Yes. I've wondered about this for a while. Because although the microwave is supposed to be fully shielded, when I take EMF readings on it with my TriField TF2 EMF meter, it's spitting out >100mW/m^2 when it's turned on. And I've seen this happen with just about every microwave I've tried this on. The only ones that haven't seem to be those expensive integrated under-counter ones where the tray slides out rather than opens like a door. Also my phone still works/receives calls when I put it in there, so it can't be as good of a faraday cage as it's supposed to be...
Crypto is not a zero sum game, because money is being printed in the Forex markets all the time, which bleeds into the crypto markets. There is a lag time, called the Cantillon effect, between when money enters circulation, and the arrival of downstream purchasing power inflation.
Apparently the particles need to be relativistic, maybe the Sun doesn't generate enough acceleration compared to the central galactic supermassive black hole?
> It's lost work though, and the amount of work is governed only by the level of competition with other miners, rather than the amount of effort involved insome external task
It's the cost of securing the network. It's not lost. Fees and rewards pay the miners for the cost of their computing cycles, to provide a secure, very difficult (near impossible) to attack network.
Once Bitcoin gets linked up with Litecoin, lightning network, and atomic swaps, seems like it will become more viable as a payment channel. It still beats me, however, as to why anyone would by anything with it if it might be worth twice as much in 6 months. Of course, it could also be worth half as much.