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Has anyone dabbled in mining bitcoins?

It used to be that if you're going solo, rather than participating in a large pool, you'd want the most energy efficient desktop with a bopping powerful AMD graphic card. (not nVidia, nor cpu hybrids). Is that still true?

Anyone invests in bitcoins or spend it?

<----this guy has several gaming rigs unused that can take new AMD cards.... debating it dipping his toes into minings...

Thoughts??

Farming it isn't worthwhile now, you'll just burn though electricity. It's done by FPGA now.

Investing is a different matter; the value is still climbing, so potentially there's money to be made if you're willing to risk it falling. It's very much in a bubble though.

Herzlos wrote:
Farming it isn't worthwhile now, you'll just burn though electricity. It's done by FPGA now.

Investing is a different matter; the value is still climbing, so potentially there's money to be made if you're willing to risk it falling. It's very much in a bubble though.

What do you mean by FPGA?

seemingly, you'd need like an 8 card setup to effectively mine for Bitcoin...

I'm looking at Etherium-mining at the moment...

Field-Programmable Gate Array - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array

Essentially a processor but with configurable gates, so you can make it do very specific things very quickly, and is somewhere between general purpose (graphics cards) and custom processors.

Turns out you can buy stuff using custom hardware (ASIC) so even FPGAs are insufficient now.

This article: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/hardware/
Also points out that cheap electricity in China makes it even harder for local mining to pay off.

Apparently piratebay and the likes have been using some javascript based cloud mining (every browsing user is doing a small amount of hashing, times however many thousand users). There's probably also plenty of botnets doing it.

So beyond the technical experiment, you're only really going to get somewhere buying it. Can you buy and sell before the bubble bursts? I think there's still an opportunity to make some money, but it's too risky for me (and I have no money to spare). My general rule of thumb is that by the time my dad is aware of something, it's too late to invest - he heard all about it on a bbc news technology show called "click" about 2 years ago.

Herzlos wrote:
Field-Programmable Gate Array - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array

Essentially a processor but with configurable gates, so you can make it do very specific things very quickly, and is somewhere between general purpose (graphics cards) and custom processors.

Turns out you can buy stuff using custom hardware (ASIC) so even FPGAs are insufficient now.

This article: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/hardware/
Also points out that cheap electricity in China makes it even harder for local mining to pay off.

Apparently piratebay and the likes have been using some javascript based cloud mining (every browsing user is doing a small amount of hashing, times however many thousand users). There's probably also plenty of botnets doing it.

So beyond the technical experiment, you're only really going to get somewhere buying it. Can you buy and sell before the bubble bursts? I think there's still an opportunity to make some money, but it's too risky for me (and I have no money to spare). My general rule of thumb is that by the time my dad is aware of something, it's too late to invest - he heard all about it on a bbc news technology show called "click" about 2 years ago.

Thanks for the info... I'm purely looking at this from a hobby standpoint.

I'm probably going to delve into Bitcoin for investments only... but mining for Etherium seems doable as I have a hoard of desktop components, where I'd only need to get the decent AMD gpu and power supply.

My only involvement in bitcoin has been hating myself for not buying up a bunch of them back when they were ~10 USD. I think day traders have jumped out windows for less.

Last time I talked to people about it a few years ago, it wasn't worth the price of electricity/hardware anymore. With the way the price has been lately, I'm uncertain if that's scaled.

Bitcoins are needed to defraud people anonymously, to extort people without a trace at random via ransomware, to buy child porn or materials for WMD, avoid lawful tax and to import drugs.

It has some legal hip trendy uses that can be set aside in favour of debit cards.

Frankly its a fething menace and should be outlawed.

 Orlanth wrote:

Frankly its a fething menace and should be outlawed.

I think buggy whip manufacturers said the same thing about the automobile.

 daedalus wrote:
My only involvement in bitcoin has been hating myself for not buying up a bunch of them back when they were ~10 USD.

Same here.

Anyway, no, it's not really worth it to mine them anymore unless you've just got the hardware and electricity to spare. And it's only going to get harder to earn them, as, by design, there is ultimately a finite supply of bitcoins. Their value is high right now through a combination of being "cool", "trendy", and being the currency of choice for buying all the drugs, guns, and kiddie porn you could want off of the Dark Web.
It's really the same for any other cryptocurrency, ultimately.

 daedalus wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Frankly its a fething menace and should be outlawed.

I think buggy whip manufacturers said the same thing about the automobile.

The automobile has honest function, so the reaction would be luddite.

Cryptocurrency is not a step forward though, but a step backwards and away from law and order. Financial anonymity and void of accountability serves no honest purpose.

My biggest concern is with getting money back out. It's unregulated so the exchanges are the digital equivalent of giving a stranger a bag of gold and him coming back tomorrow with a bag of dollars. It's not like you can take but coin to the bank.

 Orlanth wrote:

Cryptocurrency is not a step forward though, but a step backwards and away from law and order. Financial anonymity and void of accountability serves no honest purpose.

I mean, if you can accept the legitimacy of Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal as the ultimate corporate authority on where and what your money is used for with literally no recourse, then yes. Yes, I agree.

Many practical situations arise where a decentralized need for currency arises. Colorado's weed industry is the first and drunkest thing that comes to mind. They've had a very real issue with banks and the aforementioned payment processing corporations.

It also provides a means of people to be able to trade money freely without incurring surcharges from private corporations. I mean, there's issues. Harder to track money means that it's harder to successfully collect taxes, but cash presented the same issue, and we somehow managed to survive. Yes, people might buy drugs with the bitcoins (goodness!) but from where I sit, that's more a good thing for everyone than it is bad.

The technology behind bitcoin is amazing and could potentially change how finance and other a lot of sectors of the economy operate. It's an amazing idea that could potentially remove the trust premium from all transactions.

But bitcoin itself is a disaster. I mean sure, if bitcoin could capture even just 10% of transactions then it'd be an amazing investment even at the current price and everyone should be jumping on board. The problem should be obvious though - everyone is asking if they should invest in bitcoin, buy up a stock of the coins to hold on to. Hardly anyone is actually, you know, using the coins as currency.

This is because bitcoin is a really terrible currency. There is rotting fish on the beaches of small South Pacific islands that would be a better basis for currency. Because bitcoin was designed from the start to be scarce and to grow in value. Which sounds great to programmers with no economic training, but is actually a really terrible feature for a currency. It means the currency wildly fluctuates in value - which is bad for consumers and disastrous for business owners. In a high inflation year in the last quarter century then maybe the USD dropped 4% - bitcoin can move 30% in a day. Just try and think about what business is going to try and build a supply chain, write up contracts, set pricing guides for a current that can move that much in a day.

And that scarcity also means it is an appreciating currency, which sounds great because it grows in value by just sitting there. The problem is that currency's actual value is in use, facilitating trade, and so currency that just sits there growing in value is just that, currency just sitting there.

The actual tech behind bitcoin is clever enough that I can see some kind of crypto-currency making a niche for itself as a means of making payments to people in other countries. Because right now any such transaction will involve multiple financial organisations, all taking a little bit, so the whole thing can add up to 5% of the transaction, or even more. A block chain currency can replace all those organisation having to include their verification elements with anonymous, peer confirmed computers working silently around the globe. 5% will become 5 cents, potentially. But it will only do it by designing a crypto-currency that is actually a good currency, that is stable and that maintains a value roughly consistent with other currencies.

So yeah, if you want to speculate on bitcoin I guess you can. People have made money, and others almost certainly will as well if they time the market. But of course plenty of others will lose money, like with any speculative venture. But ultimately bitcoin as a sound long term investment requires a belief that bitcoin has a future as a valuable currency, and I cannot see how anyone can look at the fundamentals of bitcoin and conclude it is a good currency.

 daedalus wrote:
I think buggy whip manufacturers said the same thing about the automobile.

If the factories were churning out automobiles that were slower, smellier, and still required two horses to be operated, then those buggy manufacturers would have had a point.

Don't know much of this, but I know I'm kicking myself in the ass over it. 7 years ago I guy I worked with was telling me to get into this, he had just dumped a bunch of money in. I was like yeah, whatever man.

Now he's living life large in Sweden...

Herzlos wrote:
Farming it isn't worthwhile now, you'll just burn though electricity. It's done by FPGA now.

Investing is a different matter; the value is still climbing, so potentially there's money to be made if you're willing to risk it falling. It's very much in a bubble though.

What if you don't pay for electricity? Not that I'm interested in investing hardware that makes it worthwhile(my computer is rather slow since it was "cheapest available" ) but since I don't pay for electriicty(there's no per-apartment method to calculate how much each apartment eats electricity so they basically share the price between apartments so only danger is rent itself might raise a bit if it's too big but even then price hike would be shared by some 30 apartments).

tneva82 wrote:
What if you don't pay for electricity? Not that I'm interested in investing hardware that makes it worthwhile(my computer is rather slow since it was "cheapest available" ) but since I don't pay for electriicty(there's no per-apartment method to calculate how much each apartment eats electricity so they basically share the price between apartments so only danger is rent itself might raise a bit if it's too big but even then price hike would be shared by some 30 apartments).

So you'd pay 1/30th of the electricity. In that case let it rip and more fool to the idiots who didn't install seperate meters

The only other thing is it produces a lot of heat. That's why the places doing this on a commercial scale tend to be places with cheap electricity that are cold, like Iceland. Though that's maybe more an issue when you do it on a large scale?

 daedalus wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Cryptocurrency is not a step forward though, but a step backwards and away from law and order. Financial anonymity and void of accountability serves no honest purpose.

I mean, if you can accept the legitimacy of Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal as the ultimate corporate authority on where and what your money is used for with literally no recourse, then yes.

They all adhere to regulations of some form. If I have a concern about Visa/MC/Paypal, then I've got a company I can complain to, and a legal framework to escalate it. They also adhere to a pretty strict set of guidelines.

With bitcoin I have nothing. Even if my wallet is stolen I have nothing. For bitcoin to become an actual player on the financial scene, it needs to provide that safety net, which it's designed not to do.

And as said, I know a few people who've invested, but I don't know anyone who's ever tried to spend any of it. It's an investment bubble, and it's going to have to crash eventually.

 Orlanth wrote:
Cryptocurrency is not a step forward though, but a step backwards and away from law and order. Financial anonymity and void of accountability serves no honest purpose.

Alternatively, having all of your financial information be easily available to the police state has its own drawbacks, and "make it as easy as possible for the police to know everything about you" is not exactly a high priority for many of us.

 sebster wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
What if you don't pay for electricity? Not that I'm interested in investing hardware that makes it worthwhile(my computer is rather slow since it was "cheapest available" ) but since I don't pay for electriicty(there's no per-apartment method to calculate how much each apartment eats electricity so they basically share the price between apartments so only danger is rent itself might raise a bit if it's too big but even then price hike would be shared by some 30 apartments).

So you'd pay 1/30th of the electricity. In that case let it rip and more fool to the idiots who didn't install seperate meters

The only other thing is it produces a lot of heat. That's why the places doing this on a commercial scale tend to be places with cheap electricity that are cold, like Iceland. Though that's maybe more an issue when you do it on a large scale?

Well they looked at over it and figured it costs too much to be worth it.

As for heat...That might actually be a plus in these cold times Apartment isn't best on heating. If I could figure how to get that extra heat warm up room even a little then MORE!

But computer is too slow to do it meaningfully. I mean it starts to lag with bluray from player! I need to rip it and convert it into another form for playback(not sure why). If it can't do that...Well ain't mining bitcoins in a hurry

 daedalus wrote:
They all adhere to regulations of some form. If I have a concern about Visa/MC/Paypal, then I've got a company I can complain to, and a legal framework to escalate it. They also adhere to a pretty strict set of guidelines.

With bitcoin I have nothing. Even if my wallet is stolen I have nothing. For bitcoin to become an actual player on the financial scene, it needs to provide that safety net, which it's designed not to do.

And as said, I know a few people who've invested, but I don't know anyone who's ever tried to spend any of it. It's an investment bubble, and it's going to have to crash eventually.

That's exactly it. People are excited in it as an investment, there's almost no use of it as a currency. And who would? You can wake up one morning and find out your bitcoins will buy 30% less stuff than they did the day before. A business could find its prices are 30% out of whack from the day before.

And thing is, if it isn't going to eventually become a currency then bitcoins have no actual value and the whole thing is a speculative bubble.

Professionally, I'm a financial dispute mediator.

You don't want to risk Bitcoin. Trust me.

I'd say you may want to invest if you are aware that it's lawless and you can lose all of it with no recompense. I'd maybe stick $100 into it, but not my pension fund.

It still seems to be climbing; in part because of all the people who want to jump in on the bubble without fully understanding it. Once people stop buying it at huge rates, and the growth slows down, the bubble is over. You're not going to be able to buy anything with it, and you're really going to struggle to sell it. Then quickly it'll be a race to dump it before it's value drops down to nothing.

The smart thing to do with bitcoin was to buy it 7 years ago, and be turning it into cash now.

tneva82 wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Farming it isn't worthwhile now, you'll just burn though electricity. It's done by FPGA now.

Investing is a different matter; the value is still climbing, so potentially there's money to be made if you're willing to risk it falling. It's very much in a bubble though.

What if you don't pay for electricity? Not that I'm interested in investing hardware that makes it worthwhile(my computer is rather slow since it was "cheapest available" ) but since I don't pay for electriicty(there's no per-apartment method to calculate how much each apartment eats electricity so they basically share the price between apartments so only danger is rent itself might raise a bit if it's too big but even then price hike would be shared by some 30 apartments).

It'd be a pretty gakky move to try mining bitcoin just because 29 of your neighbours will unwillingly split the cost. But to be fair; you're going to get nowhere with a standard desktop - people have farms doing this stuff now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Cryptocurrency is not a step forward though, but a step backwards and away from law and order. Financial anonymity and void of accountability serves no honest purpose.

Alternatively, having all of your financial information be easily available to the police state has its own drawbacks, and "make it as easy as possible for the police to know everything about you" is not exactly a high priority for many of us.

Until something goes wrong with it. Sure, the police have access to financial information, but if someone steals my Mastercard and buys stuff with it, they can be traced [so I get my money back and ideally they go to jail]. With bitcoin you've got none of that. Anonymous is good up until the point that it isn't. Given that bitcoin is the reserve of criminals (transferring coins) and investors (hoarding coins), and that the exchanges work purely on trust, it's going to go wrong at some point.

Remember that exchange that vanished taking $millions worth of bitcoins? That can't happen with traditional banking [to an extent; banks can't just disappear, some value of money in garuanteed].

Money held in banks is also insured against theft. And in the UK and EU, a certain amount of savings are also guaranteed.