There was a huge discussion about it over at the Xtreme systems forums that's been going on for almost a year. Some there got really involved but have since scaled back or quit altogether. Some claimed they made money but there were a lot of problems with hackers and other crap. If interested I can post a link. Personally, I don't care much about it either way.
While I understand the Donate@Home project I wouldn't volunteer my machines to run it. I would be more inclined to just donate money to GPUgrid than use my resources to raise money by bitcoin mining. JMHO

I'll attempt to de-mystify...

For anyone wondering what work their GPU would be doing by joining D@H, essentially you are joining the bitcoin payment processing system and performing two functions: 1)recording bitcoin transactions, and 2) ensuring the security/integrity of the bitcoin transaction record. The bitcoin system compensates participants by awarding 50BTC at predictable intervals to a participant or pool of participants who validate the transaction record by being the first in the network to solve a cryptographic puzzle (the "mining" process). The participant or pool that collects the reward can then sell the BTC to buyers on bitcoin exchanges for hard currency.

D@H has wrapped the bitcoin transaction processing code in a BOINC app so they can build and run a bitcoin mining pool. But instead of distributing bitcoins mined by the pool to the pool's participants, bitcoins generated by D@H will be sold on an exchange and the proceeds will be used to fund GPUGRID research.

Even though the price of BTC isn't what it used to be, mining can still be profitable if one's hardware & electricity costs are low. Obviously hardware/electricity costs for D@H are provided by volunteers, so they should have no trouble generating funds as long as bitcoin prices don't collapse completely. HOWEVER, nVidia cards are VERY ill-suited for bitcoin mining. D@H currently allows nVidia GPUs to participate, which is a shameful waste of volunteer's electricity and computing resources IMO. I really hope they will make the project AMD only.

(not sure if that cleared anything up for anybody) :-/
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While I don't see any security risks in joining D@H, I would agree there are ethical questions surrounding bitcoin - and in utilizing BOINC to support bitcoin. I think the most important thing for potential D@H volunteers to do is educate themselves on the matter so they know what they're getting into. The Satoshi paper Dataman linked to is a good start, but it really only describes two things: the "problem" the bitcoin payment system purports to solve, and the mechanics of bitcoin transaction processing/security. Anyone looking to judge whether or not bitcoin is a societal good before joining D@H should evaluate what bitcoin has become, not what Satoshi promised it would be.

Of course, anyone who agrees that "the ends justifies the means" in this case should have no problems joining up without giving it a second thought.

I am not sure what to think. The paper is somewhat over my head, especially the probability part of it. I partially understand what a Poisson distribution is, but can not follow the mathematics. The premise that the honest network will always be larger(have more cpu power) than the dishonest network could be the flaw which sinks this ship. I am also unclear about maintaining the integrity of the time stamp server(s). If I understood it better I could offer a better opinion. I am also unclear on exactly why this is needed in the context of the grid.

Many years ago I seem to remember Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet, advancing some plan for an electronic medium of exchange, but that was sometime in the early 1990's I think. I do not remember any of the details.

Cheers

A very interesting comment, SMTB1963. Sometimes I think if there was a new project "€œCrunching for Pedophilia"€" some segment of our community would automatically "€œopt in"€ for a shiny badge and quadrupal credits. I hope I am wrong. Thanks for your comment!