Bitcoin

[hawthorne]

Anyone participating? Any recommendations for mining groups? Clients?
Looking to get started but not sure where to begin beyond running something on my PC. Lots of different 5g boxes around it seems but not sure which would be the best to get.

Any input would be great.

 

[Fry]

Making money out of mining bitcoins from PC hardware has gotten to near impossible unless price explodes again. The power consumed compared to how many bitcoins you create doesn't let you break even. I had a few mining rigs about 3 years ago, but sold them off (what a mistake that was), got back into it about 4 months ago but about to switch to litecoins due to it still being profitable to mine with a PC unlike bitcoins.

Only people currently making profit is those that have custom built mining hardware such as the machines created by Butterfly Labs. Though wait list for orders over there is a few months. I actually have an order I put in about 4 months ago I'm waiting for still.

I'm convinced if you want to make money out of bitcoin you need to make some sort of service that includes bitcoins, or just buy and sit on the coins then wait for price to rise.

 

[devestator]

Yeah, I toyed with the idea of doing a 5g machine and running it on solar power to eliminate the cost of power usage (just an initial cost for a battery bank and such). But it just didn't seem worth it. By the time I actually get the 5g machine on the waiting lists, it'll do me about as much good as running from my video cards right now would do. Because by the time I get that machine, the network will have a LOT more power on it with all the other 5g and 64g+ machines out there.

So if I ever decide to pursue bitcoins, it'll be like stock. I'll buy when I see them low and hope they explode again =P

 

[riot]

https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/500-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

Holy shit...over $22,000 for it.

I was thinking about mining when it first started up but i missed the rush and read a while back that folks are losing money now so i decided against it. Maybe in the future though!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2

 

[Fry]

I ordered two 5 GH's Miners a few months ago.

I currently have two 7970's running and doing about 1GH for 500 watts of power.

The new miner will give 5GH for about 18 watts each (Though still need a PC so add another 100 watts).

Truthfully I don't even think it's going to be a great investment due to how fast new custom hardware is changing, but certainly destroys doing it on video cards.

 

[riot]

I think we all need to donate money to Pete and butter him up then work on convincing him to run some mining programs on the NSA super computers.

That'd be an lol worthy leak if it ever got out. 'NSA using super computers to mine bitcoins. Tonight at Ten'.


(No I'm not serious. Yes it was a joke filled with sarcasm. I know there will be at least one person who misses it so I need to clarify lol) :thumbup:

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2

 

[hawthorne]

Little confused then.. This article was posted only 2 days ago:

How a total n00b mined $700 in bitcoins | Ars Technica

And he made $700 in one month using only a single 5G butterfly labs device.
That seems to me to more than pay for the power for the device and the PC.

 

[riot]

The other issue is a bit stickier: the Bitcoin system adjusts its overall difficulty as mining speed increases in an attempt to limit the speed of Bitcoin production. A few years ago, a 5GH/s miner like the Jalapeño would have produced a veritable torrent of bitcoins in a day; a few years*from*now, specialized hardware will be required to mine even tiny fractions of BTC.

This is why I avoided it. As the algorithms get harder, you'll need to constantly upgrade your hardware to remain competitive. I believe they have a system in place to release only an x amount of bitcoins to keep inflation to a minimum. As bitcoins increase, they become harder and harder to mine or something like that.

If you can get a box while the going is good though, give it a shot and let us know how it went. Getting a good box might be the bottleneck though.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2

 

[PeteSampras]

I have subsidized electricity and spare computers. if you could do this with spare computers I could fire up a bunch of them and just leave them on all the time and make bank.

 

[hawthorne]

You can, Pete, it's just not as efficient.

This: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison shows the efficiency of different hardware. You can even just used video cards, or even CPUs. CPUs are the least efficient, and video cards are only marginally better. That's why there are other hardware units being developed.

Quick for instance. My video card on the computer I tested with can do ~66MHs per second. The 5G boxes we were discussing above can do 5000MHs per second. And do so for much less power cost. Still, until I can spare the $2-300 USD for one of the 5G boxes, I can get started with tiny batches.

I was just hoping to get more info if anyone has used any of the other 5G boxes since the Butterfly Labs one is the one reviewed. ASICMiner is coming out with a 300MHs that looks good but have to buy like 50 of them.

 

[aCunningGnome]

I tried mining on my video card at home, but it wasn't worth the cost of the power. I've considered plugging in a 5G at my office and no one would be any wiser of it. Anyone else done that?

 

[n00bsgoboom]

Something I find weird, if these ASIC miners from Butterfly are so good why are they selling it and not running those miners themselves?

 

[hawthorne]

nbg, they actually talk about that in one of the articles I have been reading about all this. In order to get the capital to even make these boxes, Butterfly Labs had to do massive pre-orders. So, they have to fulfill all of those pre-orders. And from what I have been seeing, they are also making use of the technology as well.

 

[hawthorne]

I tried mining on my video card at home, but it wasn't worth the cost of the power. I've considered plugging in a 5G at my office and no one would be any wiser of it. Anyone else done that?

Interesting. I keep my computers on all the time anyway, some for torrents, some for running bots, some for rendering. I don't see any reason not to run these on computers I am already leaving running as is.

 

[rob]

Something I find weird, if these ASIC miners from Butterfly are so good why are they selling it and not running those miners themselves?

Why do you think they took over a year to release? they had to 'test' them first!

 

[fallenangelcaged]

I agree with rob, BFL is a terrible company, friend of mine on the server I play on had ordered on last July, they will probably flood the market with them when the value of BTC becomes unprofitable.

But the best thing I have seen was EBay scammers selling their spot. Wait until the 45 days and resell the item over and over.

I got a usb block eruptor that will probably never pay for itself lol.

 

[cudacuf]

I know this is thread necromancy, but has anyone else read this thread recently and wanted to kick themselves in the ass?

 

[Fry]

I know this is thread necromancy, but has anyone else read this thread recently and wanted to kick themselves in the ass?

Things in bitcoin land have gone nuts. Funny reading about Butterfly labs, they ripped off a lot of people.

What we all would do with some hindsight.