Ethereum GPU mining?

[Despoiler]

Geth 1.8 is out, and it says it has done a lot to fix light sync problems. Should try it out.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2018/02/14/geth-1-8-iceberg¹/

The problem with disk space taking up an amazing amount over time is significantly reduced too.

1.81 is out. the 1.8x branch is MUCH better for syncing.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Good. We don't need 400+ GB of host writes/day out of geth anymore.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's good to know I might actually try to see if I can sync again. I gave up trying after a few months.

 

[thilanliyan]

Anyone tried syncing with the eth blockchain recently?

I'm trying it on a WD 640GB Black HDD and it is taking days and is pegging the drive usage at 100% constantly. I tried with the fastsync option but still no luck.

Is a SSD a requirement to sync these days?

 

[fleshconsumed]

Anyone tried syncing with the eth blockchain recently?

I'm trying it on a WD 640GB Black HDD and it is taking days and is pegging the drive usage at 100% constantly. I tried with the fastsync option but still no luck.

Is a SSD a requirement to sync these days?

I run my wallet in a Virtual Machine, so there is additional overhead to it, but in my experience, yes, I found that running full node ETH wallet does require SSD.

FYI the fast sync option is only for the initial sync, that is after you caught up to the latest block, you will have to switch to normal sync which will hammer your HDD again.

Your three options are running in light mode, only available in Mist last time I checked, and very buggy too. Updating Geth to 1.8, which is supposed to have improved syncing, although I haven't tried it personally yet. Or give up on ETH wallet, and switch to MEW until ETH developers get their heads screwed on straight.

 

[thilanliyan]

Your three options are running in light mode, only available in Mist last time I checked, and very buggy too. Updating Geth to 1.8, which is supposed to have improved syncing, although I haven't tried it personally yet. Or give up on ETH wallet, and switch to MEW until ETH developers get their heads screwed on straight.

Hmm, okay, may have to give up on the sync then. I am running 1.8.1 actually, but maybe it is just too much for a mechanical HDD.

I'm not actually using it for a wallet, just wanted to support the network, but I don't want to put extra writes onto a SSD for no reason if I can just use a mechanical HDD.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Hmm, okay, may have to give up on the sync then. I am running 1.8.1 actually, but maybe it is just too much for a mechanical HDD.

I'm not actually using it for a wallet, just wanted to support the network, but I don't want to put extra writes onto a SSD for no reason if I can just use a mechanical HDD.

What kind of --cache options are you using for geth while syncing?

 

[IntelUser2000]

Anyone tried syncing with the eth blockchain recently?

I'm trying it on a WD 640GB Black HDD and it is taking days and is pegging the drive usage at 100% constantly. I tried with the fastsync option but still no luck.

Is a SSD a requirement to sync these days?

Try lightsync option from Mist too. Also with fastsync on CMD, it would be helpful to put larger --cache settings like 2048, so it goes to RAM much as possible rather than on HDD. It doesn't look like you need to set aside more than 4096 at maximum for the 1.8x branch.

 

[thilanliyan]

I'm using cache at 1024. Too small I guess?

 

[IntelUser2000]

Try 2048 then, if not 4096. The less it uses HDD the better. That's if you have enough leftover RAM to dedicated it for syncing.




So I just filed my return using H&R Block's free online page. Had to pay for the expert service to verify few things.

I entered my mining earnings last year which were about $3000 CDN. No noticeable impact on taxes. I think business earnings are separate from your personal income? I didn't even do much deduction, other than power costs, small space for area taken up by rigs at home(and property tax calculation). And less than $100 in depreciation deduction. If its just few thousand dollars, then I doubt you'd pay any taxes. The accountant I was talking to was saying something about businesses getting paid under $30K in GST won't pay taxes. Perhaps its the same thing.

The depreciation part in Canadian tax laws are under the CCA section. They have a rule of first year equipment being only be able to claim half, beyond that its regular. For computers its 55%. And you can choose to not use it, so you can do it for other years where you need a big deduction.

I wouldn't even worry about getting audited for a small setup. You need something like 50-100 GPU setups to start paying tax. Capital Gains taxes are even less of a worry because they are only taxed at 50% worth. 100K gain is 50K regular income in terms of tax reporting.

That's good then. No worries!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I was trying to sync it but after a few months I gave up. With --fastsync it "finished" but in reality it was not synced. Any wallet commands such as checking balance returned 0.

At some point it started to peg my file server so hard that my VMs were starting to fail. That's a separate issue I need to figure out... but basically if my file server gets too busy it starts to drop packets/data and I get "task blocked for 120s" errors. I would have to setup a dedicated machine for it if I want to do a node. I don't really want to use a SSD since it would not last long with all that small I/O but I imagine a raid 0 with spindle drives would probably be ok, then have a separate raid 5 to do daily backups. I may actually look at just putting some drives in my mining rig and using it as a node. Only downside is I did not setup that machine with any form of removable drive trays so if a drive fails I'd have to take it offline. I imagine a Raspberry Pi with a NAS box might work too.

Also it's good to know about not having to worry about taxes for a small rig. I was starting to worry that I would end up having to pay more in taxes than what I even make, since with a small rig the gains are not all that high compared to the costs. I don't expect to see a ROI for at least a year so if I had to pay taxes on top of that it would probably push ROI even further out.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I was starting to worry that I would end up having to pay more in taxes than what I even make, since with a small rig the gains are not all that high compared to the costs. I don't expect to see a ROI for at least a year so if I had to pay taxes on top of that it would probably push ROI even further out.

The early mover advantage really applies here. In 2016, you didn't have to worry about mining profits and taxes at all. You were mining $7-10 coins every few days anyway. Then when the price multiplies, your holding does too. But the tax says you pay based on the $7-10 value. Until you sell of course.

Just to be clear, my knowledge about Crypto mining taxes are pretty rough. I'm just brushing the concerns away because I won't be that big of a miner anytime soon, lol.

 

[Accord99]

I think the tax issues for mining is minor compared to tax issues for frequent traders where each trade is supposed to be a taxable event and any profit/loss for that trade is to be recorded. Not only does this require a lot of paperwork, this can lead to a scenario where trading during the late 2017 run-up resulted in huge "paper profits", followed by huge losses during the correction this year. But the trader still has to pay taxes on those 2017 profits.

Frequent trading also means that profits would be considered ordinary income, rather than capital gains.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm using cache at 1024. Too small I guess?

Possibly. I did some trial runs (mentioned in this thread actually) with geth 1.7x and found that --cache 10240 worked great, but it soaked up around 12GB of RAM. Bleh! You might be able to get away with a smaller --cache value than that with geth 1.8x .

 

[Elfear]

Any Nicehash users know what I'm doing wrong setting up my pool settings?

[/IMG]

 

[IntelUser2000]

Elfear:

Maybe because the pool is an Ethereum pool but the Algorithm is set as Scrypt not Daggerhash? Just a guess.

 

[Elfear]

Elfear:

Maybe because the pool is an Ethereum pool but the Algorithm is set as Scrypt not Daggerhash? Just a guess.

That was it! Thanks!

Successfully got my last block at EthPool with the help of some Nicehash mining power. Switched to EthMiner so I don't get stuck in an endless wait game when difficulty rises.

 

[IntelUser2000]

How many of you have invested into ICO's?

I've considered it but nothing really stands out at the moment. I also have a problem of using tokens to invest. Like someone said, imagining using different tokens for every single service. It sounds like a nightmare.

Also nearly every one of them calls itself a revolution. If you have revolution everywhere though, its not a revolution, its an everyday thing.

Edit: Bought Ledger Nano S directly from the Ledger site yesterday! Free shipping to Canada, it cost me little over $120. Cheaper than from Craigslist and Amazon and since its from the original manufacturer, far less reason to worry about tampering.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Edit: Bought Ledger Nano S directly from the Ledger site yesterday! Free shipping to Canada, it cost me little over $120. Cheaper than from Craigslist and Amazon and since its from the original manufacturer, far less reason to worry about tampering.

theyre pretty good. i have both the nano s and a trezor.

when you initially set it up and write down the seed words let it generate a btc (or whatever) addy and copy the addy down somewhere. then wipe it (enter the pin wrong 4 times) and restore with the seed. again generate the coin addy and make sure its the same addy you initially got from it. if it matches, youre good to go, start loading coins into it. no match, start from scratch, something went wrong.

its a PITA restoring from the seed on a nano s but believe me the piece of mind knowing your seed restores correctly is worth it.

do not keep the seed in electronic format (picture, pdf, txt whatever). yeah there are various fairly secure ways but much safer to go paper or carved or engraved and such only. use waterproof ink if you go that route. the seed is the most important thing, you can lose the nano but the seed works on any bip38 (39?) wallet. if anyone gets seed and any passphrase they have your coins. so it needs to be secure from others. make multiple copies and secure them well (bank deposit box, safe, buried, whatever).

and make a passphrase, its like a 25th word. do not keep the passphrase with the seed. that way if someone gets your seed somehow they still cant get your coins. btw passphrase is not the same as the pin it wants you to generate.

sorry if you already know all this stuff. ive heard of folks who messed up and lost coins. not the nanos fault, operator error. so figured id post it.

 

[Charlie22911]

Losing coins sucks. Back in the early BTC days before wallet encryption hit bitcoin core, I attempted to encrypt my wallet using win zip without having a backup. Lost 20BTC doing that, which wasn’t much at the time; it’s a decent amount today though.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Losing coins sucks. Back in the early BTC days before wallet encryption hit bitcoin core, I attempted to encrypt my wallet using win zip without having a backup. Lost 20BTC doing that, which wasn’t much at the time; it’s a decent amount today though.

yeah ive lost some due to my own stupidity here and there. when they were only a few dollars each it hardly seemed worth being careful with them. id toss them around like popcorn testing various wallets and exchanges.

now? crap, sure wish id paid more attention back then..

 

[IntelUser2000]

theyre pretty good. i have both the nano s and a trezor.

Thanks!

I bookmarked MadPacket's post about Ledger, but I'll take your advice too. I may have to bookmark your post because its still days away from shipping.

I might do the engraving on aluminum or even steel, I don't know. They don't work in conjunction with Mist right? I'm a bit bothered by MEW because of the problems they were having between the two top guys.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Thanks!
I might do the engraving on aluminum or even steel, I don't know. They don't work in conjunction with Mist right? I'm a bit bothered by MEW because of the problems they were having between the two top guys.

i think its sorted out as of now but i havent used it since that stuff happened. i would definitely make sure 1st as both the nano s and trezor use mew to interface with the wallet.

yeah mist keystore files need to be imported to mew 1st if i recall correctly. trezor/nano s does not directly support eth, they use mew, and mew supports importing the mist keystore files. i went that route because i couldnt get the mist/eth blockchain to sync anymore.

it was a while ago that i sent my eth to my trezor. i think i just copy/pasted addys from the "trezor-mew" interface to the "just-mew" interface and sent them that way. then later when i got the nano sent some eth from my trezor to my nano s as i use the nano mainly for erc20 tokens.

probably sounds confusing as i suck at explaining things, but it was pretty easy. always test with small amounts of coin 1st before sending the bulk of it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I think the tax issues for mining is minor compared to tax issues for frequent traders where each trade is supposed to be a taxable event and any profit/loss for that trade is to be recorded. Not only does this require a lot of paperwork, this can lead to a scenario where trading during the late 2017 run-up resulted in huge "paper profits", followed by huge losses during the correction this year. But the trader still has to pay taxes on those 2017 profits.

Frequent trading also means that profits would be considered ordinary income, rather than capital gains.

would trading be an issue even for small gamers? I'm reluctant to play with trading as I'm too scared to lose my shirt in taxes and end up paying more than what I make as I would be doing lot of small trades where I might only do like 1% gains but if that gets taxed at say, 33% then I would lose more.

That and I don't even know how the paperwork would work for that, it sounds complicated.

Or do I only worry if I start making more than like 10k?

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

AFAIK doesnt matter how much or little you made, in the USA the IRS considers every buy/trade/sell from a coin or cash to a coin or cash a taxable event. if it was only a few hundred bucks or something i probably wouldnt worry too much though.

because i traded a bunch of free (zero cost basis because of the fork) bcash for btc, plus did pretty decently in trading, i am gonna pay dearly this year.

yippee