Cryptocoin Mining?

[ultimatebob]

What I don't understand is why are new virtual currencies being invented. How can someone expect it would actually be used? I didn't even know something like litecoin existed week ago... I don't think even bitcoin can be used to buy stuff easily (like, go to whatever reasonably big webshop and try to look for anything else than a Paypal/CC payment option, good luck).

Litecoin actually has a good reason to exist. It takes forever to confirm a Bitcoin transaction, making it impractical to be used for something like a Point Of Sale transaction at a store. Litecoin's confirmation times were designed to occur much faster. Bitcoin was also designed to have a maximum of 21 million coins, which many people think will not be enough if it ever becomes wildly popular. Litecoin will have about 80 million coins instead.

That said, most of the other Litecoin clones don't really bring any new improvements to the table. It's mostly done by people trying cash in on the Bitcoin hype and make a quick buck, basically.

 

[taq8ojh]

The question (big mystery to me) is HOW are they making money on the new currency?
How does it work btw? You just start a web with some announcement, put up some cgminer-like program, and start generating the coins out of the blue?

 

[24601]

Lol, all the 400 USD 290s are out of stock everywhere now.

Wonder how long it will be for all the 550 USD 290x's to be out of stock everywhere.

Something tells me AMD/ATi will have a very good 4th quarter.

 

[Silverforce11]

I should clarify, I'm still holding my coins from March/April. I believe they'll go higher than ~$48.

I'm in it until ASICs obsolete GPUs, try to mine as many coins as possible til then.

With your 200+ coins, you'll be laughing to the bank in a years time.. and look back thinking "Damn, those Radeons bought me a car/boat/house/mistress!"

 

[Unoid]

glad I got my two 290's from newegg yesterday before OOS!
Funny thing is, I mined bitcoins on my two 5850's for a few weeks back in 2010 or around there. But the value was so crap I never kept the wallet D:

 

[Bateluer]

I'm going back and forth on whether I want to use my 7950 for mining Litecoins. I don't want to dump any money into what could be a bubble at its high point . . . but I do want to play around at least a little with some mining. I've set my 7950 up in my old tower and was installing W8.1 before I left for work.

Unless someone makes me an offer on the card, I'll see how it goes for a month or so.

 

[Bateluer]

glad I got my two 290's from newegg yesterday before OOS!
Funny thing is, I mined bitcoins on my two 5850's for a few weeks back in 2010 or around there. But the value was so crap I never kept the wallet D:

At least you're not that poor bastard who tossed 7.5M dollars worth.

 

[Smartazz]

This is getting to the point of insanity. There's a good chance these cards will not pay for themselves anymore, but people are spending so much for cards like the 7970.

 

[Smartazz]

I'm going back and forth on whether I want to use my 7950 for mining Litecoins. I don't want to dump any money into what could be a bubble at its high point . . . but I do want to play around at least a little with some mining. I've set my 7950 up in my old tower and was installing W8.1 before I left for work.

Unless someone makes me an offer on the card, I'll see how it goes for a month or so.

Unless you get a good price on it, it's not worth it.

 

[Bateluer]

Unless you get a good price on it, it's not worth it.

Shrug, I paid ~300 for it a year ago, and as of last night, they were going for nearly 400 on eBay. I was originally going to CL it for 150 after getting the Ex3 onto my 290X.

 

[Unoid]

Amd's Q4 results may actually be really good lol

 

[birthdaymonkey]

glad I got my two 290's from newegg yesterday before OOS!
Funny thing is, I mined bitcoins on my two 5850's for a few weeks back in 2010 or around there. But the value was so crap I never kept the wallet D:

I mined 12 bitcoins from Oct. 2012 - June 2013. Sold them for an average price of around $50.

 

[blackrook]

Why do AMD cards do better in mining?

 

[UNhooked]

Why do AMD cards do better in mining?

GCN architecture I think. Someone correct me if I am wrong

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I mined 12 bitcoins from Oct. 2012 - June 2013. Sold them for an average price of around $50.

Kind of me now with LiteCoin. I mined ~450 of them so far and sold them at an average price of $11/each. Now they're beyond $30/each. I'm sure at some point they'll be $300/each and I'll be like :'(.

 

[Unoid]

Watch out everyone, I decided to power up Cudaminer on my SLI 680's

320KH/s!! I'm in the money now.

two 680's hashing less than 1/5th of what the two 290's will do when I get them thursday. lol

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Watch out everyone, I decided to power up Cudaminer on my SLI 680's

320KH/s!! I'm in the money now.

two 680's hashing less than 1/5th of what the two 290's will do when I get them thursday. lol

It's not too bad considering it's taking you three cycles what it takes AMD chips to do in one.

960KH/s if they were doing an OP a cycle, not terrible for mid range chips :sneaky:

That said, don't waste your time... Study the market, buy in when they bottom out and cash out when they peak... You'll make all us miners look stupid!

 

[Unoid]

balla, I'm already heavily invested in real stocks. Figured I'd get a small mining rig just for fun. if it pays for itself, then great, otherwise I can retire it to HTPC

 

[Carson Dyle]

Bitcoin was also designed to have a maximum of 21 million coins, which many people think will not be enough if it ever becomes wildly popular. Litecoin will have about 80 million coins instead.

Why such a small, finite number for either?

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Watch out everyone, I decided to power up Cudaminer on my SLI 680's

320KH/s!! I'm in the money now.

two 680's hashing less than 1/5th of what the two 290's will do when I get them thursday. lol

LTC prices are high so even mining on Nvidia is profitable at the moment. I even fire up a Titan to mine at 400 kH/s (heats up the room overnight), while it draws some 275W from the wall it's still earning a rate of over $6/day after electricity costs.

 

[Unoid]

LTC prices are high so even mining on Nvidia is profitable at the moment. I even fire up a Titan to mine at 400 kH/s (heats up the room overnight), while it draws some 275W from the wall it's still earning a rate of over $6/day after electricity costs.

What does your 6MH/s rig consist of?

 

[ultimatebob]

Lol, all the 400 USD 290s are out of stock everywhere now.

Wonder how long it will be for all the 550 USD 290x's to be out of stock everywhere.

Something tells me AMD/ATi will have a very good 4th quarter.

The Radeon R9 290 is a pretty awesome card on it's own... in some games it can hang with a GeForce 780 that costs a good chunk more. The fact that it can mine altcoins is just a bonus

 

[ultimatebob]

Why such a small, finite number for either?

I'm not sure why, but it really shouldn't be a big deal since both coins go up to eight decimal places. That should last us for awhile.

 

[ultimatebob]

The question (big mystery to me) is HOW are they making money on the new currency?
How does it work btw? You just start a web with some announcement, put up some cgminer-like program, and start generating the coins out of the blue?

Yeah... pretty much. They also need to take the (freely available) Litecoin or Bitcoin source code make some changes to things like the product name and coin image. A lot of the coins also make tweaks to the confirmation time and number of coins in each block to make themselves look "new". Recompile the source code, launch the new binary, and announce it to the world as the next big thing! It's not all that hard for a skilled developer to do... I'm amazed that nobody has come up with an AnandtechCoin yet

You don't even need a different miner program for many of these coins, since they use protocols as Bitcoin and Litecoin.

 

[IEC]

Quick, somebody make the NefCoin