[tor-talk] Gmail and Bitcoin? [OT]

[Brandon Wiley]

There are a number of ways to make a public key with no corresponding
private key which is verifiable. For instance, you could hash the lastest
block in the blockchain to deterministically generate a verifiable random
string. However, the sending coins to an irretrievable address has already
been dismissed as being not a cool thing to do.

Regarding nym authorities in general, I guess that this service isn't
really a nym authority at all. It's a generic proof-of-work verification
service where the work is payment. It could be useful for a number of
different cases where providers of a service want to verify users. So it's
basically an economic captcha service. There are a number of free captcha
services, so this could fit into that same ecosystem.

I wouldn't mind running one of these for fun if I thought anyone would use
it.