Bitcoin?

[SMOKEU]

Anyone else here mine them?

[Drew]

I am not familiar with the word, or mining practices involved in it's discovery.

[sil3nt]

Doesn't it take a stupidly long time to mine a useful amount?

I actually don't understand how it all works. Have tried to read up on it a few times still don't get it.

[JimO]

why did i think that said bacon

[SMOKEU]

Doesn't it take a stupidly long time to mine a useful amount?

I actually don't understand how it all works. Have tried to read up on it a few times still don't get it.

If you mine for a pool with a semi decent AMD GPU like a 5850 or better then it can be worth it.

It's just a peer to peer currency, and all the "work" that your GPU does is used for maintaining the block chain and verifying the transactions of the other miners, so BTC can't be fraudulently generated. I only just got back into it after about a 1 year hiatus due to the unfavourable difficulty/$ ratio. Have a look here

[mashman]

Tin foil hats at the ready

[Scuba_Steve]

Tin foil hats at the ready

Seems the US don't like cash they can't control

[mashman]

Seems the US don't like cash they can't control

Aye... especially when there's no money to be made in the shares. Wonder how many of the sitting govt have shares in Google.

[avgas]

Bump.

So lets talk ASIC - anyone tried? What have you used? Does this mean FPGA mining is dead?

[SMOKEU]

Bump.

So lets talk ASIC - anyone tried? What have you used? Does this mean FPGA mining is dead?

FPGA is more or less dead. I haven't tried ASIC mining, for a very good reason. The waiting times to receive the ASIC miners are generally measured in months, so by the time you receive the miner, it's worth far less than what you paid for it due to the block difficulty increases. I haven't wanted to take the risk of buying secondhand hardware.

[avgas]

FPGA is more or less dead. I haven't tried ASIC mining, for a very good reason. The waiting times to receive the ASIC miners are generally measured in months, so by the time you receive the miner, it's worth far less than what you paid for it due to the block difficulty increases. I haven't wanted to take the risk of buying secondhand hardware.

So if I say had the ability to buy an ASIC and get it near immediately it would be worth it, but otherwise nope?
That is a shame - but does make it clearer that if I want to buy one to play with its worth watching the lead-times. Thanks.

Yeah I noticed some good deals on trademe recently. Better than I can get from Amazon.

[SMOKEU]

So if I say had the ability to buy an ASIC and get it near immediately it would be worth it, but otherwise nope?
That is a shame - but does make it clearer that if I want to buy one to play with its worth watching the lead-times. Thanks.

Yeah I noticed some good deals on trademe recently. Better than I can get from Amazon.

Not all ASIC miners will ever be able to make a profit if the block difficulty keeps increasing, so do your calculations very, very carefully if you plan on making your investment back, let alone any profit. Work out the hash rate of the miner, current block difficulty level, electricity costs, and how many BTC it can mine each day at current difficulty levels, and the next estimated difficulty, and the delivery time.

A good example was Butterfly Labs, they kept on taking people's money, then delaying delivery again, and again, and again. If you were lucky and got your miner quickly, you could make a profit for a few weeks, even a few months if you were lucky. If you didn't get your miner quickly, you'd end up with something that you'll likely never make any money off. If buying any miner, make sure that the seller has it in stock and can guarantee very prompt delivery.

[avgas]

Talked to a guy today about it. He found a chinese supplier that has replaced his rig. He said he pity's people who GPU mine because the new ASIC's are 10 times faster than the average GPU @ half the cost. But he also said like you if you can't get it within 2 months it is a waste of time as you have lost half your prime production. He has delivery within 2 weeks, but he thinks in about 6 months it won't be worth mining as that 2 weeks will be his prime production. As it stands he makes about 500% return in a year. But then the gear is near worthless (another 100% or less per year).

He also mentioned that China and Taiwan have rigs that destroy most of the US ones. Whole, water-cooled, 40ft shipping containers.

Meh I guess I can always repurpose an FPGA - but what the F do you do with a ASIC special for bitcoins but to slow to process? Run it on solar?

[Akzle]

what the fuck are you on about?? i've done a brief search on this shit, and still care very little. so. summarise it in a fucking paragraph.

[avgas]

(its more complicated than this - but this makes it sound magical)
Bitcoin = Independent currency free from corporation and government made by a computer finding out calculated cryptic message from a block of #####

Digital Drills
GPU = Computer graphics card chip, good at doing highspeed calculations, thus good at finding the hashes, mining rigs (like a drilling rig for gold, but this one is digital).
FPGA = Funny little chip you can program to do anything really fast, but only does basic tasks. Similar to a microprocessor, but can do multiple tasks at the same time. Running joke is that the F stands for Female (it doesn't). A little expensive. Was good for bitcoin mining due to the fact it was fast at doing lots of stuff at the same time with little power.
ASIC = Like an FPGA, but hardwired to only do one set of tasks. Cheap to make, but useless if you want to use it for something else later.

More "Hashes" or "Hash rate" the better the digital drill. Currently a cheap USB powered ASIC block miner costs about $20-$50 with the same Hash Rate of the average graphics card (GPU). Being USB you can have a hundred of these running of the PC making a powerful "rig". But as the "cheap gold" is made in the "topsoil".......the drills get more powerful later on. So something that was good drill 2 years ago - now is like mining with a teaspoon.
(keep in mind that all these things a) cost money and b) consume money in the way of power..........so unless the price keeps going up, you're fucked. Just like gold mining)