Bitcoins - Page 2

chappy · 2013-11-26, 07:07

Did this thread start because of cryptolocker?

Just curious.

Manpowre · 2013-11-26, 10:39

A norwegian tech site did 2 weeks of bitcoinmining with a top notch AMD card, think it was the 290x during the test of the card, and they made 2€ for 2 weeks with 1 card.
For a 500€ card, that takes a few (5 years) years to dig out more money than purchasing the card.

Ralf Recker · 2013-11-26, 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manpowre

A norwegian tech site did 2 weeks of bitcoinmining with a top notch AMD card, think it was the 290x during the test of the card, and they made 2€ for 2 weeks with 1 card.
For a 500€ card, that takes a few (5 years) years to dig out more money than purchasing the card.

Did they mention ASICs?

Ken_g6 · 2013-11-26, 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manpowre

A norwegian tech site did 2 weeks of bitcoinmining with a top notch AMD card, think it was the 290x during the test of the card, and they made 2€ for 2 weeks with 1 card.

That doesn't make sense. Mined BitCoins only appear discretely - you can't have a fraction of a BitCoin born any more than you can have a fraction of a baby born. And BitCoins are currently in the hundreds of dollars. But it might take more than two weeks to find one now.

Mini-Geek · 2013-11-26, 18:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ken_g6

That doesn't make sense. Mined BitCoins only appear discretely - you can't have a fraction of a BitCoin born any more than you can have a fraction of a baby born. And BitCoins are currently in the hundreds of dollars. But it might take more than two weeks to find one now.

Sort of. Not really. Blocks appear discretely, and are currently awarded 25 BTC/block, but you can join a "pool" so that you can be paid in arbitrarily small payments, even for unsuccessful work.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pooled_mining

f1pokerspeed · 2013-11-26, 21:55

The issue is, the difficulty is so high that even the best GPUs out there are god-awful for Bitcoin mining right now. ASICs are BUILT to do this, and nothing else - specialization equals massive increase in productivity (thanks Economics). That review is irrelevant, because the hardware (irrespective of power, compute and whatever else) is not cut out for it.

kracker · 2013-11-26, 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by f1pokerspeed

The issue is, the difficulty is so high that even the best GPUs out there are god-awful for Bitcoin mining right now. ASICs are BUILT to do this, and nothing else - specialization equals massive increase in productivity (thanks Economics). That review is irrelevant, because the hardware (irrespective of power, compute and whatever else) is not cut out for it.

+1

Bitmining, for the most part is done for the people with GPU's, except for the people who have ASIC's.

VictordeHolland · 2013-11-26, 22:50

You might want to consider mining LiteCoins or FeatherCoins with a GPU, it is much more profitable (and no ASICs in near future due to memory transfers).

Edit:
Mining Litecoins with my 7950: 500Kh/s or 0.33 LTC/day, which translates to roughly $5-$6 a day
Mining Feathercoins with my 7950: also 500Kh/s or 15 FTC/day, which is almost $7 a day
Of course you'll still have to consider the electricity bills.

Prime95 · 2013-11-26, 22:53

Pardon my question if it could be easily answered by google. What happens to bitcoins once it becomes uneconomic to mine them (or they are all found)? My pitiful understanding is that the miners also act as some kind of distributed server that somehow verifies or records bitcoin transactions. If these miners/servers are turned off, how are bitcoin transactions verified/recorded?

VictordeHolland · 2013-11-26, 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prime95

Pardon my question if it could be easily answered by google. What happens to bitcoins once it becomes uneconomic to mine them (or they are all found)? My pitiful understanding is that the miners also act as some kind of distributed server that somehow verifies or records bitcoin transactions. If these miners/servers are turned off, how are bitcoin transactions verified/recorded?

FAQ of Bitcoin:
"
If no more coins are going to be generated, will more blocks be created?

Absolutely! Even before the creation of coins ends, the use of transaction fees will likely make creating new blocks more valuable from the fees than the new coins being created. When coin generation ends, these fees will sustain the ability to use bitcoins and the Bitcoin network. There is no practical limit on the number of blocks that will be mined in the future."

E_tron · 2013-11-27, 02:20

Bitcoin has a legitimate problem concerning mining and generation of new blocks and transactions. The future of the network appears to be in jeopardy.

Currently bitcoin mining is only somewhat practical on specially designed chips to perform SHA-1 hashes. GPUs and CPUs are hopelessly inadequate against theses ASiC chips.

Owning a profitable ASiC as an end user is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The only way forward for bitcoin mining and block generation is data centers owned by ASiC manufactures. They will locate their data centers in jurisdictions with cheap electrical power. Current ASiC chips are manufactured on obsolete 130nm lithography (not sure which foundries they are commissioning). ASiC mining will progress only with better/faster SHA-1 hashing chip design and shrinking lithography.

All of this progress means that the generation of bitcoins (and the security of the network) will be concentrated with the producers/owners of the best ASiC chips (chip manufactures have great incentive to hold onto the best mining hardware before shipping it to endusers). This means that the whole network can be hijacked by one of these chip manufactures.

The only way to ensure the security of the bitcoin network is to keep the mining/hashing power distributed amongst the endusers. Those days are now over thanks to the incredible power of the ASiC chips.

There are some cryptocurencies (i.e. Litecoins) that use the scrypt hashing algorithm. They are better protected against ASiCs since scrypt is designed to be slow on simple chips (the bitcoin ASiCs) and fast(ish) on chips with access to lots of fast memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt This means that GPUs are ideal for performing the scrypt hashing and ASiC chips are unlikely to attack the Litecoin network.

2013-11-26, 22:50	#19
VictordeHolland "Victor de Hollander" Aug 2011 the Netherlands 2³×3×7² Posts	You might want to consider mining LiteCoins or FeatherCoins with a GPU, it is much more profitable (and no ASICs in near future due to memory transfers). Edit: Mining Litecoins with my 7950: 500Kh/s or 0.33 LTC/day, which translates to roughly $5-$6 a day Mining Feathercoins with my 7950: also 500Kh/s or 15 FTC/day, which is almost $7 a day Of course you'll still have to consider the electricity bills. Last fiddled with by VictordeHolland on 2013-11-26 at 23:31 Reason: LTC FTC mining with 7950

2013-11-27, 02:20	#22
E_tron Sep 2002 Austin, TX 3×11×17 Posts	Bitcoin has a legitimate problem concerning mining and generation of new blocks and transactions. The future of the network appears to be in jeopardy. Currently bitcoin mining is only somewhat practical on specially designed chips to perform SHA-1 hashes. GPUs and CPUs are hopelessly inadequate against theses ASiC chips. Owning a profitable ASiC as an end user is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The only way forward for bitcoin mining and block generation is data centers owned by ASiC manufactures. They will locate their data centers in jurisdictions with cheap electrical power. Current ASiC chips are manufactured on obsolete 130nm lithography (not sure which foundries they are commissioning). ASiC mining will progress only with better/faster SHA-1 hashing chip design and shrinking lithography. All of this progress means that the generation of bitcoins (and the security of the network) will be concentrated with the producers/owners of the best ASiC chips (chip manufactures have great incentive to hold onto the best mining hardware before shipping it to endusers). This means that the whole network can be hijacked by one of these chip manufactures. The only way to ensure the security of the bitcoin network is to keep the mining/hashing power distributed amongst the endusers. Those days are now over thanks to the incredible power of the ASiC chips. There are some cryptocurencies (i.e. Litecoins) that use the scrypt hashing algorithm. They are better protected against ASiCs since scrypt is designed to be slow on simple chips (the bitcoin ASiCs) and fast(ish) on chips with access to lots of fast memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt This means that GPUs are ideal for performing the scrypt hashing and ASiC chips are unlikely to attack the Litecoin network. Last fiddled with by E_tron on 2013-11-27 at 02:20

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2013-11-26, 07:07	#12
chappy "Jeff" Feb 2012 St. Louis, Missouri, USA 13×89 Posts	Did this thread start because of cryptolocker? Just curious.

2013-11-26, 10:39	#13
Manpowre "Svein Johansen" May 2013 Norway 201₁₀ Posts	A norwegian tech site did 2 weeks of bitcoinmining with a top notch AMD card, think it was the 290x during the test of the card, and they made 2€ for 2 weeks with 1 card. For a 500€ card, that takes a few (5 years) years to dig out more money than purchasing the card.

2013-11-26, 21:55	#17
f1pokerspeed Jun 2012 6A₁₆ Posts	The issue is, the difficulty is so high that even the best GPUs out there are god-awful for Bitcoin mining right now. ASICs are BUILT to do this, and nothing else - specialization equals massive increase in productivity (thanks Economics). That review is irrelevant, because the hardware (irrespective of power, compute and whatever else) is not cut out for it.

2013-11-26, 22:53	#20
Prime95 P90 years forever! Aug 2002 Yeehaw, FL 7,537 Posts	Pardon my question if it could be easily answered by google. What happens to bitcoins once it becomes uneconomic to mine them (or they are all found)? My pitiful understanding is that the miners also act as some kind of distributed server that somehow verifies or records bitcoin transactions. If these miners/servers are turned off, how are bitcoin transactions verified/recorded?