firmbeliever

Thanks. Does this mean that Google is essentially subsidizing the cost of producing renewable energy, and if so, does that then mean that the consumers of the renewable energy end up paying less because of said subsidy? I'm just trying to follow where that money is actually going and how it's actually shifting overall usage from fossil fuels to renewable.

So if they are still getting their power from the grid, who uses the renewable energy that they purchase?

Thanks for the reply. I'll check out Ethereum; I'm not at all familiar with it. Seems like you'd then be losing some of the - for lack of a better word - purity of the system. If I understand correctly, part of the point with bitcoin is that there really are no central entities, gatekeepers, etc. It's completely decentralized - of the people, for the people, by the people. But if you need a way to "pay" miners outside of what the system deals in, seems like you'd be bringing in some sort of central entity. Not that that's a bad thing, I just understood it to be part of what bitcoin was avoiding. And maybe it will make more sense when I learn a bit more. Thanks again.

I get how it works with bitcoin - that's why I was saying the incentive is obvious there. The miner makes money.

I was asking what the incentive would be to go through the computational effort of creating a block in a system that doesn't involve money. The author gave the example of using blockchain to maintain a shared calendar. What incentive would I have to go through all the computational effort to create a block of calendar entries?

Or let me know if I misunderstood your reply.

Question - does the incentive (or lack thereof) of the miners to create the blocks also need to be considered? There's an obvious incentive with bitcoin - you make money. What would be the incentive for me to create a block of (using one of this article's examples) entries on a shared calendar? It seems like part of the reason that this works for bitcoin is precisely because the "thing" being recorded (money) is something I also want as a miner. Why would I want to put in the computational work to create a block of calendar entries?

On you would be helpful, but the clothes as combos would suffice.