Using cameras to mine cryptocurrency

It has been going on for a while now:

 

2014: 'Seriously, this is just wasting electricity'

Link: Dimwit hackers use security camera DVRs as SUPER-SLOW Bitcoin-mining rig

 

2018: 'This week, LMG’s team released new research demonstrating that Internet of Things (IoT) devices are vulnerable to “cryptojacking.”'

Link: Cryptojacking Meets IoT - LMG Security

 

I would really like to know if anyone is using a digital camera to do anything except take and process images. Games are cool but people already installed Doom on iPods from 2003. Let's take it up a notch.

Bitcoin mining needs so much computing power that currently only

ASICs make commercial sense.

 

If you are stealing computer time, such that it doesn't cost you anything, that

changes the economics. I don't think this means cameras that are usually

discussed here, but security cameras and the system that they connect to.

 

As well as I know, you would need millions of them to have any value at all.

Dream Lab website uses cell phones for cancer research while they are being charged at night. I've been doing it for six months or so with no obvious problems.

I would really like to know if anyone is using a digital camera to do anything except take and process images.

I’m using an old point-and-shoot as a paper weight.

The current bitcoin difficulty is about 6,379,265,451,411.

 

Miners do a complex calculation to attempt to add a new block to the chain, which has about

a 1 in 6,379,265,451,411*2**32 chance to succeed. The difficulty is adjusted to keep the success

rate to close to one every 10 minutes.

 

An ordinary processor, like in laptops from about 10 years ago, and in many embedded

devices, might do one million hashes per second. With the current difficulty, it would

take about 2e16 seconds to mine, or about 870 million years.

 

So, if one could take over the power of 870 million security cameras, one might mine

some bitcoin in about a year.

As an aside, you don't need to mine Bitcoin, and you don't need to mine Bitcoin to collect Bitcoins (or parts thereof). You can mine other currencies, or you can mine other currencies and exchange them automatically for Satoshi.

 

AFAIK, cameras do have ASICS, but not the ones that would give them an advantage for crypto.

 

Charles, it's too bad for people like me that Apple won't allow mining apps in the App Store. ;-)

Other than Bitcoin specifc ASICs, mining costs more in electricity than the bitcoin mined.

 

Or, as above, if someone else is paying for it, but that is stealing.

 

It might be that other cryptocurrencies are different.