Is JavaScript Bitcoin mining a viable alternative to online advertisement?

2 pointsNarcolepticFrog2 comments

For very large websites that have millions of viewers, would it be feasible for them to have visitors to their webpage run javascript that mines bitcoins (or does some other useful computation) as an alternative to displaying advertisements? Are there any examples of this "visitors as computational power" idea?

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Legal and moral issues aside:

- Devices will become really slow as the operation will try to hog memory and computational power. This will affect the website's responsiveness. Written badly, it can crash the browser.

- The browser app will start to consume more resources, forcing other apps in the devices to be killed by the LMK. This makes the overall device experience a hassle as moving from app to app will load them from disk rather than from cached memory.

- Additionally, it will consume more power. This is not a big deal for desktops and plugged laptops. But for mobile devices, this is a big deal.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/new-jersey-slaps-mit-bitco...

And I think user's computer will get pretty hot.

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