That endeavor may be "unknown" in general, but it is super well-known in the "Bitcoin community" and the subject of unending discussion/debate/conspiracy theories.
Personally, I like the idea of digital currency, but the knowledge that it is based on completely useless computations (gold at least has many practical applications and looks nice) annoys my programmer side. I know money do not have to be otherwise useful, but still the feeling is there.
As far as I am aware, they are not completely useless computations. Isn't the model supposed to be that transactions are verified using calculations of effectively a tuned brute force method where the brute force needed is tuned to the power of the network. Tuning the difficulty means that no-one else can beat it to the brute force goal without having comparable computational power.
In that sense the computation no less useless than any other cryptographic technique that has complexity to thwart brute force attacks.
[I may be completely off base here, I wouldn't call myself a bitcoin expert, but this is how I perceived it]
In a completely distributed system where malicious participants are trying to attack the system, you need some kind of mechanism to get a consensus about the state of the world. Obviously, a simple majority vote wouldn't work because an attacker could cheaply spawn many nodes on the network. In bitcoin this is solved by tying the "vote" to proof of work: the explicit assumption is that the majority of the computing power is controlled by participants who aren't trying to attack the system.
There is another mechanism that could reduce the need for proof-of-work though: the participants could instead show proof-of-stake[1], i.e. prove that they control a certain amount of currency. Somebody has created ppcoin[2] (a bitcoin fork) to experiment with this.
In bitcoin this is solved by tying the "vote" to proof of work: the explicit assumption is that the majority of the computing power is controlled by participants who aren't trying to attack the system.
...and if these Bitcoin-mining ASICs are primarily purchased by people trying to attack the system?
Compared to the Federal Reserve that creates money out of thin air, whenever they want, and dilute the value of the currency in the same time? That doesn't worry you at all?
"Whenever they want" says it all. When its needed. Bitcoins work on an algorithm, that is insensitive to need. Which allows boom-and-bust coinage.
Here in the US Midwest, in museums there are old coupons, tokens, wooden nickels printed by local banks, business, bars(!) and pressed into service in the 1800's when coins became scarce. The US Mint didn't respond for years, leaving us essentially without money. Caused a local recession.
For monetary policy to respond properly the fed has to read aggregate demand and react accordingly as quickly as possible. There are extreme incentives for the fed to keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing and economic growth, there is little encouragement to think long term and turn up the interest rates so that currency is protected.
Bitcoin may be flawed, but at least its obviously and predictably flawed. This stability should in the long run allow for much better planning on an individual level.
How you reached this conclusion? Is there any limit of what one person is allowed to be worried about and I was unlucky to get only one worry subject allotted to me?
It is fascinating how people may misconstrue the plainest topics to turn them into something completely different. The subject of Fed creating the money has very little to do with current topic, and I did not express any indication that I somehow not worried about it (if you want to know so badly, yes, I am worried, very much, are you happy now?). However both nature of this problem and its causes are completely different from the topic at hand - and I specifically only compared bitcoin to gold and not paper money to avoid any temptation to this completely irrelevant turn. Of course, I was destined to fail.
This is not particular to Bitcoin. It is a basic economic principle that those with the most capital can invest to make the most returns (in this case investing in a chip). How is this unfair?
A company pouring $1M+ to develop a 65nm Bitcoin mining chip: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=69