of an account holder
- Protection from government mismanagement of currency or government defaults

Drawbacks:
- Transactions can't be reversed or charged back (you assume all fraud risk)
- Anyone can create an account and move money themselves (watching money move through centralized systems is an easy way to stop crime)
- Funds cannot be moved without the account key. If you loose it the funds are gone. No one can get them back. If the key is stolen the funds are gone.
- No traditional "trusted" central source that backs the system.
- Low market volume and lots of speculation makes bit coin prices volatile.
- Limited merchant options.
- The need to exchange Bitcoins for government backed currency can dampen many of the advantages.
- Questionable legal status: many of the features make bit coins attractive to criminals, legitimate users may not want those associations. Similar story with strong encryption.

The application in question here is an example of a novel use of these properties. Harnessing idle processing power (a la folding) to provide a useful service (payment transaction processing and network security) in very small micropayment increments (phone processor isn't very powerful) to pay for a service that would otherwise be ad supported. Even if the number of bitcoins mined by a given phone is small, it might be enough to support. This sort of payment method couldn't be done without something like bitcoin.

The bigger issues have been pointed out so far.. If the user is not aware of this it is pretty shady. Even if the user IS aware they might not fully understand or forget that it is there and complain about battery life. This seems like something that would work better for a desktop game (especially ones with GPUs) than a mobile one where battery and heat are really a concern (with user consent).
 
darwen said:
My initial reaction was to pick up the pitchfork too, but after reading the article, I honestly think this is quite inventive. If I'm choosing when to run the application, I'm choosing when to pay the developer. The payment to the developer is directly proportional to the quality of the application. Want more bit coins? Develop better apps.



I'm not sure you understand how software works. There is crappy code running in almost every application you use. This code is wasting resources such as battery power every day. What's the difference between accidentally wasting resources and intentionally using more resources? It isn't fraud or hacking. The application does exactly what the developer tells it to do. Are the accidental wasted resources also considered fraud?
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Seriously? You see no difference between accidentally writing less-than-optimal code and intentionally (and, likely, secretly) wasting *MY* battery life - for a profit? I, and I think most customers, would beg to differ.

I'll echo and extend the warning from another poster... I will not use any app with this plug-in; I will not use any app from any developer who uses or has EVER used this plug-in; I will spread the word to friends and family to avoid this developer's apps because they waste battery life to make the developer a tiny profit, and I will gladly pay money for their competitors' apps that don't similarly misbehave. Likely, I would pay far more money than they would ever get from such a plug-in on a single phone in the first place.

That said...

I think this is the dumbest idea ever. The ill will you would generate from customers is obvious in this thread, and my guess is that the hash rate from an iOS device would be downright useless, and even that only runs when the app is actually open. There's no way this plugin could generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile, even on thousands of devices.

Though I will concede that charging $80 of unscrupulous developers to shoot themselves in the foot is kind of amusing.
 
This just prooves that EVERYTHING concerning bitcoins is just a scam (or money laundering).

Won't make it beyond Apple's garden fence 😛
 
No way.

So your users directly donate money in the form of their power bill and reduced battery life for you to attempt to COUNTERFEIT cryptographic currency?

All while tens of thousands of devices have a snowflake's chance in hell of actually cracking a single bitcoin?

No way. I hope you get auto-detected and banned from the App Store, you slimy, counterfeiting battery vampires.
 
Bitcoin mining bots? I do not understand future.

I'm in my 20s and can't even imagine how confused I'll be by the time I'm 60!
 
andycr said:
So your users directly donate money in the form of their power bill and reduced battery life for you to attempt to COUNTERFEIT cryptographic currency?

All while tens of thousands of devices have a snowflake's chance in hell of actually cracking a single bitcoin?

No way. I hope you get auto-detected and banned from the App Store, you slimy, counterfeiting battery vampires.
Click to expand...

So we DO know how much battery these things take?
 
cogitodexter said:
I don't see why Apple would pull the plug on such a game, provided the developer was open about it being the way the game is supported, especially if it was ad-free.
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They will because to will destroy battery life etc. Remember consumed batteries are not covered under warranty. And with something like an ipad there is no battery swap. It's whole unit at $200+ a pop

And then there is the detail that you are hashing for the developer.
 
I can just picture the lawsuits now.

"... and your users will never know."

Yeah... That just SCREAMS legitimate, ethical business practices...

I hope the developers of this malware stay in business long enough to be sued out of existence.
 
RVijay007 said:
Everyone is saying that they would delete a company's app, but no company that uses this is going to advertise the fact that they are using it.
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And every app that uses Unity will be checked and those hiding this code will be banned because Apple doesn't like that sort of game.
 
No background apps for a reason

Apple has a very strict policy on background processing. Let us let the fandroids experience this kind of b.s.
 
charlituna said:
They will because to will destroy battery life etc. Remember consumed batteries are not covered under warranty. And with something like an ipad there is no battery swap. It's whole unit at $200+ a pop

And then there is the detail that you are hashing for the developer.
Click to expand...

Okay, so we know -for certain- that this will destroy battery life? We're not just speculating?
 
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