BitCoin: making money with DC - literally!

[Rezin777]

I'm pretty sure no one bought a 58xx series card for bitcoin

I've bought seven of them.

Waiting on PSU

My original 5850 in the sandwich!

MSI Lightning oddball on the bottom

 

[darkewaffle]

What i am thinking is: Why do some posters want us to take part so much? Why not accept our "no" and leave it? Why is it so important to recruit more people when Rezin777 states:
- I don't understand this!

There must be some reason for this persistence. Could it be that those in the bitcoin program need the growth to make a gain? And that possibly at our costs? I don't trust any program which relies on recruiting more and more people because this reminds me of the pyramid-scheme, where the people at the bottom pay all and gain nothing.

He says it's not in his best interests in the sense that he will make fewer bitcoins, but more members increases the trust in the bitcoin which is the most important component of the system. You can make as many coins as you want but unless people give a crap, it's meaningless.

Bitcoin uses a distributed database spread across nodes of a peer-to-peer network to journal transactions, and uses cryptography in order to provide basic security functions, such as ensuring that bitcoins can only be spent by the person who owns them, and never more than once.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin


I never mentioned a deflationary spiral. A deflationary spiral deals with falling prices leading to falling demand which leads to falling prices and so on and so forth. I'm arguing that someday in the future when the number of bitcoins becomes sufficiently small, someone forward thinking who has been saving can conceivably dump enough coin to completely reset the economy. The wiki and the forums and the users love to throw around "we could run this economy on a single coin" but when you get to that point what happens when someone still has 10 whole coins and then starts spending? The very thing you vilify, inflation, will be put into absolute overdrive.

And that day in the future may not be so far off, as I think it's quite possible the total number of bitcoins will begin to decrease long before the static 21M point is ever met. Everyone mining now is accustomed to 50 coins per block. In not so many months, that will half itself to 25. Then again to 12.5, and so on and so forth every 210k blocks. While it is possible that the spending power gained relative to the effort put in will not change, though I think it's unlikely as there will be substantial lag time for the market to adjust to the slower influx of currency, the perception alone of suddenly everyone earning "half" will have a very detrimental impact on the interest in mining and thus the faith in the coin. It's like the president announcing that in 2012 everyone will earn half their pay, but it'll even out in the end when it depresses inflation.

And I fail to see the relevance of time preference. If your point is that people are more likely to spend then save, then of course that's true and to me that means that it would be even easier for large sums of coin to [adversely] impact the economy because the majority of the users would have trivial relative spending power.

 

[Rezin777]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Ahh, that means that you can't spend the same coin twice. If you have 1 BTC in your wallet, and you send 1BTC to John, you can't then send 1BTC to Joe. You can't double-spend, in effect counterfeiting the coin. I agree, it could be phrased better.

I never mentioned a deflationary spiral. A deflationary spiral deals with falling prices leading to falling demand which leads to falling prices and so on and so forth. I'm arguing that someday in the future when the number of bitcoins becomes sufficiently small, someone forward thinking who has been saving can conceivably dump enough coin to completely reset the economy. The wiki and the forums and the users love to throw around "we could run this economy on a single coin" but when you get to that point what happens when someone still has 10 whole coins and then starts spending? The very thing you vilify, inflation, will be put into absolute overdrive.

And that day in the future may not be so far off, as I think it's quite possible the total number of bitcoins will begin to decrease long before the static 21M point is ever met. Everyone mining now is accustomed to 50 coins per block. In not so many months, that will half itself to 25. Then again to 12.5, and so on and so forth every 210k blocks. While it is possible that the spending power gained relative to the effort put in will not change, though I think it's unlikely as there will be substantial lag time for the market to adjust to the slower influx of currency, the perception alone of suddenly everyone earning "half" will have a very detrimental impact on the interest in mining and thus the faith in the coin. It's like the president announcing that in 2012 everyone will earn half their pay, but it'll even out in the end when it depresses inflation.

And I fail to see the relevance of time preference. If your point is that people are more likely to spend then save, then of course that's true and to me that means that it would be even easier for large sums of coin to [adversely] impact the economy because the majority of the users would have trivial relative spending power.

I see.

Why will the number of Bitcoins decrease? Lost wallets? I really think that will be a drop in the pond.

The fact that the reward is cut in half at certain intervals will be factored into the price over time. It won't be a sudden an impact as you say, because we already know when it is going to occur. Sure, there might be some impact.

You also have to consider that transaction fees are included in the block reward, so as Bitcoin grows and more people are transferring Bitcoins, the reward per block will increase. (Fees are optional, but they insure a prompt transaction when there are many transactions.) Will transaction fees be enough to counter the halving and keep mining profitable? Time will tell.

The type of inflation you are talking about, removing Bitcoins from the economy by saving, then putting them back into the economy by spending, isn't equivalent to just creating new money. If those coins are removed, the buying power of all the other coins goes up. Then when those coins are put back into the economy, the buying power of all other coins decreases. That's part of a free market, and I have no problem with it. The reason time preference has to be considered is that someone will have to choose to save those coins for that long, that's risky on it's own.

It's different from everyone having their coins, and agreeing on their value, then I mint 5,000,000 new coins, devaluing all coins already in existence. I never removed those coins to begin with, so the other coins didn't benefit from the first part of the equation.

Most importantly, a person who removes currency from the economy for savings is not stealing from everyone else when they spend it. Anyone can save Bitcoins, once the 21 million is reached, no one can create new ones.

Also, I think you might not realize the amount of time we are talking about until the 21 million coins are mined. Bitcoin will either be a success or not long before then. I hope an even better system comes along in the next 50 years, I do think Bitcoin is the best system we have so far.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I'm pretty sure no one bought a 58xx series card for bitcoin

Lol, look at my signature. I'm up to 8 5870s? I definitely bought those for gaming... 8 way crossfire and all you know..

 

[brownstone]

So I'm curious Rezin, which pool are you a part of? How about you OVerLoRDI?

 

[Rezin777]

So I'm curious Rezin, which pool are you a part of? How about you OVerLoRDI?

I primarily used slush's pool when I started mining. I used deepbit (Tycho's) when slush would go down, only twice. I've switched to BTCmine because I feel the large pools are getting too big. Eventually, when I have enough hashing power, I plan to mine solo.

Let me add that every pool I've used so far has been great. No problems with payments or connection or anything else.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

So I'm curious Rezin, which pool are you a part of? How about you OVerLoRDI?

Slush's pool. I'm currently at about 4Ghash/s right now, but even then the difficulty is getting high enough that solo variance can be killer. I prefer the steady payouts of large pools like Slush's or deepbit. The higher the hashrate of the pool, the less the variance.

I might switch to luke-jr's pool once it gets a bit bigger. It is at something like 30 Ghash/s right now, so the variance is too high imo.

 

[Rezin777]

Slush's pool. I'm currently at about 4Ghash/s right now, but even then the difficulty is getting high enough that solo variance can be killer. I prefer the steady payouts of large pools like Slush's or deepbit. The higher the hashrate of the pool, the less the variance.

I might switch to luke-jr's pool once it gets a bit bigger. It is at something like 30 Ghash/s right now, so the variance is too high imo.

Luke-Jr's pool seems nice, very low fee. I also like how the payout's are done with his pool.

Anyway, 30 Ghash/s is not too bad as far as variance is concerned. Since I've switched from slush, I've been getting a payout at regular intervals as if I was still in slushs. Of course, it depends on how often you like to get a payout. I set it to work out to about once a day.

Also if you have decent hashing power, by switching and increasing the pools hash rate, others who are on the fence may switch as well. I went to BTCmine when it was about 15 Ghash/s. Now it's breaking 30 Ghash/s. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing.

 

[brownstone]

So if one were curious and wanted to try said mining out, would it be worth it with one 6870? How much could/would that bring in roughly?

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Luke-Jr's pool seems nice, very low fee. I also like how the payout's are done with his pool.

Anyway, 30 Ghash/s is not too bad as far as variance is concerned. Since I've switched from slush, I've been getting a payout at regular intervals as if I was still in slushs. Of course, it depends on how often you like to get a payout. I set it to work out to about once a day.

Also if you have decent hashing power, by switching and increasing the pools hash rate, others who are on the fence may switch as well. I went to BTCmine when it was about 15 Ghash/s. Now it's breaking 30 Ghash/s. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing.

I'm probably going to stick with Slush's for as long as it makes sense. Mostly because 1) not worth the effort to switch all my cards over and 2) I'm really close to breaking the Top 20 on the pool

What's your hashrate?
Do you trade on mtgox, or #bitcoin-otc (if so whats your nick on IRC)
Also, are you going to survive the summer?

 

[OVerLoRDI]

So if one were curious and wanted to try said mining out, would it be worth it with one 6870? How much could/would that bring in roughly?

A 6870 is worth about 260Mhash/s at stock speeds. OC and you can probably get about ~280Mhash/s.

At the current difficulty 260Mhash/s generates on average 2.8btc per day. So that would be your expected pay out for a pool (give or take depending on variance). 1 bitcoin is about 3.2-3.4 usd right now (who knows how long that will last) so you'll make ~9.25usd/day. Because the exchange rate is so high right now the network is growing like crazy, and thus difficulty is going to jump in ~5 days by ~50%, so that will cut you down to 1.8btc/day.

Remember to factor in cooling and electricity costs.

 

[Rezin777]

I'm probably going to stick with Slush's for as long as it makes sense. Mostly because 1) not worth the effort to switch all my cards over and 2) I'm really close to breaking the Top 20 on the pool

What's your hashrate?
Do you trade on mtgox, or #bitcoin-otc (if so whats your nick on IRC)
Also, are you going to survive the summer?

Yeah, slush has a nice pool for sure. I just want to see generally smaller pools and more of them! Deepbit is very large from the OCN crowd.

My hashrate is a hair under 3 Ghash/s. I'm doing some tweaking as we speak to try and hit 3 steady.

I am considering using mtgox now that coincard is no more. I haven't set up the gpg thing yet for #bitcoin-otc so I don't use it currently.

The summer shouldn't be too big of a deal, I've put the mining rigs in a basement that stays about the same temperature year round (I couldn't stand the fan noise otherwise). I'm more worried about dirt. I should clean the basement... But, I have so many other projects to finish first...

 

[brownstone]

A 6870 is worth about 260Mhash/s at stock speeds. OC and you can probably get about ~280Mhash/s.

At the current difficulty 260Mhash/s generates on average 2.8btc per day. So that would be your expected pay out for a pool (give or take depending on variance). 1 bitcoin is about 3.2-3.4 usd right now (who knows how long that will last) so you'll make ~9.25usd/day. Because the exchange rate is so high right now the network is growing like crazy, and thus difficulty is going to jump in ~5 days by ~50%, so that will cut you down to 1.8btc/day.

Remember to factor in cooling and electricity costs.

Alright, I gave it a whirl, if for nothing else to get a better idea what it was about. I've now been bitcoin...ing...?? for 1 full day on my 6870 (that averaged 264-265 for the majority of the last 24 hrs) as part of the BPM pool and my total reward....drumroll please....1.86 btc.

I'll be honest, I was really hoping for the 3.2-3.4 estimate...what happened?

 

[Rezin777]

Alright, I gave it a whirl, if for nothing else to get a better idea what it was about. I've now been bitcoin...ing...?? for 1 full day on my 6870 (that averaged 264-265 for the majority of the last 24 hrs) as part of the BPM pool and my total reward....drumroll please....1.86 btc.

I'll be honest, I was really hoping for the 3.2-3.4 estimate...what happened?

BPM pool?

Anyway, variance is what happened. Regardless of your hash rate, the pool needs to find blocks for the miners in the pool to receive any reward. If the pool has a long period where it doesn't find any blocks, the reward for that period is going to be less (or zero). But if it finds more blocks than average, the reward for that period will be more. The smaller the pools hash rate, the more variance you will experience, but in the long run (1 month or more) it all equals out. Bitcoin mining is a marathon, not a sprint.

The pool I'm in went 12 hours without finding a block earlier today. After we finally found one, our next block only took 36 minutes to find. Then 1:03, then 1:53.

So in 12 hours the pool earned 50 BTC. But in the next 4 hours we earned 150 BTC.

 

[sandorski]

I've had the idea of doing some Bitcoin Mining in the back of my mind for awhile now, but have kept putting it off. With my current setup 50-100 BTC/Month should be doable as an independent, which is tempting. My biggest issue with the idea behind BTC is that the Market using it is so small and undeveloped that the only reason I'd want BTC would be to immediately Convert it into $CDN for my own use. I just have no confidence that it will survive, so hoarding BTC seems to be a waste of time to me.

 

[brownstone]

BPM pool?

Alright, so I'm new to this whole thing....does it show?

Upon further research, I'm in Slush's pool.

 

[Rezin777]

Alright, so I'm new to this whole thing....does it show?

Upon further research, I'm in Slush's pool.

I thought you had found a hidden pool that I didn't know about!

Slush has a nice pool. I like his 7 day moving average chart.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I thought you had found a hidden pool that I didn't know about!

Slush has a nice pool. I like his 7 day moving average chart.

Yeah the charts are what I appreciate about his pool Also the website feels a lot clearner.

Brownstone, Variance is a bitch. The next day might be better, might be worse, but it will all level out. Your results won't be that impressive given how high the difficulty is, but if you make more money than your cost of electricity and cooling, I'd say go for it

Now get on #bitcoin-otc and once you have some coins try and sell them

 

[Ken g6]

Another news story about BitCoin: http://launch.is/blog/l019-bitcoin-p2p-currency-the-most-dangerous-project-weve-ev.html

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks, Ken_g6, for a good read!

 

[bart1975]

So will this bitcoin stuff let me earn free amazon gift cards? If so how long before I actually earn enough bitcoins to actually buy stuff with them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Crap, perhaps I shouldn't have sold my HD4850 last weekend, and converted my 4x PCI-E rig to HD4850s for mining bitcoin, rather than the current four 9600GSOs for F@H.

Bitcoin is ATI-only, right? Will HD4850 do much?

 

[brownstone]

Here are a few tools that may be of help in determining profitability...or not.
1) Find your hardware here and locate the Mhash/s of the model link

2) Go here and enter the info (note: the hash rate from the chart is in Mhash/s while on the profitability calculator it is in khash/s > 600000 kHash/s = 600 MHash/s

*Also keep in mind that the difficulty seems to be jumping about every week which will decrease the amount you will receive every time it jumps.

 

[airdata]

Hi guys... bitcoin noob here just testing the waters.

what would be the best low-profile card available? I have several systems available to mine that only take a low-profile card.

 

[brownstone]

I've got nothing. Perhaps you can find a low profile version of a card in my previous post, but make sure you run some rough figures as it may no longer be profitable. Difficulty will be increasing in the next few days by what looks to be 50 - 75%