Could the 'blockchain' be a botnet where people 'willingly' infect their computers with the mining/botnet software and where 'solving' is hacking something (like bank accounts)?
As cryptocurrencies are fairly new, I expect to see something pop-up in the near future. Golem for instance; wonderful design, but since its decentralized theres no way to prevent the usage. I wouldnt be surprised to hear somewhere down the line the network was rented to crack hashes or some other form of high computation required attack. I can't say much about a "botnet" as i'm not entirely sure if code can be executed during computation.
It's safe to say these acts will be performed elsewhere if not readily usable on the blockchain.
As cryptocurrencies are fairly new, I expect to see something pop-up in the near future. Golem for instance; wonderful design, but since its decentralized theres no way to prevent the usage. I wouldnt be surprised to hear somewhere down the line the network was rented to crack hashes or some other form of high computation required attack. I can't say much about a "botnet" as i'm not entirely sure if code can be executed during computation.
It's safe to say these acts will be performed elsewhere if not readily usable on the blockchain.
Definitely something to think about!
Blockchain is just a buzz word to describe decentralized databases secured by cryptographic algorithms.