Do any of you bitcoin mine?

[Deathshroud]

What is stopping you from mining a bunch of bitCoins, holding on to them until the price inflates, and selling them all at once?

I should get on this, I have 2 560's in SLi which I would assume could crank out a lot of hashes pretty quickly.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Oh hey lookit...another "make money doing absolutely nothing" idea for the rubes.

[bitWISE]

What is stopping you from mining a bunch of bitCoins, holding on to them until the price inflates, and selling them all at once?

I should get on this, I have 2 560's in SLi which I would assume could crank out a lot of hashes pretty quickly.

Absolutely nothing. Once the coins are in your wallet you can sell as many as you want, for any price you want, at any time you want (provided you find a buyer). https://mtgox.com/ is the main exchange for buying and selling.

nvidia cards are shit at bitcoin mining. My laptop has a 3GB GTX 560M and it can only process 35M hashes per second. My AMD 5750 at home can push 211M hashes and the 7970 I ordered can push 685M. They make standalone devices that are insanely fast at mining coins but I'm not ready to go that far yet. With the 7970 I should be able to earn 0.0449 BTC every 24 hours, but with pooled mining you can't be very sure.

Firstly, AMD designs GPUs with many simple ALUs/shaders (VLIW design) that run at a relatively low frequency clock (typically 1120-3200 ALUs at 625-900 MHz), whereas Nvidia's microarchitecture consists of fewer more complex ALUs and tries to compensate with a higher shader clock (typically 448-1024 ALUs at 1150-1544 MHz). Because of this VLIW vs. non-VLIW difference, Nvidia uses up more square millimeters of die space per ALU, hence can pack fewer of them per chip, and they hit the frequency wall sooner than AMD which prevents them from increasing the clock high enough to match or surpass AMD's performance. This translates to a raw ALU performance advantage for AMD:

AMD Radeon HD 6990: 3072 ALUs x 830 MHz = 2550 billion 32-bit instruction per second
Nvidia GTX 590: 1024 ALUs x 1214 MHz = 1243 billion 32-bit instruction per second

This approximate 2x-3x performance difference exists across the entire range of AMD and Nvidia GPUs. It is very visible in all ALU-bound GPGPU workloads such as Bitcoin, password bruteforcers, etc.

Secondly, another difference favoring Bitcoin mining on AMD GPUs instead of Nvidia's is that the mining algorithm is based on SHA-256, which makes heavy use of the 32-bit integer right rotate operation. This operation can be implemented as a single hardware instruction on AMD GPUs (BIT_ALIGN_INT), but requires three separate hardware instructions to be emulated on Nvidia GPUs (2 shifts + 1 add). This alone gives AMD another 1.7x performance advantage (~1900 instructions instead of ~3250 to execute the SHA-256 compression function).

Combined together, these 2 factors make AMD GPUs overall 3x-5x faster when mining Bitcoins.

[U4EA]

I read as recently as a few weeks ago about how the cost of mining bitcoins [in terms of power usage] barely outstrips the value produced. Have you factored this into your calculations, or are you not paying for the power?

[Deathshroud]

Firstly, AMD designs GPUs with many simple ALUs/shaders (VLIW design) that run at a relatively low frequency clock (typically 1120-3200 ALUs at 625-900 MHz), whereas Nvidia's microarchitecture consists of fewer more complex ALUs and tries to compensate with a higher shader clock (typically 448-1024 ALUs at 1150-1544 MHz). Because of this VLIW vs. non-VLIW difference, Nvidia uses up more square millimeters of die space per ALU, hence can pack fewer of them per chip, and they hit the frequency wall sooner than AMD which prevents them from increasing the clock high enough to match or surpass AMD's performance. This translates to a raw ALU performance advantage for AMD:

AMD Radeon HD 6990: 3072 ALUs x 830 MHz = 2550 billion 32-bit instruction per second
Nvidia GTX 590: 1024 ALUs x 1214 MHz = 1243 billion 32-bit instruction per second

This approximate 2x-3x performance difference exists across the entire range of AMD and Nvidia GPUs. It is very visible in all ALU-bound GPGPU workloads such as Bitcoin, password bruteforcers, etc.

Secondly, another difference favoring Bitcoin mining on AMD GPUs instead of Nvidia's is that the mining algorithm is based on SHA-256, which makes heavy use of the 32-bit integer right rotate operation. This operation can be implemented as a single hardware instruction on AMD GPUs (BIT_ALIGN_INT), but requires three separate hardware instructions to be emulated on Nvidia GPUs (2 shifts + 1 add). This alone gives AMD another 1.7x performance advantage (~1900 instructions instead of ~3250 to execute the SHA-256 compression function).

Combined together, these 2 factors make AMD GPUs overall 3x-5x faster when mining Bitcoins.

Interesting. 1 thing, lets say you wait 2 months and horde a bunch of bitCoin hashes. What if someone else cracks the same hashes as you and sells them? Does that invalidate your hashes?

[Ryoki]

I read an article a while back about how bitcoin came to be, apparently noone knows who created it exactly?
It's all very interesting (but alas to me largely incomprehensible) stuffs.

Also, what GKY said. The whole thing emits the vague odour of a ponzi scheme if you ask me.

[Eraser]

I'm not well educated in the subject of bitcoins, but aren't you all going about this the wrong way? I would think that the idea behind bitcoins isn't to get rich doing basically nothing, but to have a monetary entity that's not tied to countries or politics. I'd say generating bitcoins should be compared to national banks printing money bills. They don't do it to become rich, they simply provide the service of creating physical representations of money. A bitcoin generator does the same (but virtual instead of physical).

I guess the people behind bitcoin needed a way to securely generate coins and have the batch of generated coins distributed among individuals in order to "seed" it. Money is only interesting if you can trade with it, and if you're the only one who has this type of money, chances are no one is interested in it. In return for providing the service of generating coins, you get to keep them.

So they have people generating coins for them and it must be hard to do so to gradually introduce it in a balanced distribution and to counter inflation. I guess there's at some point a limit to the number of coins that can be generated in the world?

So I think people should generate bitcoins not because they want to get rich, but because they want to support the idea of bitcoins.

[Plan B]

What horse shit.
Bitcoins isn't some protest against evil capitalism, it's just currency.
Why get all sanctimonious and demand people use it in an altruistic way?

[Deathshroud]

Also, what GKY said. The whole thing emits the vague odour of a ponzi scheme if you ask me.

I also agree with this. Also, you're betting on bitcoins that have consistently become less valuable over time. Why bother?

[Eraser]

What horse shit.
Bitcoins isn't some protest against evil capitalism, it's just currency.
Why get all sanctimonious and demand people use it in an altruistic way?

Nothing is demanded, I just think people shouldn't expect to get rich by generating bitcoins, because that was (probably) never the intention behind it. I just see lots of comments in the fashion of getting rich by doing nothing, where's the catch? I'm just offering an alternative way to look at bitcoin generation that may just make a lot more sense than the vague idea of spinning gold out of thin air. I also never said bitcoins are on some higher moral ground or anti-capitalist. All I'm saying is that to me, it seems likely that this generation scheme is just a practical solution to a practical problem.

[bitWISE]

Without some SERIOUS hardware you aren't going to get rich mining bitcoins right now. After nearly 24 hours I only have 0.02 btc and even with my new card I'll only pull like 0.06 per 24 hours. It didn't always take this long, it gets harder as time goes on. So really, I have to hope that the value stays high and in about 2 months I'm still able to sell one for $266 or more. If I do sell one for that price, it will pay for the electricity usage of my entire home for those two months (not just my PC). I'm currently paying $0.062 for each kwh of electric so they could drop as low as $8 per coin and I would still technically make a profit for a computer a leave on 24/7 anyways.

The only catch is finding someone with the balls to buy bitcoins. It's like selling any other virtual item to another person.

Interesting. 1 thing, lets say you wait 2 months and horde a bunch of bitCoin hashes. What if someone else cracks the same hashes as you and sells them? Does that invalidate your hashes?

If you're trying to solo process blocks it takes 1-4 years with a current single GPU system, so that isn't really something you do. The way the vast majority of people mine is by joining a pool that tracks the amount of "work" you contribute and when each block is done they pay you a tiny fraction that corresponds to how much you did.

[Eraser]

Coincidentally, an article appeared in a local newspaper here about the first Dutch restaurant that accepts bitcoins. The article said each single coin is worth 108 euros. Not sure how much it was before, but bitwise made it sound like it was a lot less.

[bitWISE]

Coincidentally, an article appeared in a local newspaper here about the first Dutch restaurant that accepts bitcoins. The article said each single coin is worth 108 euros. Not sure how much it was before, but bitwise made it sound like it was a lot less.

The value is extremely volatile. That is the problem with using bitcoins for purchases.

Here is a graph in euros

[GONNAFISTYA]

lol jesus

And morons still think it's a good idea?

Building your house on sand in an earthquake zone is a better idea.

[Eraser]

lol, I read someone (in the netherlands) who has his house up for sale accepts 6000 bitcoins for it as well.

[Dark Metal]

Price dropping...

[Deathshroud]

If you're trying to solo process blocks it takes 1-4 years with a current single GPU system, so that isn't really something you do. The way the vast majority of people mine is by joining a pool that tracks the amount of "work" you contribute and when each block is done they pay you a tiny fraction that corresponds to how much you did.

Ok, this makes more sense. The "layman" doing this from home essentially has to rely on whatever 3rd party is running the pool, in hopes that they'll make good use of the blocks that have been mined. Seems a bit dubious to me.

[MKJ]

lolol
http://kotaku.com/e-sports-league-mined ... -486205191

Users discovered the Bitcoin mining when they noticed their GPUs carrying unusually high loads over the past two weeks.

[...]

The league is offering free memberships as some members complain the code damaged their video cards.

[Plan B]

Hehe, if you blindly skip through the EULA, you (and your GPU) are going to have a bad time
(Wonder if it actually *was* in the EULA. That would be even more deliciously devious.)

[4days]

<tatclass> the keys are like right next to each other.

[bitWISE]

Price has slumped back under $100 this week. Holding my new coin a while before I sell.

[phantasmagoria]

Was reading the other day about some new machines coming (or may already be) out that generate silly amounts of hashes which is going to make generating lots of coin much more difficult for the more casual miners.

[GONNAFISTYA]

So that Bitcoin mining that was done by the ESEA League over a 2 week period only netted $3600? For 2 whole weeks with several customer's computers churning away simultaneously?

Why do I get the feeling that "earning" from Bitcoin is probably less than minimum wage? Oh that's because it is.

The things people do to earn a pittance.

[bitWISE]

I would say the $3600 was free but someone had to code in the secret miners and setup a pool account to pay out the coins. If it had lasted more than a couple weeks though, you can see how the profits would really start to roll in. I'm surprised they thought they could get away with it though, when my card is mining its loud as all fuck.

Was reading the other day about some new machines coming (or may already be) out that generate silly amounts of hashes which is going to make generating lots of coin much more difficult for the more casual miners.

Yea there are two major vendors. Butterfly Labs are the main force and have machines from 5, 10, 25, 50, or even 1,500 gigahashes per second. Another company released enough competing products to prevent Butterfly Labs from effectually taking control of the entire bitcoin network (network is controlled by the distributed processing power, if one person controls 51% or more they could roll out fake bitcoins) and presumably recoup the costs. The cool thing about the butterfly labs devices is that you can change the firmware to do other computation tasks with it, if you have something that could benefit from the instruction set.

They achieved such insane performance by designing custom 32nm processors (wafer printed and all that jazz) that do nothing but process SHA256 hashes. To compare the performance, some of the most powerful single GPU systems top out around 700 (1200 if you count the mutli-cards like a 7990) megahashes per second. So where it would take me over 1 year to process a block of 25 bitcoins, it would take these machines a matter of days or even hours.

Another option available to the more average Joe's and companies are custom FPGA setups. Field programmable gate array. Alone these don't push out many hashes but with lower power cost and size you can cluster them up like crazy. But these new ASIC machines basically kill the FPGA market.

[bitWISE]

Well. Fuck.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013 ... ge-mt-gox/