Just out of interest... Bitcoin mining

Jay85 · 13 May 2013 at 21:37

I've been doing some reading lately about bitcoin mining as I've never ever heard of it before. Infact was shocked when I read there was virtual money just floating around out there in the form of bitcoins which can be sold and bought like on a stock exchange market.

I see a lot of people on here with crazy gpu setups so wondering how many of you here actually mine and try and get a share of this venture?

Again I've only done light reading so im not upto date with what is going on and still not 100% sure what the hell it is!

If someone can shed some more light on this subject matter, please feel free.

Sin_Chase · 13 May 2013 at 21:39

Factor in highly volatile exchange rates, cost of electricity and the wear on hardware I personally do not think it is worth it. Back in the start, was actually a much better prospect, but now - hard enough just to break even.

Jay85 · 13 May 2013 at 21:41

Sin_Chase said:
Factor in highly volatile exchange rates, cost of electricity and the wear on hardware I personally do not think it is worth it. Back in the start, was actually a much better prospect, but now - hard enough just to break even.

Have you mined before then? I see people's rigs on youtubes with machines mounting like 12 gpu's all at full whack and a giant fan cooling it all. Is it really necessary? It seems abit excessive!

ArchAndroid · 13 May 2013 at 21:45

You might want to try to look into LiteCoin or other mining programs like BitCoin. The key is to get in early and BitCoin is way too mature to make big gains now.

Jay85 · 13 May 2013 at 21:51

ArchAndroid said:
You might want to try to look into LiteCoin or other mining programs like BitCoin. The key is to get in early and BitCoin is way too mature to make big gains now.

Is litecoin another mining program though more like what bitcoin was when it started then? Might look into it but if I have to invest in new equipment to me it just seems crazy unless there are real gains to be made.

OptimaLnrg · 13 May 2013 at 23:24

I find it all quite repulsive tbh. People complaining that folding would use too much power but as soon as they have a chance to make some money they do the same thing.

I wouldn't mind if the computation was towards a good cause. Is it?

Jay85 · 13 May 2013 at 23:27

OptimaLnrg said:
I find it all quite repulsive tbh. People complaining that folding would use too much power but as soon as they have a chance to make some money they do the same thing.

I wouldn't mind if the computation was towards a good cause. Is it?

I don't think it goes towards any good cause other than making money. Seems like a repetitive scheme that just generates money over time once it becomes rare enough and you can sell it for a decent amount. I still find it strange that such thing exists.

Edit: I wish I could fold@home but I just can't afford the electric bills with my rig on full pelt all day and all night long. Just out of curiosity though, how much extra do you folders pay on your electric bill?

imginy · 13 May 2013 at 23:38

This week I will get around £30 profit after electric on my 2 7950's.

Most weeks I get more but this week been a bit bad because difficulty went up on ltc and price went down.

It's more of a long term investment for me, I don't cash out just save up the coins who knows this time next year a bitcoin could be worth a £1000 or more

To get the most out of it you really need to mine the right coins at the right time and then swap them for bitcoins when the price is right. It's quite fun

I mainly mine alt coins like ltc/cnc/nvc.... because it's easier on my graphics card.

here is a few links
http://www.coinchoose.com/ will tell you whats the best coins to mine
https://btc-e.com/ A good exchange to buy and sell the coins
http://wemineltc.com/gettingstarted A good ltc mining pool
http://weminecnc.com/ A good cnc pool
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150331.0 The easiest mining program

imginy · 13 May 2013 at 23:44

OptimaLnrg said:
I find it all quite repulsive tbh. People complaining that folding would use too much power but as soon as they have a chance to make some money they do the same thing.

I wouldn't mind if the computation was towards a good cause. Is it?

Jay85 said:
I don't think it goes towards any good cause other than making money. Seems like a repetitive scheme that just generates money over time once it becomes rare enough and you can sell it for a decent amount. I still find it strange that such thing exists.

There is one good cause and that's getting money away from greedy bankers and governments

Jay85 · 13 May 2013 at 23:52

imginy said:
This week I will get around £30 profit after electric on my 2 7950's.

Most weeks I get more but this week been a bit bad because difficulty went up on ltc and price went down.

It's more of a long term investment for me, I don't cash out just save up the coins who knows this time next year a bitcoin could be worth a £1000 or more

To get the most out of it you really need to mine the right coins at the right time and then swap them for bitcoins when the price is right. It's quite fun

A mainly mine alt coins like ltc/cnc/nvc.... because it's easier on my graphics card.

here is a few links
http://www.coinchoose.com/ will tell you whats the best coins to mine
https://btc-e.com/ A good exchange to buy and sell the coins
http://wemineltc.com/gettingstarted A good ltc mining pool
http://weminecnc.com/ A good cnc pool
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150331.0 The easiest mining program

Hmm, do you mine as a pool or solo? Whats your mining rate with 2 x 7950's?

I will have a read through the links, but if doing it for a long term investment it seems viable in particular if the prices do go up. It's literally like playing the stock market lol.

Edit: I didn't realise there were so many different types of coins! So the prices of these coins vary from week to week then? Just like the shares of the stock market go up and down?

Edit2: I still don't get the how the prices work for selling these coins and how it converts to real money.

evohicks · 13 May 2013 at 23:55

Jay85 said:
I've been doing some reading lately about bitcoin mining as I've never ever heard of it before. Infact was shocked when I read there was virtual money just floating around out there in the form of bitcoins which can be sold and bought like on a stock exchange market.

I see a lot of people on here with crazy gpu setups so wondering how many of you here actually mine and try and get a share of this venture?

Again I've only done light reading so im not upto date with what is going on and still not 100% sure what the hell it is!

If someone can shed some more light on this subject matter, please feel free.

Glad you asked this, I was going to at some stage but I think I get the gist of it now.

Litmoose · 13 May 2013 at 23:59

I think a few to many people have jumped on the band waggon now for it to be worth while for Mr average Joe.

Jay85 · 14 May 2013 at 00:04

evohicks said:
Glad you asked this, I was going to at some stage but I think I get the gist of it now.

Well I just had a quick bash at this to see what mining actually does to my rig and since I have no other mining software installed other than litecoin it whacked my cpu usage upto 100% but im glad im on watercooling or it would get hot very quickly!

I'm having a read on how to utilize the gpu rather than the cpu instead.

humbug · 14 May 2013 at 00:15

If you have an AMD 6950/70/90 - 7950/70/90 it can be profitable against costs if you get in with the right sort, a pool is generally considered better than solo as your sharing resources.

Biffa · 14 May 2013 at 00:16

You might want to come to the Distributed Computing Subforum, we have a big thread going about it there.

ToxicTBag · 14 May 2013 at 00:21

Yes indeedy and were all barking mad

Agnostic · 14 May 2013 at 07:45

From what I saw you get rewarded for cracking hashes (ultimately for discovering passwords and other encrypted data). Is this true or am I just talking rubbish?

Gregster · 14 May 2013 at 09:45

I don't know about anyone else but I am bored as hell reading about bitcoin mining. I understand we have a forum for it:

Biffa said:
You might want to come to the Distributed Computing Subforum, we have a big thread going about it there.

Can we keep it there and out of the GFX forums please?

OptimaLnrg · 14 May 2013 at 10:28

Jay85 said:
I don't think it goes towards any good cause other than making money. Seems like a repetitive scheme that just generates money over time once it becomes rare enough and you can sell it for a decent amount. I still find it strange that such thing exists.

Edit: I wish I could fold@home but I just can't afford the electric bills with my rig on full pelt all day and all night long. Just out of curiosity though, how much extra do you folders pay on your electric bill?

i fold on an undervolted 3770t @ 2.5ghz so system full load is about 57w

Sprite · 14 May 2013 at 10:39

Jay85 said:
Well I just had a quick bash at this to see what mining actually does to my rig and since I have no other mining software installed other than litecoin it whacked my cpu usage upto 100% but im glad im on watercooling or it would get hot very quickly!

I'm having a read on how to utilize the gpu rather than the cpu instead.

If you have an nVidia card as per your forum sig, it's not really worth it. AMD GPUs are much better for mining due to the higher number of shaders they have.