Cryptocoin Mining?

[Atreidin]

How many cures for cancer has F@H discovered? Useful, indeed.

Oh please. They have done a lot to help model and understand how proteins fold. That is a huge deal, whether or not you want to try to understand what they are doing. Scientific advancement is hard work. It doesn't work like in TV shows and movies, where the starship captain visits a dying alien world and has his one ship doctor come up with a vaccine for their illness in 12 hours. We still have a lot of stuff to research, and they are doing a damn good job of it. The people who programmed it sure are doing a lot more with their lives than you are. It is worth much more respect than you are giving some stupid internet currency fad.

 

[sandorski]

How many cures for cancer has F@H discovered? Useful, indeed.

Moot point. F@H and other similar DC Projects narrow down and do Research that needs to be done before the Cure will be found. Do you say the Wright Brothers were wasting their time with their first Airplane?

 

[Chiropteran]

Moot point. F@H and other similar DC Projects narrow down and do Research that needs to be done before the Cure will be found. Do you say the Wright Brothers were wasting their time with their first Airplane?

What has F@H done that is actually useful now, today, in the real world?

The same argument can be made about bitcoins, while the haven't done much yet they might completely change the world in a few years if they take off and we have a free open currency with very small transaction fees and complete anonymity. Which is more important or valuable is largely a matter of opinion.

Would you rather live as a slave in a nation with the most amazing advanced medical technology, or free in a nation with the medical technology we have today?

 

[Dark Shroud]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

5830 around 240 MHash/s
6850 around 200 MHash/s

5830 is also cheaper (some deals around $109), so it clearly wins. Actually, the 5830 is widely considered to be the best mining card from a cost perspective. A triple GPU machine with 3 5830s > many much more expensive single card machines at mining.

However, for my personal use I decided to buy a 6970. From a cost/MHash perspective it's nothing great, but when bitcoin mining difficulty reaches absurd levels I can just keep it as an effective gaming card.

I had found that chart a little while afte posting. I threw a build together at newegg and the final price was a bit under $650 with just two HD 5830s with easy room for a third. So like I thought I'll need around 70 bitcoins for hardware since I'm broke right now.

The network issues with Bitcoin the last few days didn't help. A single HD 6970 will earn around 6 Bitcoins a week.

 

[sandorski]

What has F@H done that is actually useful now, today, in the real world?

The same argument can be made about bitcoins, while the haven't done much yet they might completely change the world in a few years if they take off and we have a free open currency with very small transaction fees and complete anonymity. Which is more important or valuable is largely a matter of opinion.

Would you rather live as a slave in a nation with the most amazing advanced medical technology, or free in a nation with the medical technology we have today?

Oy vey.

False dilemma.

 

[YoungGun21]

Oh please. They have done a lot to help model and understand how proteins fold. That is a huge deal, whether or not you want to try to understand what they are doing. Scientific advancement is hard work. It doesn't work like in TV shows and movies, where the starship captain visits a dying alien world and has his one ship doctor come up with a vaccine for their illness in 12 hours. We still have a lot of stuff to research, and they are doing a damn good job of it. The people who programmed it sure are doing a lot more with their lives than you are. It is worth much more respect than you are giving some stupid internet currency fad.

They are completely different things. I used to run F@H back in the day. I did that to help the research progress.

Now I run this. I run it to make money.

 

[v8envy]

This helped me pull the trigger on two $99 AR XFX 5830s with a copy of Shogun: Total War from TD. I've been itching for justficiation to give both ATI and multi-gpu another shot, and this is it.

Hoping to make a few bucks with bitcoins before the fad implodes. That way I can offset the additional $ I'll need to trade these babies for a 470 or other NV hardware when I can't get them to work well with Linux. My fourth try using ATI hardware under Linux, I'm just way too stupid to learn from my previous mistakes.

 

[airdata]

My budget mining rig : mobo and cpu are free because i got a 9800gt w\ them that I sold for $50. Ebay parts/repair stuff ftw.

Mobo & cpu : EVGA 750i w\ Pentium D 925 - $0
Ram : 2x512mb ddr2 from my closet
hdd : 320gb sata hdd from my closet
psu : 550w antec true power - $30 from craigslist
GPU1 : Sapphire 5770 - $80 from the for sale section of the forums
GPU2 : XFX 5850 - $170 - Ebay
Case : USPS Priority Flat Rate box - Free

Getting 190MH on the 5770 and 290 on the 5850.

 

[Cuhulainn]

Case : USPS Priority Flat Rate box - Free

Getting 190MH on the 5770 and 290 on the 5850.

Loving the case.

You should break even on that pretty quick.

 

[airdata]

I'm bringing home a fan today because my office feels like it is 90f lol

 

[darkewaffle]

lol bitcoins. read about this in the distributed computing forum. bandwagon bubble aside, the rhetoric associated with it is hilarious. the whole 'we're gonna save the world with bitcoins and defeat the centralized uberbank bureaucracy keeping the poor poor and the rich rich' is pretty rich itself.

It's just bubbling and will burst eventually, probably at one of the next two/three 'halving' intervals which I think people will pick as "get out" markers.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

lol bitcoins. read about this in the distributed computing forum. bandwagon bubble aside, the rhetoric associated with it is hilarious. the whole 'we're gonna save the world with bitcoins and defeat the centralized uberbank bureaucracy keeping the poor poor and the rich rich' is pretty rich itself.

It's just bubbling and will burst eventually, probably at one of the next two/three 'halving' intervals which I think people will pick as "get out" markers.

I'm generally pretty pessimistic myself. Do I think bitcoin is going to become the currency of the future? Not likely... It is technologically too advanced for the common person to trust. You see a lot of people, even on this forum, not understanding it or being unwilling to figure out how it works.

I do hope that bitcoin sticks around. Many people are working to make it easier to use by making mobile clients for smart phones and other web based services. I also hope to see more businesses accepting them (the price variance will have to calm down for that to happen).

For me, this has been a fun and lucrative project. It combines my interest in economics and computer hardware. If it tanks tomorrow I will still have come out well ahead and will be making a very long thread in FS/FT

 

[pcm81]

What I want to know is this:
1. If bitcoin is decentralized, how do they manage the generation difficulty and the size of payout reward?
2. How do they make sure that 2 wallets do not have the same address if there is no central database of all current addresses?

 

[OVerLoRDI]

What I want to know is this:
1. If bitcoin is decentralized, how do they manage the generation difficulty and the size of payout reward?
2. How do they make sure that 2 wallets do not have the same address if there is no central database of all current addresses?

1. All nodes (a node is anyone running the client) all have the block chain, see how long it takes to solve the blocks and use the same formula to compute the next difficulty. Same data, same formula, same result.

2. This I'm not sure about yet, I've been trying to dig up the answer. As far as I've got is that based on 256 bit encryption the chance is unlikely to say the least.

Edit: Bitcoinwiki info on the subject
Since Bitcoin addresses are basically random numbers, it is possible, although extremely unlikely, for two people to independently generate the same address. This is called a collision. If this happens, then both the original owner of the address and the colliding owner could spend money sent to that address. It would not be possible for the colliding person to spend the original owner's entire wallet (or vice versa). If you were to intentionally try to make a collision, it would currently take 2^126 times longer to generate a colliding Bitcoin address than to generate a block. As long as the signing and hashing algorithms remain cryptographically strong, it will likely always be more profitable to collect generations and transaction fees than to try to create collisions.

 

[pcm81]

1. All nodes (a node is anyone running the client) all have the block chain, see how long it takes to solve the blocks and use the same formula to compute the next difficulty. Same data, same formula, same result.

2. This I'm not sure about yet, I've been trying to dig up the answer. As far as I've got is that based on 256 bit encryption the chance is unlikely to say the least.

Edit: Bitcoinwiki info on the subject
Since Bitcoin addresses are basically random numbers, it is possible, although extremely unlikely, for two people to independently generate the same address. This is called a collision. If this happens, then both the original owner of the address and the colliding owner could spend money sent to that address. It would not be possible for the colliding person to spend the original owner's entire wallet (or vice versa). If you were to intentionally try to make a collision, it would currently take 2^126 times longer to generate a colliding Bitcoin address than to generate a block. As long as the signing and hashing algorithms remain cryptographically strong, it will likely always be more profitable to collect generations and transaction fees than to try to create collisions.

That makes sense.

But what else i though of and was not sure is this:
They say that there is going to be 20 million bit coins total. They also say that a bitcoin can be split into many parts, there is no mention of only going as low as 0.01, so that means you could have a ballance of 0.0000001BTC... theoretically.

Now, something makes no sense here. Lets introduce new term "token" So if the encryption scheme allows 20 million tokens and by default each token has a value of 1 bit coin then the 20 milion tokens could be used up long before 20 million bitcoins were generated... sending 0.01 btc requires its own token. Alternatively if a token can have a value of 0.01 BTC it can also have a value of 1,000,000BTC, which means the total number of BTCs is not limited to 20 million. So printing BTC becomes possible...

What do yall think?

 

[YoungGun21]

That makes sense.

But what else i though of and was not sure is this:
They say that there is going to be 20 million bit coins total. They also say that a bitcoin can be split into many parts, there is no mention of only going as low as 0.01, so that means you could have a ballance of 0.0000001BTC... theoretically.

Now, something makes no sense here. Lets introduce new term "token" So if the encryption scheme allows 20 million tokens and by default each token has a value of 1 bit coin then the 20 milion tokens could be used up long before 20 million bitcoins were generated... sending 0.01 btc requires its own token. Alternatively if a token can have a value of 0.01 BTC it can also have a value of 1,000,000BTC, which means the total number of BTCs is not limited to 20 million. So printing BTC becomes possible...

What do yall think?

Right now a Bitcoin is worth basically 1,000,000 "bits". This is true because the actual max number for this system (like max possible) is 21 trillion or 21,000,000,000,000. They decided to just set 1 Bitcoin as 1,000,000 of these units, so that it would be easier to handle. Now, once the maximum amount of BTC are discovered (120+ years from now, if this sticks around), it may be necessary to move the decimal place to the left or the right depending on the exchange rates. We could see something like 1 Bitcoin = 100,000 bitcents. This doesn't change the amount of Bitcoins out there, it simply makes it easier to do transactions.

Yes bitcoins can be split up as many ways as possible. This is what I have confirmed so far from my pool waiting to be sent to my wallet: 1.66271278 BTC.

As far as the difficulty is concerned, the algorithm is already set. The only variable really is how many blocks are being mined per hour (the target is 6 per hour), so it changes based on that.

2 wallets can have the same address. You can have as many versions of your own wallet as you want. However, you can't double spend. The network confirms every transaction on its own, so everybody knows what everybody else is doing. If your wallet tries to spend twice, you will get caught by the network. It obviously isn't a privacy issue to have things checked this way since your wallet address is just a hash, and you can change that whenever you want.

 

[Chiropteran]

It's just bubbling and will burst eventually, probably at one of the next two/three 'halving' intervals which I think people will pick as "get out" markers.

It's interesting, because while you might think that at first, the genius design of the system discourages that. Bitcoin production is not free, it costs time and hardware. This cost is increasing each week during the difficulty adjustment. As a result, bitcoins will probably never be easier to mine than they are this week. And next week again will be the easiest mining week, compared to all following weeks. This constant increasing difficulty means that if you do decide to bail out and take your cash, when you get back in it'll take you far longer to mine the same number of bitcoins... this creates incentive to hold onto your coins, rather than dump them.

 

[hawtdawg]

To those of you complaining that Bitcoin mining isn't doing anything useful compared to something like Folding@Home, you're looking at it all wrong.

Don't look at mining as a way to make money. Look at it as creating a new currency. A currency that cannot be manipulated or controlled by any government or bank. A currency that cannot be taxed.

 

[pcm81]

To those of you complaining that Bitcoin mining isn't doing anything useful compared to something like Folding@Home, you're looking at it all wrong.

Don't look at mining as a way to make money. Look at it as creating a new currency. A currency that cannot be manipulated or controlled by any government or bank. A currency that cannot be taxed.

Personnally i am just looking at it as running my pc 24/7 to pay my rent + electic.

 

[Vesku]

I'm sitting here wishing I'd stuck with Bitcoin generating when I looked into it last year. Now I'm starting well into the difficulty increases AND nVidia cards apparently get 1/6th or so the Mhash/s of equivalent AMD cards. Wish I'd jumped on that Sapphire 5850 deal now. =S

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yeah I don't know what’s happening to the network but I'm two days behind on mining now. I've only got about 7 coins when I should have 10. I need 12 coins to buy a new HD 5830 for mining.

I'm using my gaming rig and it's a bit troublesome since I only have a HD 6970 and P67 chipset instead of Z68 with Virtu that would solve my usability problems.

 

[wbynum]

I'm sitting here wishing I'd stuck with Bitcoin generating when I looked into it last year. Now I'm starting well into the difficulty increases AND nVidia cards apparently get 1/6th or so the Mhash/s of equivalent AMD cards. Wish I'd jumped on that Sapphire 5850 deal now. =S

You ain't the only one wishing they had started last year. I ran folding all fall/winter on two boxes. Would have been much more profitable to mine bitcoins.

What was the 5850 deal? If that is no longer available then you can pick up 5830 cards on Tiger Direct and Newegg for around $100. I have 5 on order. Three are going in an i7 box and two are going in an old AMD socket 939 box.

 

[Vesku]

Sapphire had a custom PCB 5850 for $140 ish for a week or two. Clearing out unsold chips by putting them on 6850 skeletons it seemed. I do have a 5830 on order though and it seems if I get one that OCs decently then the price/performance should match that 5850. It's just if the bitcoin thing fades in the next 6 months I would rather have a 5850 in that box than a 5830, oh well.

 

[darkewaffle]

It's interesting, because while you might think that at first, the genius design of the system discourages that. Bitcoin production is not free, it costs time and hardware. This cost is increasing each week during the difficulty adjustment. As a result, bitcoins will probably never be easier to mine than they are this week. And next week again will be the easiest mining week, compared to all following weeks. This constant increasing difficulty means that if you do decide to bail out and take your cash, when you get back in it'll take you far longer to mine the same number of bitcoins... this creates incentive to hold onto your coins, rather than dump them.

Why would someone bail out and then try to get back in? That defeats the purpose of bailing.

Increasing difficulty does one thing; it creates concern that people will earn fewer coins. This concern is what will cause most people to then do one of two things, hoard or bail. The problem is bitcoins are not being treated like a currency, but a commodity. People don't want to spend them as their value creeps higher and higher, so they are either going to hold them as an investment or cashout and take a profit. It's a bubble because the coins are largely only in the hands of the buyers and sellers, and when they aren't actually being spent they lose mindshare and their value starts becoming suspect. Whether it's at a certain coin price, or certain difficulty level or certain halving interval, I think it's bound to happen in the relatively near future.

 

[hans030390]

Which pool is most likely to get me the most bitcoins with a 5770? I know it won't be much, but I'm just wondering if joining a bigger one (like deepbit) or a smaller one would turn out better for me.