Quote of the day for me so far: "According to Bitcoin Watch, the aggregate power of the bitcoin network is about 4.8 x 1021 FLOPs. Using your own estimates, this would be enough to simulate 4 or more brains."

I have been wondering recently if there is some way of combining cryptocurrencies with deep learning. I know the Bitcoin hash calculations are used to secure the transactions, but if there was some way of either re-purposing these calculations or adding some additional ones, then that could unleash a massive amount of computing power. Plus if you could mention both machine learning and the blockchain in the same sentence you'd be sure to get a lot of interest from VCs.