Cryptocoin Mining?

[chihlidog]

I don't get it, what is this bitcoining stuff?

Run gpu at 100%, find blocks, get paid bitcoins. Trade bitcoins for cash, gift cards, or merchandise. That's as simple as it can be answered.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Run gpu at 100%, find blocks, get paid bitcoins. Trade bitcoins for cash, gift cards, or merchandise. That's as simple as it can be answered.

How hard is this? Or does it not makes sense with power consumption costs.

 

[gorobei]

I don't get it, what is this bitcoining stuff?

you need to read some of the earlier posts. there are links to some articles and wikis. i put up a short synopsis of the general model.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Post them in OP...who wants to read through 8 pages ... haha.

Does it make sense ot try it, if not, then pass.

 

[gorobei]

How hard is this? Or does it not makes sense with power consumption costs.

it's relatively easy as long as you have an amd 5 or 6 series card(juniper/cypress/barts/cayman).

not worth it for cpu or nvidia cards. power costs are minor compared to profits depending on market value of bitcons(fluctuates like any currency)

 

[v8envy]

I don't get it, what is this bitcoining stuff?

Bitcoining is a game which currently runs well only on 5 and 6 series AMD hardware. You max out your machine running it, and your score is in dollars. If you're good, you end up with more dollars than you've spent on power and hardware.

As far as worrying that the BTC craze is over: nobody knows the future. But looking at the past you have nothing to worry about so long as bitcoinwatch.com shows total computing power in the network increasing.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Nice, I have 4x6950's sitting idle all the time .

Ill put em to use I guess...

 

[chihlidog]

Keep in mind, too, that it gets more difficult to find these blocks as time goes on. There's potential for a LOT of money to be made. If you've already got the hardware its sort of a no-brainer to mine a bit with it. If not, whether its really worth it to buy one of the GPUs that are good at this is really speculation.

 

[gorobei]

even a cycle of miners dropping in and out as profit/coin value fluctuates is fine. if value is too low then miners drop out and lack of computing power will force difficulty to drop.

treat as form of entertainment/hobby/experiment that happens to pay out dollars.

 

[ViviTheMage]

so just install the application, and be on my marry way?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Nice, I have 4x6950's sitting idle all the time .

Ill put em to use I guess...

I hope you have a strong power supply, Bitcoin mining beats the hell out of the GPU.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I hope you have a strong power supply, Bitcoin mining beats the hell out of the GPU.

Pretty sure it's underutilized ... HX1000


Are there some good tutorials on how this all works, what it is? someone update the OP, haha.

What is the official site?

 

[Smartazz]

Vivi, I just read the stuff on their wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

I decided to give it a go since I don't pay for electricity and I already have a 6870, so I got nothing really to lose. However, I noticed that while I'm running GUIMiner, that my desktop gets really laggy, especially any Windows animations. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

[gorobei]

we should probably make a how-to/faq/beginners thread either here or in distributed computing and have another thread for all the people debating the validity/foundation of the system.

 

[NoQuarter]

Vivi, I just read the stuff on their wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

I decided to give it a go since I don't pay for electricity and I already have a 6870, so I got nothing really to lose. However, I noticed that while I'm running GUIMiner, that my desktop gets really laggy, especially any Windows animations. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Add "-f 60" to your switches. You'll lose just a bit of computation speed but desktop won't be laggy anymore.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Thanks smartazz.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Pretty sure it's underutilized ... HX1000


Are there some good tutorials on how this all works, what it is? someone update the OP, haha.

What is the official site?

This works for most people, but it's somewhat involved: http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

But I'll give you the simple way I did it.

I downloaded the CPU miner here: http://www.bitcoin.org/ If I remember correctly, when you set it up you'll get your wallet. I don't actually use this miner since it uses your CPU, but I use it as a wallet.

Then I downloaded this bitcoin GPU miner: http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=3878.0 (I'm going to donate a little to him, it works well) Once you download it you'll just want to copy it three more times since you have four GPU's. When you run each instance you can assign it via drop down to GPU's 0-3.

I was not able to mine solo, there appears to be a problem with solo mining at this time on the GUI GPU miner. So, I joined a pool. I created an account at: www.deepbit.net

You'll enter your ID and password in the GPU miner, it will pull work from deepbit.net and mine.

This has worked for me so far, good luck.

 

[Smartazz]

Thanks NoQuarter, that did the trick and it didn't really hurt my computation speed, around 220Mh/s like it was before.

 

[OCGuy]

Thanks Slowspyder, I will start my mining this evening! I hadn't had time to read up on the main FAQ site, and you made it easy!

 

[krumme]

we should probably make a how-to/faq/beginners thread either here or in distributed computing and have another thread for all the people debating the validity/foundation of the system.

Okey i simply dont understand the system. What thread should i use then? - for me it just sound like if human mankind burn electricity, we will all get richer? For that we have the most fishy site ever created. Seriously i dont understand the logic - no shit, its just bla bla bla in my eyes. If someone can explain it without all the nonse in a simple way, it would be appriciated.

 

[NoQuarter]

Okey i simply dont understand the system. What thread should i use then? - for me it just sound like if human mankind burn electricity, we will all get richer? For that we have the most fishy site ever created. Seriously i dont understand the logic - no shit, its just bla bla bla in my eyes. If someone can explain it without all the nonse in a simple way, it would be appriciated.

Currency is just something people place arbitrary value on to barter with. As long as it is something with inherent scarcity it is pretty suitable. Gold is a naturally rare element, availability of dollar bills is controlled by the Fed, bottle caps are hard to find in a wasteland, and bitcoins have a limit on production The only thing that makes any currency worth something is how many other people will use it to trade goods.

The actual work and burning of electricity to make the coins places no value on them, that is just to insure the uniqueness of the currency so that it can't be counterfeited or overproduced. The real question is why would you use bitcoins over another currency like USD. Tax evasion and illicit trade are probably two reasons, but easy of internet and international transactions are others, and possibly decentralizing control away from banks..

 

[Aikouka]

You'll enter your ID and password in the GPU miner, it will pull work from deepbit.net and mine.

One thing to specify is that you need to enter your worker ID and password into the GPU Miner not your pool account info. You create workers through your pool account. For example, your account could be "bcminer" and your worker account may be "bcminer.69501", "bcminer.69502" and so on. You name them yourself (but they start with your pool's account username), so you can use them to differentiate your workers. Mine are username_58701 and username_69501.

You can use the same worker for everything, but it's always interesting to see how each one does.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Thanks Slowspyder, I will start my mining this evening! I hadn't had time to read up on the main FAQ site, and you made it easy!

No problem, glad I could help. Good luck!

 

[gorobei]

small version:

Bitcoin is a money transfer service like paypal or western union. It allows users to send money over the internet, as payment for services rendered or goods. The main difference is that it uses a virtual currency(bitcoins) instead of dollars.

The bitcoin system differs from paypal buy not having giant centralized mainframes or server centers performing the accounting. Instead a small software client program running on thousands-millions of volunteer users' computers keep track of all transactions and keep records of who has how much in their account/wallet.

This client program does this through strong cryptographic security inspections on the transfer signatures. To reward the client-runners/miners for using their computer runtime and electricity, the system hands out coin rewards to those who solve and confirm the crypto. Everytime a block of security data is solved the entire network awards 25 coins to whoever solved/mined it.

The miners then spend the coins on a online money exchanges like mtgox to convert into dollars/services rendered/llama socks/etc. Depending on how many people want to use the coins the value goes up and down. [most miners are using the profits to buy more equipment to mine]

The crypto started off easy enough such that anyone could mine it and earn coins. But at that time the coins were worthless because no one wanted them. As more people used bitcoins the value increased and so did the difficulty. Cpu's used to be good enough, but eventually only powerful AMD videocard gpu's running openCL could solve a block in a reasonable amount of time. It now takes a pool of users with a buttload of computational power to mine the blocks.

The reason some people consider this a scam is because there is a money for nothing aspect to the system. As miners mine, they get coins. Those particular coins are created at the time of solving, and did not exist prior. The system mints those coins as part of the growth plan built into the system. The plan will eventually stop minting coins once the total reaches 21,000,000. The difficulty of the crypto changes to control the rate that coins are generated, such that a steady regular minting rate occurs rather than only a few people getting a bunch at the beginning. Right now we are in the early to middle phase.

Unlike dollars, yen, euros which governments create/mint whenever they want to manipulate the economy; bitcoins are controlled by the software running on a fixed schedule.

Why it is not a scam:
If paypal decided to divest itself of the data centers it runs, and subcontracted the records keeping/backup/system security to someone else for a nominal service fee, it wouldn't be overly problematic.
Bitcoin's mining clients/users are simply subcontractors. If they were paid directly in dollars instead of coins there would be no hint of criminality. But by paying them in bitcoins, the system generates more users of the currency and ensures a level of confidence in long term utilization of the coins(as well as eliminating initial need for operating capital). As long as miners can get their money out as they please the system is fine.

The future:
Whether bitcoin remains a viable alternative to dollars and paypal remains to be seen. Any number of factors can change the willingness of people to use the coins or run the crypto checks: government intervention, new gpu architecture and performance, individuals or groups manipulating the market, ddos of the infrastructure. In the short term there is an opportunity to use previously idle pc's to earn money (to pay for more pc's).

 

[OCGuy]

No problem, glad I could help. Good luck!

Up and running in deepbit, averging about 231 per GPU..pulling 440w from my wall according to the ol' kill-a-watt.