Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Google, Please Mine Bitcoins

The price of Bitcoins is skyrocketing. The demand is going up and the supply is limited. In time, the supply will only dwindle (about 10 mil out of 21 mil coins have been mined so far), and as long as there are unstable currencies around the world, the demand for alternative currency such as Bitcoins will likely remain (or maybe even go up, who knows?!?). As I try to grasp the future social and economic impact this new and strange currency has, I started to wonder what the head of Google (who could tap into some of the world's most amazing and abundant servers) thinks about it.

For the greater good of its Shareholders, Employees, and All Earth Bound Slaves of Fiat Currency, Larry should rally the company to mine Bitcoins. Here are some top reasons why:
  1. Google has a gazillion of machines on Borg that are on standby, idling, and still eating up electricity. Putting Google servers into Bitcoin mining will generate wealth that could be distributed back to the company and its Shareholders. GOOG to $1000 baby!
  2. Disgruntled employees that are forced to work on G+ (hey, I know there are a bunch of you out there) could transition to work on mining Bitcoins. I'm sure they'll be relieved. In addition I think many employees would be proud of #4 (see below). Similarly, unmotivated workers that spend lots of time on misc-mtv@ troll mailing list and memegen will finally feel like they're making a change in the world, and be productive again. Look, if doing something is good for employees and good for Shareholders, why not?
  3. Google is in a superior position over other companies at running massive cloud/bandwidth/custom backplane/custom OS/GPU/ASIC/etc at scale. Obviously I didn't run through back of the envelope calculations but if there's a company that can make serious money by making pennies at Google scale, that would be Google.
  4. The security of Bitcoins depends on the majority of the clients/miners being honest. If Google starts running miners on its servers, it will help keep Bitcoins even more honest and secure. Therefore, Google doing mine = doing good deeds for everyone, and Do Good >> Do No Evil, right?
  5. Similar to the above, if there is an institution that starts owning a huge chunk of Bitcoin shares, I would rather that institution not come from authoritarians (the same that control fiat currency on a whim) or a bunch of wild libertarian/anarchist hackers. I'd rather that institution be Google. Some people say that Google has become evil, but would you rather see Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Monsanto, Chevron/Exxon/Enron-alikes involved? Um, no thanks. In Google I trust [a little bit more]. Dominate me Google. Please!
  6. Yeah yeah I know this is an ungoogly thing to say (how dare I criticize my friends/former peers). But more likely than not, many existing Googlers are already running Bitcoin miners on their Google issued machines, which is not much different than how they've been using it for other noble deeds like SETI@Home/Gene-folding/.... Create a new division in GoogleX, or one might as well as make it official in the company and make it a company-wide OKR. Just make sure they deposit back into the Shareholders' Bitcoin wallet pool, m'kay?
Larry, please go boldly where no man has gone before. The needs of many outweigh the needs of the few.  I AM NOT JOKING. Thanks for reading, I will now troll on Reddit. And /.