Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
May 01, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- UNICEF is making it even
easier to give to those
in need. The global charity organization has launched a
special page called The
Hopepage, which reportedly functions as an online
crypto-mining page for anyone that logs onto it and allocates a
certain amount of processing power to it.
In a report by
The Verge on April 30th, it was stated that over
2,600 people have already tried this and the processing power that
can be allocated to the website is maxed out at 80 percent. The
mining is done simply by time spent on the webpage once this
processing power is allocated to the website. UNICEF claims that
the relationship is direct. The more time spent on the website, the
more cryptocurrency mined.
Specifically, it sounds as if it is
one of the first cryptocurrency experiences that truly puts the
blockchain and blockchain tech at the back-end. The entire user
experience appears to focus on ease of use over the need for any
specialized technical knowledge.
It all begins with the customer
clicking “start donating,” which triggers a pop-up window that asks
you to allow the website to use your computing power. This is
followed by a sort of disclaimer that the website’s algorithms
function inside of your browser, so there is no need for you to
download anything special.
A caveat is that it has apparently
already been discovered that the website isn’t functional across
every computing platform. In addition to this, the mining tool used
is essentially the same as Coinhive’s, Javascript-based
mining tool, which mines Monero and has been used by Salon to test
out generating ad revenue as well as the Showtime network, as a
test. Therefore, the crypto mined is limited to one
currency.
The question remains: just how much
cryptocurrency can you mine with a regular laptop through an online
tool? In The Verge report, it was stated that a 2015 MacBook Air
with 20 percent processing power allocated, ended up with a hash
rate of six hashes per second.
The answer is: this clearly mines a
minuscule amount if the average numbers of the Monero network are
put into consideration. According to the Monero stack
exchange website with many of its technical
specifications, the network was averaging 23,300,000 hashes per
second to mine one block every 2 minutes. This was two years ago
but these stats serve to show that it takes a lot more to get a
substantial amount of crypto-coins from mining. These stats yielded
roughly 11 Monero coins per block. 6 hashes per second, again,
would be a lot less.
The Hopepage also only donates the
mined Monero through UNICEF Australia. At this time, it appears
that no other branches of the charity are involved in the
process.
Despite this, it is promising that
global charities are moving into the space. People trust the bigger
charities like UNICEF with their money. If these organizations can
convince their donators to move to crypto-payments, this could
actually become a key part of the snowball effect towards
widespread adoption, overall. With its low mining stats as well as
the fact that the project focuses only on UNICEF Australia, all of
this is still up in the air.
By: BGN Editorial Staff