[gizmo385]

Is there something unique or special about the private keys that are guessed? This seems like an incredibly wasteful allocation of compute (which wouldn’t be surprising given that it’s bitcoin but still)

[kobalsky]

controlled arms race to improve things on both sides and it doubles as a canary.

[LegionMammal978]

If someone had totally broken the hash in secret, I doubt they'd burn it on such a low-stakes canary.

[p4bl0]

I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?

[sammy2255]

What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?