Bitcoins

[Devin]

Just curious to see if any other Tempers dabble in Bitcoins or other types of virtual currency? I've been chatting about it recently in the ShoutBox, but now I'm bringing the discussion to the forums.

To experiment with my GF got me a USB Block Erupter, along with a fan and external powered USB hub. Waiting on the hub to get here so I'm using a spare. I found out that I can mine using my Raspberry Pi as a sort of central unit. It doesn't use much power, and nor does the USB Block Erupter (2.5 watts).

I've been experimenting and I get a decent 350~ to 400~ (And on the rare occasion 500~) megahashes a second. Meaning that if I mine Bitcoins in slush's pool I make $1 and change every 48 hours. From there I can cash out to a wallet. I've started using Cryptsy which allows me to easily buy/sell/trade different types of coins, which is nice. I originally wanted to mine Litecoin, but the USB Block Erupter doesn't support scrypt mining sadly. So I'm stuck with coins that allow SHA256 mining.

Any other Tempers mine? If so any insight on what you mine, what pool you mine in, or what everyone should be mining. Bitcoin at the start was extremely cheap. Now they got for $104 a coin. I'm currently mining Terracoin, at which I'll be making 1.265 coins a day.

Spoiler

 

[PityOnU]

~$126 a day?

Not bad.

How much was all the equipment up front?

 

[Devin]

~$126 a day?

Not bad.

How much was all the equipment up front?

Oh no. I'll be making Terracoins, which are extremely lower valued then Bitcoins. At the moment.

The Erupter's $56.
The Raspberry Pi was $25 I believe.
USB Fan was $16.
The USB Hub was $8.

Around $105. Of course just experimenting, and the Pi has other uses. They were all gifts though. If I mined Bitcoins directly, I'd make $18~ a month. Which would pay off that stuff in about 5-6 months. Or 7 taking into effect rising difficulty of the mining.

 

[PityOnU]

Oh no. I'll be making Terracoins, which are extremely lower valued then Bitcoins. At the moment.

The Erupter's $56.
The Raspberry Pi was $25 I believe.
USB Fan was $16.
The USB Hub was $8.

Around $105. Of course just experimenting, and the Pi has other uses. They were all gifts though. If I mined Bitcoins directly, I'd make $18~ a month. Which would pay off that stuff in about 5-6 months. Or 7 taking into effect rising difficulty of the mining.

I've always felt there was a lot of money to be made in this stuff, but had never been able to get into it because of the large barrier to entry cost-wise and (more so) the extreme intricacy of the system.

if I had a bitcoin shirpa, though, I could probably get past the initial cost, especially with the power efficient soc's they have for mining now.

 

[Devin]

Definitely. Bitcoins sold for $12 a pop a little while ago, and now they're up to $104. You don't even need to mine coins, people sell them all the time. Buy a cheap coin now, let it sit in your account for a few years. Come back to money. Bit of a gamble though. I bought a new currency called Quark, which is dirt cheap now. I bought 923 Quark coins. It's not even a month old. Now I just plan on letting them sit in there, they can't go much lower than they're at currently.

 

[Pedeadstrian]

I've always felt there was a lot of money to be made in this stuff, but had never been able to get into it because of the large barrier to entry cost-wise and (more so) the extreme intricacy of the system.

if I had a bitcoin shirpa, though, I could probably get past the initial cost, especially with the power efficient soc's they have for mining now.

I always thought that school computer labs would be great for mining. I don't really know anything about it, though. In my mind, it's like folding, but instead of trying to cure cancer, you're trying to make money. I doubt it'd be a profit for me in the end, considering it'd probably make my computer's parts die quicker.

 

[marksteele]

I mine bitcoins on my main computer in the winter. Average ~800MH/s on a amd 7970. Honestly though, with the new advances in ASIC mining rigs using anything other than one is a waste. The difficulty rating will ramp up too quickly.

That being said $300 for 5GH/s is a decent investment


edit: The real money for me is bitcoin gambling. If I didn't gamble it would take about a month to net $100. That would also require my computer running 24/7. Whereas if I gamble and get lucky I can take 0.02 bitcoins and turn it into 2 bitcoins

 

[Devin]

I always thought that school computer labs would be great for mining. I don't really know anything about it, though. In my mind, it's like folding, but instead of trying to cure cancer, you're trying to make money. I doubt it'd be a profit for me in the end, considering it'd probably make my computer's parts die quicker.

Yeah school computers aren't made for this kind of stuff. CPU mining's basically dead, and the computers probably have integrated graphics cards. Which is again terrible for mining. The power consumption cost, and time setting them up isn't worth it.

Heck my i3 sucks at mining, (Like 54 megahashes a second.) and my integrated graphics card doesn't mine anything. Plus you don't want to mine with those due to them degrading faster with mining.

 

[Devin]

I mine bitcoins on my main computer in the winter. Average ~800MH/s on a amd 7970. Honestly though, with the new advances in ASIC mining rigs using anything other than one is a waste. The difficulty rating will ramp up too quickly.

That being said $300 for 5GH/s is a decent investment

Definitely. Just wish those miners from Butterfly labs would ship already.

(Double post I know.)

 

[marksteele]

Definitely. Just wish those miners from Butterfly labs would ship already.

(Double post I know.)

you got the 5GH/s model or did you go higher?

The only reason I won't invest in a rig atm is because the US gov't is threatening regulation. If that happens the value will plummet faster than you can say "damnit"

edit: and ofc theres the issue of the volatility. I sold some coins at $110 the next day it was at $230 *cry*

 

[Joe88]

is that including electricity cost?

 

[Devin]

you got the 5GH/s model or did you go higher?

The only reason I won't invest in a rig atm is because the US gov't is threatening regulation. If that happens the value will plummet faster than you can say "damnit"

I wanted to, but then I saw people were waiting so long for their units they ordered like a year ago. I'd wait until people get their orders from this year.

 

[marksteele]

is that including electricity cost?

ASIC miners are really really power efficient. Your looking at 4 -5 watts per gigahash

 

[Devin]

is that including electricity cost?

Haven't really calculated that. But from what I read the Pi's like 5 watts of power, and the USB Block Erupter is 2.5 watts. So really it's not that much. If this website's correct, with the cost of power in Florida. The cost of power's .02 cents a day.

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Specs?

Also, should I use my GTX 760 or HD 7770 OC for bitcoins? AMD has the edge in mining, but the 760 is way stronger.

 

[Niksy]

Interesting topic. I learned about Bitcoins too late and now it's a big hassle for a normal user to mine them. Still, I find the idea interesting.

Can someone explain what a USB Block Erupter is? And what these GH/s and MH/s are?

Also, another interesting, I think, piece of info - a guy on reddit invested ~30,000$ into BTC when they were cheap and now has millions in bitcoins.

 

[Devin]

Interesting topic. I learned about Bitcoins too late and now it's a big hassle for a normal user to mine them. Still, I find the idea interesting.

Can someone explain what a USB Block Erupter is? And what these GH/s and MH/s are?

Also, another interesting, I think, piece of info - a guy on reddit invested ~30,000$ into BTC when they were cheap and now has millions in bitcoins.

http://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=store

They're like little USB sticks that mine coin. If your computer's terrible at mining then you can buy a USB hub, fan, and a bunch of the Erupters. Put the Erupters lets say 10 in the USB hub. Hook that up to your comp. You'll now pull 3.3GH/s. (The cost of 10 of them is $625.) At 3.3 GH/s (Which is the least they pull. My Erupter goes about 350 to 400~ MH/s. Sometimes it hits 500~ MH/s.) You'll be pulling in $140.33 at the current difficulty. Of course people mine another currency called Litecoin. If Bitcoin was Gold, Litecoin would be Silver. It's worth less, but is far easier to mine. (Too bad the USB Block Erupter doesn't support mining Litecoin or any other non SHA256 based coins.) It doesn't seem very cost effective, but just imagine at the start of Bitcoins. Extremely easier to mine due to the lower mining difficulty. People would rake them in. Now a few years later they're extremely rich. That guy with millions, is a billionaire most likely.

Hashes are if I'm correct. Are how fast you're mining. KH (Kilohash)-> MH (Megahashes), -> GH (Gigahashes).

 

[Ericthegreat]

Just curious to see if any other Tempers dabble in Bitcoins or other types of virtual currency? I've been chatting about it recently in the ShoutBox, but now I'm bringing the discussion to the forums.

I coulda bought bitcoins sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fucking cheap at one time >.< Who the fuck believed in a internet currency widely used for drugs/money laundering.

 

[trumpet-205]

Specs?

Also, should I use my GTX 760 or HD 7770 OC for bitcoins? AMD has the edge in mining, but the 760 is way stronger.

With the introduction of these ASIC miner, it is now become impractical to mine using PC really. The thing about bitcoin is that it is subjected to inflation a lot.

AMD has an edge in mining since it can do 32-bit right bit shift (one of the calculation in SHA-256) in one cycle, vs 3 cycles in Nvidia. Unless you are using Titan, 780, or Telsa K20 (where CUDA 3.5 specifically adds an instruction for right bit shift), AMD still has an edge in mining.

 

[raulpica]

A friend of mine and me wanted to buy ASIC miners from Butterfly Labs and get into the Bitcoins market, but the queue times are simply effin' ridicolous, and that threw me off a lot.

Mining with anything else than an ASIC miner is anti-economical here in Italy :/

The USB sticks have a ridicolous MH rate to justify buying them, imho.

 

[Fishaman P]

I kinda wanted to start Litecoin mining, but since it's on a shared computer, I don't have admin rights.
My AMD GPU has horribly broken OpenCL in the currently-installed drivers, so that's a dead-end.
Then there's the fact that the retarded Norton Internet Security installed thinks Bitcoinminer is a threat.