Washington - A manufacturing start-up recently announced plans to go for a shutter aluminum factory in Upstate New York taking advantage of the abundant cheap electricity from the St. Lawrence River.
Rather than smelting aluminum, the company is planning to convert that power into bittoine.
Money is considered as a means of buying things. Now, the country's hottest investment is buying money. And the crowd of investment is raising questions about the fact that in recent years one of the reasons for the slow pace of economic development is that the country is busy deviating itself. While bitcoine mining can not be labor intensive, it separates time, energy and capital from other, more productive activities, which economists say is that rapid growth can happen.
James Mc Andrews, former head of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said, "It seems that our development is devoted to activities like the spread of cybercoins in the digital infrastructure, which is worse than the stupid."
According to a wide range of measures, there is a productivity problem in the US. The economy is gradually increasing, and about 20 percent of the adults are not working either in their major working years nor are they trying to find work. The Americans who have jobs are less likely to start their own companies. Even the most basic type of production is also in decline. Americans are making less sex and fewer children.
Instead of working, playing video games, instead of getting it, logging on, and growing parts of its time, capital and natural resources are being grown in virtual products like social media, games and latest feeds: virtual currencies
Bitcoin is the largest virtual currency, a particularly dependable consumer of resources because new bitcoins are distributed in a kind of lottery where each ticket is purchased with electricity.
Bitcoin miners compete for coins by depositing answers to difficult mathematical problems. Instead of solving problems, miners use computer to inflate floods of estimates. It can be attractive: each bitcanine is currently valued at approximately $ 10,550.
The believers insisted that this is a meaningful endeavor. They describe bitcoin as a better currency which will eventually come in widespread use, and they also predict broad applications for blockages, the use of digital bookkeeping method to record ownership of bitcoin and verify transactions Is performed.
But using Bitcoin is so hard that in January a major Bitcoin conference had to stop accepting bitcoin. This, in practice, is a speculative investment like gold. And George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen said that mining gold was a better use of resources, because if this value is lost, then it can be used to fill the tooth.
"Once the bitcoine power is burnt, it never comes back," he said.
Colin L. Read, Mayor of Plattsburgh, NY, sees it as a public nuisance. In the 1950s, the city was guaranteed a certain supply of cheap electricity as part of the construction of the dam generating dams on St. Lawrence. Bitcoin mining companies are joining the power supply like hunger of mosquitoes.