btc as mean of pay do you use it ?

[barq2]

I have still never found an answer as to what btc mining acually IS.

I did read once a dude had like 30 cpus in one room doing it and died from overheat/dehydration

lol your signature goes well with your post

yes you are correct certainly at the beginning that was idea using cpu power to solve maths equations,dont ask what sort since no clue actually,one would get rewards in block of 50 coins,since it was of no use at the begining people did it for fun as experiment,similar to those people would let run their pc to work on networks solving protein issues,looking for alien signals etc.

In a way it is a shame that all the number crunching going on doesn't have some value other than the bitcoins. I used to be part of that SETI project, and much the same as a screensaver would kick in when the computer wasn't in use, it would use my CPU power to add to the collective effort to search for alien signals amidst all the noise.

Are there any crypto-currencies that use the number crunching usefully? i.e. to find new big prime numbers, or analyse scientific data?

Over the years people have been so clever at getting more than one thing out of a computer function. One example that comes to mind is the verification on websites where you type in the numbers from photos of signs. Can't remember which company was behind it - maybe Google streetview - but whilst proving you were human to a website, they also got humans to confirm the building numbers to make maps more accurate.