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12-29-2013 , 12:04 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by iversonian
people talk about how current hardware will be obsolete soon. but why? what is over the horizon that would be a mega leap over ASICs?
There are differing degrees of efficiency for ASICs. Once we get to the optimal size, we basically are at Moore's law from then on out.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GutZ
Is there a way to park cash on Coinbase?
I would like to buy Bitcoin at a price I have in mind, then move to BTC-e and buy Litecoin. I don't want to wait 3-5 days.


What price do you think I should buy?
There's no way to park at Coinbase. But you get your price locked in when you buy, so it doesn't matter if you are waiting for a price.
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12-29-2013 , 12:38 AM
Thank you.

The reason I don't want to wait is I want to convert into LTC asap.
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12-29-2013 , 04:12 AM
Get yourself all setup on coinbase. Buy your bitcoin, send to btc-e, and then sell for ltc or usd to buy ltc at a later time.
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12-29-2013 , 07:50 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anssi A
Sorry if this is bit silly question:

I know GPU mining isn't really profitable any longer, but if I still want to do it on the side as I use computer for web surfing/other random light stuff. Does the mining increase my computer's electricity usage? If yes, by about how much (10%, 200%?).

(My card is pretty good gaming GPU)
GPU mining is profitable if u have a decent gpu 7950+ r9+
you electricity usage will go up about 50-100%
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12-29-2013 , 08:13 PM
i wonder what % of mining is being done without the knowledge of the people who are paying for the electricity.
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12-29-2013 , 09:34 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by iversonian
i wonder what % of mining is being done without the knowledge of the people who are paying for the electricity.
A lot of miners are pretty lol, so it wouldn't surprise me at all. I bet there are a lot of parents who are wondering why their electricity bill went up so much and so much heat is coming out of their kids rooms. Maybe they think there is a grow operation there.
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12-29-2013 , 09:52 PM
Thanks IceWolf.
It is sure entertaining to go back to the beginning of this thread
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12-29-2013 , 10:53 PM
I've been reading some random criticisms from random blogs and I was wondering if someone could explain the jist of this post.

http://dizzynomics.wordpress.com/201...btc-confusion/

Quote:
Bitcoin has decentralised earnings. Only miners who create Bitcoin code can earn from the system absolutely, and the only reason they can earn is because the clearing union demands that it clears against a self manufactured unit which is not pegged to anything.

Only a miner knows if he can immediately cash out with a profit at any given time. Everyone else entering the system and buying units (from miners) is a speculator who may win, or lose.

The way value is assured is by restricting supply relative to inflows, even though those using the system for its transaction/secure payments function have more interest in stability than appreciation.

This is the flaw. Appreciation only serves the interests of opaque miners who keep the system ticking over, not the users themselves (unless they are speculators). Thus you are replacing a fee-charging organisation with an elite set of prospectors.

At the moment this may appear to be a much more efficient and cheaper system than paying an intermediary to clear on your behalf, because the fees you are indirectly paying miners are being obscured by the illusion of permanent value. But if and when a Bitcoin’s value went to zero, the cost of funding those miners would end up much higher on an individual basis than fees paid to a clearing union. The only winers in that scenario would be the miners or people who used the system for the transfer of conventional money.
And from the comments

Quote:
The only reason all those agents can be removed is because the system funds itself like a ponzi scheme. Costs are costs. Currently those costs are funded via Bitcoin’s appreciation, but ironically this does not serve the interests of the community at all… Bitcoin’s greatest innovation is the open ledger and decentralised double spending solution. If this was funded directly via participants rather than Bitcoin miners you would get a truly decentralised and fair exchange system. The removal of intermediaries is a positive innovation, but not if it exposes participants to risks and greater costs as a result. Also the current cost of trading INTO Bitcoin or redeeming for dollars is huge. Spreads are huge. That is not efficient.
This blogger continually refers to bitcoin creating a group of elites out of the early miners. Sounds ridiculous, but I don't even really understand the concepts behind what this person is basing their theory on. It's interesting regardless of whether or not it's true.
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12-29-2013 , 11:52 PM
Don't get it.
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12-30-2013 , 12:33 AM
While the barrier to mining is quite low-- because of cloud hashing and crowd funding, there are real costs involved with mining BTC because of how competitive it has become. Mining equipment is now expensive whether you deal in BTC or USD. IIRC people are paying between 15-20$/gh. Mining of course serves to legitimize the ledger and generate new BTC, but there are people who mine 6months just to breakeven.

In the meantime, Bitcoin has shown the ability to transcend the idea that it could only solely exist as a store of value. It possesses utilities that allows the public to subvert central banking that is controlled by sometimes, oppressive governments. That fact alone nullifies his hypothesis. You can generate transactions in BTC, relative to whatever USD is, and never be exposed to the fluctuations of BTC.

As for the comment, I would say that that is simply a byproduct of a system that is closer to peer to peer than anything else in the world. Buy and sell walls exist everywhere and are not indicative to whether "spreads are huge". The fact that a middle man does not exist removes a degree of opportunity for market manipulation-- something that is clearly tangible and omnipresent in every other exchange in the world; whether you deal in gold at London or trade securities in wall street.


Otherwise im with TC. This guy has no idea what he's talking about and clearly doesnt have a BTC or financial or philosophical or economic background. No idea wtf he's talking about half the time.
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12-30-2013 , 10:51 AM
Ok I'll delete his feed. I wasn't sure and because I'm not knowledgable it's hard to figure out if it's me that's not getting it or the blogger that's not getting it.
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12-30-2013 , 10:53 AM
One question about mining. Is it something separate from day to day bitcoin transactions or does everyone have a chance (however small) to solve one the problems and score a bit coin. Could some rando score a bit coin or do you have to be doing something specific to mining?

I was always under the impression that once mining got to hard for individuals it would be the whole network that essentially did the mining. With mining turning from a private endeavor to something more akin to a lottery.
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12-30-2013 , 12:45 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ianlippert
One question about mining. Is it something separate from day to day bitcoin transactions or does everyone have a chance (however small) to solve one the problems and score a bit coin. Could some rando score a bit coin or do you have to be doing something specific to mining?

I was always under the impression that once mining got to hard for individuals it would be the whole network that essentially did the mining. With mining turning from a private endeavor to something more akin to a lottery.
You have to be specifically mining. It used to be in the standard client, although it was shut off when it was a dumb idea to CPU mine. There's probably a way to enable it through the standard client. But even with a very specialized computer and GPU mining, you'd be like 1 in a million to find a block in the next year.

It still is individuals mining, although there are pools. Pools are basically groups of miners working together and splitting the lottery winnings. Think of it is a team of poker players entering the main event with a shared bankroll, and they split winnings. It's not really an EV play if the players are equal, but a variance reduction play. Most pools take a fee.

There is a peer to peer pool that basically pays out based on how close you were to solving blocks along the way to prove you are working. Think of this system as a group of lottery players that buy a lot of tickets. Each ticket someone shows that matches 3 numbers will get a "share" of any winnings that the pool gets. This is a way to prove you are actually buying the tickets and distribute winnings fairly with less variance than just individuals buying tickets.
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12-30-2013 , 01:47 PM
So eventually we would see large distributed pools of miners. Like SETI at home. People that just do it for the fun of the idea and not because they particularly expect to make significant money off of it.
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12-30-2013 , 03:15 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ianlippert
So eventually we would see large distributed pools of miners. Like SETI at home. People that just do it for the fun of the idea and not because they particularly expect to make significant money off of it.
It used to be more like SETI at home back around 2011, but even then you needed certain kinds of graphics cards to even break even with electricity costs. We've gotten to a point where you need specialized chips just dedicated to mining. This is still somewhat distributed but more consolidated (relative to user base of Bitcoins) than before. I predict that this will consolidate even further, such that those who can exploit advantages, such as free power, cool climates, etc..., will dominate mining so much that it will become unprofitable for others.

There are people who think they can make money and don't, because the underestimate costs. Or they get lucky because the price spikes (but they still would have been better off buying Bitcoins). The % of Bitcoin holders that are miners is pretty small right now.
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12-30-2013 , 05:25 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by iversonian
i wonder what % of mining is being done without the knowledge of the people who are paying for the electricity.
bitcoin (sha256) not a lot but there is a huge botnet mining litecoins (srypt). look for the 174v7 174v6 accounts

as you can see here they are making good cryptomoney
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12-30-2013 , 08:41 PM
Dogecoin..that's all.
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12-30-2013 , 09:04 PM
If i have free electricity, how much pennies can one make with just a standard laptop per hour?

and what bout with a pretty high end laptop?
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12-30-2013 , 09:20 PM
Im in Canada so cannot link a bank account on coinbase. Im still waiting to get verified on Cavirtex. Would it make sense to buy on cavirtex then send the coins to my coinbase wallet? Just with the 25 million behind coinbase it seems a bit safer?
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12-30-2013 , 09:47 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by fluorescenthippo
If i have free electricity, how much pennies can one make with just a standard laptop per hour?

and what bout with a pretty high end laptop?
Probably .000000001 pennies per hour. WIth a high end laptop, .000000002 pennies per hour.

Your EV after risking burning out a card is negative.
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12-30-2013 , 09:48 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shifty86
Im in Canada so cannot link a bank account on coinbase. Im still waiting to get verified on Cavirtex. Would it make sense to buy on cavirtex then send the coins to my coinbase wallet? Just with the 25 million behind coinbase it seems a bit safer?
Get Electrum and send to yourself.
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12-30-2013 , 10:10 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by iversonian
i wonder what % of mining is being done without the knowledge of the people who are paying for the electricity.
I had some grad school friends mining with a 20ish node cluster when nobody had any jobs related to research running....they did pretty well but it was a few years ago. The machines are built and optimized for a totally different application though so it was never efficient. I think around late last or early this year it stopped being worth the time to update the code etc.

Its prob the best situation for energy though.....the department/university pays for the electricity for the whole building and there are other groups using ludicrous amounts of electricity for high power lasers, maintaining particles at a few degrees below absolute 0 etc. The whole theory groups power usage is unmeasurable, let alone a single cluster that often times runs 24/7 with actual jobs anyway.
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12-30-2013 , 10:20 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TomCollins
Probably .000000001 pennies per hour. WIth a high end laptop, .000000002 pennies per hour.

Your EV after risking burning out a card is negative.
yea it could probably be that low. so its like very very sure its less than a couple bucks an hour? im assuming free expendable hardware too.
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12-30-2013 , 11:07 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by fluorescenthippo
yea it could probably be that low. so its like very very sure its less than a couple bucks an hour? im assuming free expendable hardware too.
You will be lucky to make a dollar in 3 months, on a laptop, even without electricity or hardware costs. Difficulty too high, and a laptop is not going to give you hardly any hashrate. Make more money solving captchas.
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12-30-2013 , 11:16 PM
I cant read this. What is my total hashrate

[img]http://s28.************/uw5ztjwop/get_attachment.jpg[/img]
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