hardware for bitcoin: is it worth it in 2021? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 02:39:03 pm
content: This morning I was looking for a crypt-processor to offload some task to my poor SBC linux, I don't know what I did and what I typed, but after having Googled for a couple of hours, I gotthispromotional link in all the banners opened on the top web pages.Why?What? And how they know my wishes?I don't know, but as far as I have understood, it's not the VPN crypt-processor I am looking for, but rather a weird beast that now makes me wonder why someone would come into the need of that thing in 2021.It looks you have to invest hardware for bitcoin: is it's worth it in 2021? most bitcoins have been already mined, and only a few are still hidden somewhere in the mathematical world ... and to find these residuals you need advanced hardware that will cost you an eye and a leg and will make you electricity bill very salt.Anyway, this is what I *feel* without any scientific support under my nose, and I may be completely wrong.The questions here are:1) is it really worth it in 2021? to make some profit?2) if #1 is True, then ... which hardware solution is the best?

author: alpher
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 02:54:55 pm
content: I think that minning straight BTC at this time it's a lost cause, but you should definitely check this site:https://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 03:14:21 pm
content: Depends on many things. High performance GPUs are generally the way to go. There was a rig I saw recently with ~78 Nvidia RTX 3080s that pulls in about $12-13k/month at current prices. Of course, that rig will cost you >$60k in upfront capital, just for the GPUs. Nevermind the power requirements.Mind you that's $20k today. If BTC drops back to $10k then that becomes $3k. Much longer payoff. The math is only getting harder, regardless of the price.As for power...78x 3080s will draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 25kW. That's ~208A of my 200A service. Don't turn the stove on...For me in CA, 600 kwH per day * 30 days = 18MWh, which will cost me oh...$5k in electric bills alone. Likely much more w/ peak pricing.But of course you don't need to go to that extreme. A few GPUs might make you a few tens of dollars per day. Maybe. If the price stays high. So is it worth it? Probably not, unless you have a lot of money to spare, and have really cheap electricity. If you happen to have your own solar farm then the math works out better.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 06:09:18 pm
content: With BTC at $30K+ right now, mining is certainly attractive. But from the UK? Don't even think about it. Not even hashing for alt coins. Do the financial math before you do the crypto math. You'll be burning your money and making someone less skilled a lot richer.Kind of ironic that what was meant to be a democratic currency free of control from banks and states, that would be mineable by everyone, is now 2/3rds under the centralized authority of the Chinese government. As for ETH, that's now decentralized into the hands of a few corporations.Go invent something new. And take 100% ownership.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 07:41:03 pm
content: Even at $30k, is it worth mining it? Due to its nature, it's taking more and more resources per bitcoin to mine.I'd be curious to see what the sweet spot would be to make some profit, if you take the initial investment AND the power consumption into account.Not that I necessarily promote speculating, but I'd think at this point you'd make more profit with a lot less hassle just trading bitcoins rather than mining them. Just a thought, again I'd be curious to see realistic figures regarding mining.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 11:11:22 pm
content: It's more profitable to create bitcoin mining malware and unleash it on the world, so that will infect 1,000,000 computers but add only 10% additional CPU load in the background so it doesn't necessarily annoy the user. I believe this is already being tried to monetize websites.But seriously, isn't there an electricity cost factor now that is creating a barrier to profitable mining? Even if the hardware was free, isn't electricity cost the issue? Perhaps if you mine coin in a cold country next to a hydroelectric dam where electricity is cheap and you can pull the extra heat off the miners to replace your heating costs, it may be worth it.NOTE: You may want to mine other cryptocurrency that is cheaper, easier to mine at this point. Once bitcoin "taps out" you may have better risk/benefit with others.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2021, 11:43:48 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 11, 2021, 07:41:03 pmSure it is worth it. You just need to burn subsidized coal end ruin the environment, divert your most high-end production lines to calculate useless numbers, this. Instead of using those GPUs for genetics folding, simulation, or you know, something useful. We waste more energy than the country of Switzerland for running this bullshit. I mean, look at this:Yes, it is exactly what you think it is. Highly intelligent aliens would see us, we wouldn't be able to explain any of this to them. Probably they would just blast us from orbit, making sure this stupidity doesn't infect others.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 01:02:13 am
content: Quote from: edy on January 11, 2021, 11:11:22 pmIt is not if the goal is to hold to the mined coins long term. Look where BTC was 4 years back and where it is now.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 01:13:30 am
content: @NANDblog a cryptofarm is what the aliens really built on Mars in Total Recall, but abandoned it after they had to pay for the electricity.@bud HODL ( hold on for dear life ) and hope some DF down the line will buy your wallet before Greta Thunberg raises an army to trash the crypto (coal) miners.It's an irony that the freedom loving coffee drinker who pays in BTC, is oblivious their crappuchino produces more CO2 in blockchain nonce mangling, than a 787 on take off.Some interesting metrics: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Indexhttps://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 03:52:40 am
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on January 11, 2021, 11:43:48 pmThere are altcoins that do useful work for mining them - Curecoin and Foldingcoin, which both use Folding@Home for mining. Only a small amount of energy is used purely to run the blockchain.There are other altcoins that are a lot more efficient than Bitcoin as far as mining is concerned, I have mined several of those over the years. Sadly, they generally don't remain profitable to mine over the long run, either the coin crashes in value or the difficulty rises to the point where they're no longer energy efficient. I still have an old Nexus 7 (with a bad touchscreen) mining Swagbucks, making about $10/month at current difficulty while using about 3.2W. I used to have several more cheap smartphones and tablets mining, but the coins they were mining have become unprofitable. (What's interesting about Swagbucks is that it uses Scrypt as the hash algorithm, but does a trick with memory use based on the miner's IP address to "deparallelize" it. Thus it is "GPU resistant" and "ASIC resistant" because the memory requirements to parallelize it by any significant degree would very quickly rise to impractical levels. It's also somewhat sensitive to latency to the pool, at some point that ends up dominating performance so it doesn't make sense to mine it with a Ryzen.)What I would like to see is an altcoin that's "mined" using bandwidth, where the primary purpose is to make a P2P Youtube alternative that incentivizes people to run "cache nodes" based on Raspberry Pi and similar.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 04:48:53 am
content: No.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 09:09:23 am
content: QuoteI'm kind of confused here. Is there any real application for them then?I mean, I get that BTC can be an alternative payment method, but in reality it has turned into a tulip fest with a niche in illegal goods payments and an insane power demand. And in theory all of these altcoins can be used as a payment method as well, but aren't they at this point "look I just changed the magic number, the concept remains the same"-bucks with no realistic future?

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 09:20:23 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 12, 2021, 03:52:40 amOf course it is not profitable, the entire systems are based on the pyramid scheme. Something that is illegal is several countries, because it is one of the most basic scams. The average energy consumption for one single Bitcoin transaction in 2020 was 741 kilowatt-hours. That's as much electricity as people use in months. If you would get your salary in it, your carbon footprint would double-triple. That's how insane this is.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 09:36:24 am
content: spending budget on burger sale or fishing equipment could be much more profitable.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 11:22:50 am
content: Quote from: daqq on January 12, 2021, 09:09:23 amBasically.In Australia, instantaneous intra-bank payments have been a thing for years and costs you nothing. That in itself largely eliminated the need for cryptocurrencies. Crypto is all well and good while they are worth something (and you didn't pay for them, either directly or indirectly).

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 01:36:10 pm
content: Quote from: daqq on January 12, 2021, 09:09:23 amJust many attempts at solving the main problem with Bitcoin. Most were not successful since that's a hard problem to solve, but Swagbucks (which is a fork of Litecoin which in turn is a fork of Bitcoin) has been profitable for me to mine for over 5 years. It has a lot of other problems that I don't like, but I still mine it because it's profitable.QuoteHence why I'm pushing for altcoins that do something useful apart from the currency itself. Curecoin and Foldingcoin use medical research as the "hard work" of mining, while my proposed idea of "mining" with bandwidth creates a P2P Youtube alternative that encourages the network to grow.Quote from: NANDBlog on January 12, 2021, 09:20:23 amMost of that energy goes towards making new Bitcoins, would be interesting to see what happens when the making of new Bitcoins phases out and all the miners get are the transaction fees. It would definitely cause the mining efforts to scale back a lot, not sure if that would completely crash it or if it would adapt and finally become a sustainable system.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 01:56:35 pm
content: As far as I know the age of mining Bitcoin with GPUs is long gone. You need to invest in ASICs and hope no one beats you to it before you recoup your investment. You also need cheap power on an industrial scale. Domestic power is way too expensive. It's a big boy game individuals play no role in.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 02:02:36 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on January 12, 2021, 11:22:50 amThe pitch and appeal never was replacing instantaneous intra-bank payments. The value of cryptocurrencies is similar to that of fiat currency. As long as people believe they have value, they do. There's nothing more or less substantial about a dollar than a Bitcoin, except maybe the former can be minted at will.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 02:49:39 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 12, 2021, 01:56:35 pmUnless you buy used ASICs for far less than the cost of new ones and have a source of fixed rate electricity to run them. That includes dorm rooms and a few apartments with electricity included in rent as well as those who have surplus alternative energy at home but no net metering or those who are exceeding the rollover cap for net metering.In that situation, I would opt for buying used servers instead and mining Monero or earnhoney, since at least the servers would be useful for other stuff if it turns out mining wasn't worth it.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 04:03:48 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 12, 2021, 02:49:39 pmIf ASICs are sold you can bet they're not very useful any more. You'd be better off serving burgers at your local McDonald's. Mining with servers hasn't been profitable since the early days. Being naive in this game will cost you either a chunk of cash or time, or both.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 07:01:55 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 12, 2021, 02:49:39 pmHave you considered smelting aluminum or growing cannabis?There's more than one way to (ab)use free electricity...

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2021, 11:13:10 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 12, 2021, 04:03:48 pmThose would be the ASICs that have become cheap because they're not profitable to *most*. Likewise, the servers would also be extra cheap because they're inefficient. It wasn't too long ago when it was profitable to mine earnhoney on a Sandy Bridge, if I could get electricity at a flat rate or surplus electricity that would go wasted if not used, I would still be mining it.Quote from: ebastler on January 12, 2021, 07:01:55 pmSmelting aluminum in an apartment doesn't sound very safe to me. Growing cannabis would be an option if it's legal in that area, but then it would be a lot easier to just grow it in your backyard and not have to depend on artificial light at all.I don't call it "free" electricity because the rent is significantly higher than similar properties without electricity included in rent. It's quite significant, as in you generally have to run quite a bit to end up paying less than if you paid for the electricity separately. Something like 2kW running 24/7 was the break even point back in 2009, I'm sure it has went up because of crypto mining.I remember one time a company that made an app to get free music legally (keep in mind that was before Bitcoin, 2008 or so) by using your computer to do work in exchange. It targeted university students (who often pirated music, which made them prime targets for the RIAA) to try to offer an alternative to piracy. It didn't catch on largely because prior to cryptocurrencies, there was little demand for computation that exposed your data to random strangers. Had that started a few years later, the outcome likely would have been way different.

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 12:29:55 am
content: The whole Bitcoin thing has been a pretty hilarious exercise in watching people lose thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars and as a result slowly reinventing the entirety of our modern banking system, which was supposedly the evil organization to begin with."Oh, I guess it's nice that banks remember where your money is so you don't lose a million dollars because you forgot your password."Aside from that though, I genuinely had no idea how absurdly power-intensive Bitcoin usage was. I mean it's reasonably straightforward to ballpark it if you think about it, but I never did. ~700kWh per bitcoin? Holy hell.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 12:39:55 am
content: The whole thing has always struck me as a pointless exercise and almost criminally wasteful of natural resources. Huge amounts of fossil fuels have been expended and millions of tons of e-waste produced doing useless mathematical busy work generating something that is as volatile in value as any collectible and not even tangible goods. The volatility makes it useless as a currency, and the speculative investment is risky to say the least. The fad has lasted longer than I expected, but it is still entirely possible that it will fall through the floor overnight. If not from people getting bored, then from people eventually getting old and wanting to cash in, and the next generation having even less interest in it than today's kids have in antique furniture.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 12:48:15 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 12, 2021, 02:02:36 pmthat there is a fixed limited supply can also cause problems

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 01:30:28 am
content: I'm under the impression Bitcoin was meant to replace online payment services like Paypal. I think that use case is better covered by Ethereum, been a while since I last looked at the "inefficient" mainstream cryptos.I wonder if there's a reason why energy efficient cryptocurrencies are generally unsuccessful in the long run apart from the problems altcoins face in general. That sometimes happen because the assumption that something other than compute power becomes the limiting factor turns out to not be true. Maybe things will be different for a coin that's limited by bandwidth by its very nature? Apart from sharing bandwidth, perhaps there could be other altcoins that revolve around resources other than compute power? One example could be SDR receivers, where users could bid for priority use of (control over the tuning of) receivers. "Desirable" receivers get paid more so that would encourage putting up decent setups as opposed to just plugging in a random piece of wire and leaving it. Could be done for transmitters as well, although it would be a lot more complex to prove that the end user would have the license to operate such a transmitter in the area. Maybe it could work for ISM bands only, if there's a system in place to make sure the transmitter is always operating within the rules. (A distributed network of transmitters and receivers where end users pay the owners of the equipment to use them, that's starting to sound like a decentralized version of a cell network!)I think cryptocurrency in general is a good idea, now make some that are not limited by compute power (which in turn is limited by energy use) and one big problem would be solved.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 04:16:14 am
content: Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 12:29:55 amyeah but, 1 bitcoin now is $34K in value (the moment i see it)https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoinis that legit and accepted by all banks/countries? the stock value fluctuates like crazy too. if you happen to buy something in Jan 12th, you could lose $1K or more alreadyQuote from: NiHaoMike on January 13, 2021, 01:30:28 ami'm not sure adding another currency will solve problems thats already existed... such as money laundering etc.. i'm not expert in financial/currency/economy area though so i'm not debating any further, let the discussion to the experts, but if its going to replace online payment, who the hell can afford $34K for a single bitcoin? can i buy 0.001 bitcoin? how much a Rigol DS1054Z going to cost? 0.01183221913269833757321185588357 bitcoin? we are going to need new unit. 1.18 bitcents? no! somebody is going to lose 0.003221913269833757321185588357 bitcents, thats equal to 22.5534 Wh of energy, urgh my brain hurt. and then if i buy it, where do i put it? paypal? or bitpocket? what if i lose password as other mentioned? imho its just a redundant currency to what already existed, and the problem that came with every single one of them. i will stick to conventional method, until this thing go viral and generally accepted/established by banks/universities/countries/people. (but then, thats the sentiment)

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 04:22:22 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 13, 2021, 01:30:28 amSeems like this will suffer from all the same problems as other "How hard can it be?" endeavors succumb to. Currency is one thing. An open-source collaborative cell network? Good luck with that!I've got nothing against cryptocurrency in general. It really seems like a solution in search of a problem. The main problems it's trying to solve are already better solved by traditional fiat currency and banks.Is it...untraceable? No. Anonymous? No. Instant? No. Decentralized? Not really, and this isn't a benefit in and of itself. I'm struggling to see the practical benefit for like 99.9% of people. As I mentioned, the entire crypto world is slowly reinventing modern banking as naive people lose tons of money. "Oops mistyped the destination address." Too bad, money's gone forever. "Oops someone hacked my account." Too bad, money's gone forever. "Oops, lost my password." Too bad, money's gone forever. "Oops, the online service storing my Bitcoin was shut down and the owner stole all the wallets." Too bad, money's gone forever. Sensing a pattern?Something like ~20% of all Bitcoin is currently stored in lost or inaccessible wallets.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 08:49:09 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 13, 2021, 04:16:14 amNo, it is 700kWh per transaction. That's when you want to transfer money or pay for something.It's worth noting that this is about 300Kg of CO2 emission. With a press of a button.Mining one bitcoin is about 1.5GWh. You can calculate it from the yearly 78TWh consumption, the system gives you 1 bitcoin every 10 minutes.It's madness, there is no justification for it. Stop it.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 09:51:53 am
content: yes i sort of agree, its waste of energy, time and money in the name of fancy mathematics. not really sure why people, or even companies/investors buy the idea. it doesnt really solve any unsolvable problem with existing currencies, i still can buy goods with existing system. its probably just a big pool of uncrackable crypto experiment. i wont be entertained if someone sell to me even at 1/10X of market value, and i will stay away if a store try to enforce the currency, not that i cant find it somewhere else. i remember one store selling mp3 songs (snort) tomorrow it can go poofed to zero value, so i wont take the risk until it really established and accepted by experts. but then, this is just a sentiment and speculation. fighting from each side to decide if the price is to go up or down. i was a saleperson for some stock market long time ago, did some research and its enough for me with this gamble, i'm not part of it. i'd rather going red or blackened skin under the burning sun work hard to search for big fishes than this nonsense.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 10:20:48 am
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on January 13, 2021, 08:49:09 amThe perfect and almost clean energy-maker machine is our star, the sun. It produces a lot of death radiation and sometimes has solar storms, this is a big problem and it's making hard to build a permanent station on the Moon, but hey? Its radiation per hour is hundred hundred hundred times what why can generate on the Earth planet in a whole year with our neanderthal-technology.We are not Homo Neanderthalensis, We are supposed to be Homo Sapiens, so we should stop using fire to warm up, cook and get things moving, and start making better use of resources!I have a friend who is installing solar panels and photovoltaic cells everywhere, and ... these panels should be "somehow" clean energy.Why somehow? Because you have to build these solar panels and photovoltaic cells, and the process is not exactly clean, but ... less dirty than what happens burning fossil fuel.I am not expert but I see a gain for the health of the planet and people, so maybe the new digital economy would make sense if entirely powered by solar panels?OT:If I was a tales writer, I would describe a world where all the big-irons, big and power hungry servers and computers for the weather forecast and digital economy are all located underground in a Caveau in the desert, with thousands and thousands of photovoltaic panels installed around on the surface where the sun radiation is the best achievable.(maybe a similar place already exist, with less panels, but maybe it already exist)

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 10:23:35 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 13, 2021, 09:51:53 amIt lets people "take the power back," so to speak, so they're not beholden to financial institutions. Which is fine, if that's what you want, but it also means you now have the responsibility of doing all those other things that banks do. Like remembering where your money is.QuoteSure...itcould. So could the US dollar. In theory. I'm not sure what "experts" have to do with it. The legitimacy of a currency doesn't hinge on the buy-in of experts. There's no cabal of lizard-people at the center of the earth deciding what our money is worth. It's worth what it's worth, which is what people generally agree that it's worth. Same as Bitcoin, which is basically our normal currency with extra steps. For it to "poof" vanish everyone would have to decide it's worthless all at once. And that isn't going to happen.QuoteThat's just...making an instant 1,000% profit? Silly thing to say no to. I suppose that works for those who take a moral stand that there's some kind of inherent nobility in poverty, or in doing hard work for pennies. Ah for the days when you could tie up your money for 5 years at a time in a "high yield" COD with a 2% interest rate. If only those fools who made millions off BTC had done that instead, they'd be much happier. I'm sure there is a type of person out there who, if they could go travel back in time to talk to their former self a year ago, wouldstilltell them "nah, Tesla is too risky! Better invest in mutual funds instead!" I haven't met someone like this but I'm sure they exist...The one legitimate use case I can see is for those who live in countries that aren't exactly "free," and also those living in countries where the local currency is unstable/unreliable/worthless. Bitcoin being off the grid, so to speak, would make sense. Even with the price fluctuations. For those in developed countries it's more of a hobby IMO.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 12:26:45 pm
content: Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 10:23:35 amwhat power? each country will formulate some kind of tax anyway if this currency going viral. bitcoin is not free, you'll exchange it with real money anyway, buying mining tools, rent a space and pay electricity, so you cant run away from government and banks. it probably make your life even more miserable (or forever in the dream land waiting for "too good to be true" things to happen).Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 10:23:35 amas i said i'm not expert but i sense this is bigger than you thought. economist, financials, socio-economy, lifestyle etc. imagine you walking on the street with 2 currencies in your pocket. 1 currency is everybody can support, 1 is not so you want to keep exchanging to the other. with ever changing value like that, good luck. but as said i'm not the expert but i dont want to get to the mess yet, even if you ask me to keep both USD and MYR in my pocket, there is no point, unless if i want to go to USA anytime soon. if you want to keep bitcoin separate to online transaction only, then thats fine. but conventional way already have infrastructure for that, paypal, credit card etc. i prefer the more stable way. ymmv.Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 10:23:35 amhow much worth making pcb in your place? and how much worth it is in China? national bank can produce money to boost local economy, but not with bitcoin. they are not simply the same. with rapid fluctuation in market value, imho its not suitable enough yet to be exchange with real money in everyday use. its more suitable with stock market players, you wait until its yearly low and you buy and wait until its decades highest and sell.Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 10:23:35 amthere is a risk of it being lower than 1/10X next day, as i said, i'm not going into the game. i better do real work and get real hard earned profit. ymmv.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 01:51:17 pm
content: Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 04:22:22 amIt would be simpler to start out with a network of RTL-SDRs. Note carefully that the main value is in the receiving location that's rented out, not the RTL-SDRs themselves. The main market is for users to receive signals from a location other than their local location, particularly for those who cannot get decent radio reception.One problem cryptocurrencies have solved is the "I have some spare compute resources, what to do with it?" problem. Replace "compute" with something that doesn't take much energy to scale up and we'll have an even better cryptocurrency if done right. (The last bit is the hard part.)

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 02:04:52 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 13, 2021, 01:51:17 pmit"WAS"a valid statement.

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 02:34:54 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 13, 2021, 12:26:45 pmTo tax it they have to know about it. If you live in Venezuela I can see the benefit of using an outside currency that you can make direct payments to other people with, which isn't tied to the crumbling economy of your own country that has had 20,000% inflation in the past year. There are valid use cases here. The less trust in government and the banking system there is, the more appeal these kind of systems have. In high-trust systems (like most developed countries) it's simply not a concern that tomorrow your bank account will be worth 5% what it is today, or that someone at the bank will steal all your money.QuoteNone of those things matter. What matters is what people mutually agree a given currency is worth. Without that it makes no difference how many economists say otherwise.QuoteFunny enough this is probably something that Bitcoin enthusiasts would argue as a positive. The government can't manipulate the currency quite so easily. As for being suitable to exchange with money I'm with you. It's a pain in the ass to use it day-to-day. But enough people are willing to try it, apparently.QuoteThere are degrees of risk. Not just "risk vs no-risk." The risk you describe is tiny. In any case it doesn't matter, this is just a hypothetical. But I think it highlights the difference in mentality pretty nicely between people who do all these newfangled internet computer bitcoin things and people who put their money into 60 month CODs with 0.25% interest rates because "it's safer than stocks." With a wide spectrum in between of course.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 02:46:47 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 13, 2021, 02:04:52 pmStill true for the altcoins that haven't went to ASICs.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 05:27:39 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 13, 2021, 02:46:47 pmright! Ethereum is currently at $1K, must already costs something to generate one. how about reinventing another cryptic$ (lets call it Deutery) while its still cheap and we can make thousands of coin in a day using my Atomic PC here. whats the plan?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2021, 06:26:18 pm
content: How much do you for 1K Watt per day?

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2021, 07:31:41 pm
content: Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 10:23:35 amOne can imagine that in countries where the local currency is unstable/unreliable/worthless, so too is the local internet service, without which (as I understand it) a cryptocurrency exchange cannot happen.

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2021, 09:52:23 pm
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on January 14, 2021, 07:31:41 pmYou'd think so, but it's a lot easier (and less hassle) to wait for the internet to come back on, or use your phone, than to wait for the local currency to un-inflate itself 10,000%, or transform into whatever currency the new government has decided is valid.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 02:55:04 am
content: Cryptocurrency transactions can run over P2P wireless networks as well. Just one connection to the worldwide network is enough to keep everything in sync. Any valid transaction is spread to the whole network, then put into a block to start the process of making it complete.Here's a project to broadcast the blockchain using satellite, putting Bitcoin a bit closer to an independent P2P network:https://blockstream.com/satellite/

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 11:39:14 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 12, 2021, 11:13:10 pmYou're saying it's profitable if someone else picks up your bills and you don't value your time.False economy is just that. Again, flipping burgers likely is a more worthwhile approach and probably better for the environment too.

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 12:58:55 am
content: Well yes, using old obsolete and inefficient hardware is only going to be profitable if you have effectively free power. New technology crunches more numbers faster using less power. News at 11.As for time, it's a relatively low maintenance way to make money,ifyou have the starting capital to set it up properly. But then that's true of many things. The days of turning a crank to push the 1s and 0s through the electronium machine are long gone, I'm happy to report to those of you who need to hear it.However I will be sure to tell the next Bitcoin millionaire I meet how irresponsible they are and that if only they'd done the "right" thing and gone for a "high yield" 3% investment like their grandpappy they could have made the same amount in only 50 years. That'll really grab the attention of those going after quick BTC money, I'm sure...

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 01:36:15 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 16, 2021, 11:39:14 pmThe rent increase to get electricity included (back when I was looking for apartment housing while I was in college, 10 years ago) is enough that you actually have to be running at least two typical ASIC boxes just to break even, otherwise you'll spend more on the rent increase than if you paid for electricity separately. (After crypto mining became popular, the difference probably widened a lot.) Those schemes create a paradox where saving energy actually allows those wasteful schemes to continue. Outright wasting energy is one way to break them, so go to the next step of mining crypto so that it's not all waste. You could even go with an altcoin like Curecoin or Foldingcoin that does useful work like medical research so it's even less of a waste.Nowadays, a common source of "free" electricity is surplus from solar panels and other on site renewables. That's the case when net metering is either not available or there's enough surplus to go over the cap so the extra is "lost". In that case, a cheap used ASIC box can be operated during those times to get back what would otherwise be wasted.If you're spending hours per day maintaining your mining setup, you're doing it wrong unless you truly have a massive operation. Back when I had 7 cheap smartphones and tablets mining various altcoins, the time I spent maintaining them averages to minutes per day at most.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 05:34:13 pm
content: As far as I understand, Bitcoin Mining is not profitable unless you have access to very cheap electricity, and modern mining hardware.I have a contract for 4KWatt domestic power, plus 1Kwatt of extra power taken from the solar cells I installed on my roof.I was thinking of using this "free" (free because taken from the sun, but it's not really "free", you have to maintain the cells, clean them often, etc) 1Kwatt electricity to mine something with a couple of dedicated ASIC-units on a couple o low cost motherboards.So, here answer to the topic seems: No! The average "home miner" (like me) is unlikely to recoup the cost of mining hardware and electricity, and profiting on your own "seems" highly unlikely.I thinksolar farmscoupled with dedicated modern ASICs may help make mining more profitable, and respectful of the health of the planet; however, if proper accounting is crucial to profitable Bitcoin mining, well ... I have to admit that I have several difficulties in understanding the system, in terms of hardware, software, electricity and money to invest to do some valuation estimate

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2021, 03:37:39 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 17, 2021, 01:36:15 pmOne can apply all kinds of reasoning to it but the fact remains that it's only profitable if someone else picks up the bill. It's also likely you'd be mining very inefficiently. Unless you're willing to overplay your hand by using ridiculous amounts of energy liable to get you kicked out of your appartement it's not going to be anything more than a hobby. Running a few mining rigs isn't going to get you a sound return on investment nowadays, especially if they're outdated machines behind the curve.Mining with 7 mobile devices very definitely is hobby territory. It only makes sense if you consider it a fun activity, not as a means to earn money.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2021, 03:13:24 am
content: Those "electricity included in rent" schemes are basically "take advantage of it or it takes advantage of you" schemes. The only way to win appears to be going all out with a sizable setup. Or don't play it and pay for electricity separately (in return for a much lower rent) like most people do.Nowadays, a common source of "free" electricity would be from your own solar panels when your own usage is low, most likely during spring/fall if you don't have net metering. If you can't find anything better to do with the surplus, might as well mine some altcoins with hardware you already have. The efficiency might be low, but it's going to be a lot better than the zero you would get if you didn't.Those 7 mobile devices were making something like $150/month back when the difficulty was low. Call it a hobby if you like but it's not something the average hobbyist would call insignificant.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2021, 10:08:16 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 19, 2021, 03:13:24 amWhich 7 mobile devices?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2021, 10:14:31 am
content: Bitcoin Mining Profit Calculatorhere

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2021, 10:21:09 am
content: A0=Hash RateA1=Bitcoin PriceA2=Power consumptionA3=Cost per KW/hProfit/day = f(A0,A1,A2,A3){ A0++, A2--, A3--} : ---> f++{ A0++, A2-- }: ---> buy modern efficient ASICs?A3 -- : ---> use solar cells?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2021, 02:22:12 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on January 19, 2021, 10:08:16 am3x Moto E, Nook HD, Kindle Fire, ZTE Speed, Galaxy Rush. All the phones I bought cheap specifically for mining, the tablets I already had.QuoteThe problem with newer ASICs is that they're far more expensive than older used ASICs. Thus why those older ASICs are good for those with "free" electricity. Besides, that would get more use out of hardware that otherwise would be thrown away.

author: mikejonesny
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 19, 2021, 03:18:44 pm
content: amazing to see again lots of interest in btc

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2021, 08:52:42 pm
content: Economically, the problem is Crypto Mining is implictly anti-competitive. The notion ofDifficultywas Satoshi's idealistic attempt to prevent the rise of a cartel-of-actors; a cartel who could gain so much hash rate by simply having enough resources to buy up, for example, all of the GPUs on Earth. In the same way a Federal competition regulator operates by preventing a corporation from taking over the competition to destroy future access to the market (Alphabet?), by algorithmically increasing the difficulty with a rise in block speeds (hash rate),shouldbe enough to act as an implicit market regulator. In a market that's designed to haveno regulation.Unfortuntelydifficulty regulationworks in completely the opposite direction. This is because it is in the interest of the dominant competitors to invest in hash rate; not to improve the block resolution speed but, to make mining so darn expensive that only their cartel is left with exclusive access to the mining pool. When eventually the difficulty decreases as other players drop from the mining game, the cartel-of-actors is left controlling the difficulty.In my opinion.Suggestion for 2021. Bury your USB Block Erupter in a time capsule, and leave it for future generations to ponder the insanity of making such a device.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2021, 09:58:59 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 19, 2021, 03:13:24 am"take advantage of it or it takes advantage of you" is just waffle to justify behaviour which isn't quite up to snuff. It's like taking 20 packs of sugar because otherwise the restaurants is taking advantage of you, or selling power to your neighbours using extension cords. Functioning adults shouldn't need to be told that's frowned upon. Besides, most home owners will also include a fair use policy or allow domestic use of their property and amenities only.Solar power is far from free. It takes quite a few years to break even. $150 a month is what a kid with a paper route makes. That's hardly a business venture, especially if you're doing it on someone else's dime.

author: SVFeingold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2021, 11:28:48 pm
content: Solar power isn't free, but how much do you really think you need to run 7 mobile devices? Figure a 100 kW solar farm oughta do it? Nah better make it 200.I get the temptation to make up ridiculous scenarios that nobody in their right mind would actually try to implement, but it's not really informative. Assuming our cyrpto-mining enthusiast has enough money to set up a real operation then yeah, you could pay off the solar panels reasonably quickly. Assuming you don't live in Norway or something.Whether it's a total waste of energy is another topic but hey, at least it's renewable energy!

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2021, 11:38:07 pm
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on January 20, 2021, 08:52:42 pmPerhaps if we make the mining do something useful outside the blockchain, such as medical research or hosting content, we could effectively "trick" the cartel into doing something useful. I don't think cancer patients would care if the research that's helping to heal them was done by millions of individuals or a few data centers.Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 20, 2021, 09:58:59 pmDid you miss the part where the rent for places that include electricity is a lot higher than for similar properties that do not include electricity? Something like $200/month extra when for similar apartments in that area, $100/month for electricity is already on the high side. It would be a different matter if it was just $80/month extra where everyone is expected to conserve to keep it that low. In reality, if mining crypto is bad, so should be refusing to turn off the HVAC or at least reducing its use when leaving home. (I think the latter is what those schemes are marketed towards.)If you don't have net metering, then sizing your solar setup is a tradeoff between covering more summer/winter usage and not being able to get good utilization during spring/fall. Crypto mining using cheap hardware during spring/fall is one way to boost utilization. I suppose you could keep it small so there won't be much surplus, except solar panels often get cheaper as you buy more at once.The way you refuse $150/month sounds like you're the type who refuses to own a garden because you can buy fruit and vegetables for cheap at the local grocery store. Fine, you're helping to keep the difficulty from rising as fast. Or actually calculate how much you make compared to the few minutes you spend per day maintaining it and it turns out to be a decent rate. (Good luck delivering the papers while only using a few minutes per day or less!)Quote from: SVFeingold on January 20, 2021, 11:28:48 pmA single 100W panel was all it took to power my mining setup at that time, with some left over to run other stuff.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2021, 01:10:39 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 20, 2021, 11:38:07 pmI've pondered if 'citizen science' would be a use for all of those domestic internet routers? Most routers are potent little machines running some Linux-Busybox distro. Just a few clock cycles per machine would soon add up across a whole ISPs estate. Some 26M+ CPE devices in the UK alone. Of course, electricity is free because it's paid for by the householder. Polynomials anyone?As for the cartel, the chance of block rewards are just enough incentive to make the risk worth taking. But what is the incentive if there are no returns on investment? World peace, a cure for Malaria/Zika, proof of quantum gravity? Nar, these guys want cold hard US dollars, and a crypto bank in Gran Cayman to hide it all from the IRS. For techies, crypto is a whole universe of hardware and software peaks to conquer. Which is a good thing. It gives us something to do with the free college dorm electricity. But for the investment trusts and criminal pyramid schemes that are funding the crypto arms race, it's the round trip time from fiat to fiat that motivates them. One day it will be too difficult to mine the last ounces from the block, and the floor will fall out the ASIC hardware market. <<Poor is the last man left holding the blockchain>> But there might be money to be made from all of that scrap metal.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2021, 01:47:59 am
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on January 21, 2021, 01:10:39 amProbably would work better to add some storage and create a P2P content distribution network. While we're at it, also add in P2P wireless mesh networking to further boost bandwidth. If we end up with a Youtube alternative that's partially P2P in nature, the individuals will at least keep the "cartel" honest - every video they refuse to host will instead be hosted by individuals. Add in cryptocurrency rewards for "seeding" content and everyone will be encouraged to participate.

author: Sallymilr
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 07:42:06 am
content: Thank you very much for the formula, but there are some flaws in this regard!

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 08:18:38 am
content: Quote from: Sallymilr on April 22, 2021, 07:42:06 amI feel some link spam coming... "Welcome" to the forum, Sallymilr. Shall we wait until you add a spam link to the post above or have you banned right away to save us all some hassle?

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2021, 03:49:32 pm
content: Quote from: ShaoCan on April 23, 2021, 10:33:30 amAnd there goes another one. Reported. Bye, ShaoCan!I don't get this link spam business. The posters spend a somewhat significant amount of time on one single post: Looking for the "right" thread (stale and somewhat relevant to their topic), creating an account, posting some kind-of-matching stuff, jotting down the account details so they can come back later, sometimes checking back multiple times to ensure the thread is silent, then coming back to add the spam link, and reporting the done deed back to some client. Presumably the client also spend a moment to list the submitted link, and check whether it has survived after a few days.Does anyone have an idea what a spammer gets paid for successfully posting a link? Why is this worth the spammer's time, and how big is the value to their clients? Is this all about page ranks in Google, or do they actually hope to directly attract customers who find and follow the link?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2021, 05:29:20 pm
content: I suspect it's largely automated. They probably have a script written for each of the major forum packages that does most of the work. Then they just have to sign up for an account and get through the capchas. It's possible even finding the thread and posting a "relevant" message is fully automated, they could search for keywords like bitcoin, money, investment, etc in the post titles. Doesn't have to be super impressive AI.