So computing power generates bitcoins? Is it ethical for me to use the 3 8-core machines at work I have to generate bitcoins for my personal use? What about my personal work machine?
No. There's a constant average rate of new Bitcoins created, and that amount
is divided among the nodes by the CPU power they use. When Bitcoins start
having real exchange value, the competition for coin creation will drive the
price of electricity needed for generating a coin close to the value of the
coin, so the profit margin won't be that huge. The easier way to gain a lot
of wealth would be trading goods.
At the moment, though, you can generate new coins quite profitably, if you
expect them to have real value in the future. If you choose to, be aware that
Bitcoin is still experimental software.
That's not quite accurate, as it changes over time (just above that in the FAQ), and you cannot "discover" bitcoins which are already known. The difficulty in finding a new one increases as each new one is found, if only slightly.
Use them! But do not be so excited. There is people running GPU farms already. So it's like you got modern equipment to extract gold while someone own gold mines with tons of dollars invested in mining equipment. So you definitely will not be the top miner, but you will get something.
Yes, wealth is tied to computing power... I spotted this flaw when bitcoins were mentioned in a thread on HN a few months ago. My comments are here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1655033
It's tied to computing power in the sense that one could run the app on multiple machines, or even multiple virtual machines, but it seems like you'd be doing an awful lot of work for a relatively minimal return.
It seems like it would be a lot easier to simply trade for bitcoins.
