Bitcoins and Other Crypto-currencies

Have they paid for themselves?

Pretty much, had about £130 out of it so far. But that got spent on some new ones that increase my hash rate by 65 ghash.
Which look they will mine back their cost in the next 3 weeks.

[iup=3509228]Errkal[/iup] wrote:

[iup=3509215]1cmanny1[/iup] wrote:

[iup=3509155]Grumpy David[/iup] wrote:You can use a computer but for the number crunching tasks and the amount of heat and power they use to mine bit coins there would be no profit in it. Plus it would take too long, you'd mine nothing as everyone else is using very specialist equipment whilst you're using some nasty New Zealand spec prebuild.

A tiny USB computer would be able to do it faster than a gaming PC? Also Errkal you said you only make 3 pounds a day, what mining equipment do you have?

It isn't a USB computer is is a USB ASIC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit.

IT is basically a processor thats job is to run calculations that are then submitted to the Bitcoin Network. The rate in which you can do calculations is called youer hash rate.

Where a £500 graphics card could do maybe 120 MegaHash a £16 AntMiner U1 ASIC will be able to do 1.8 Gigahash.

A lot of Alt-Coins use GPU and CPU mining only but BTC has gone passed that, using your GPU as a miner is good as a learning tool as it saves spending money but because it has to run at 100% utilization all the time it wont make you anything.

My setup at the moment is this:

10 x http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bitmain-AntMiner-U1-1-6GH-Bitcoin-Black/dp/B00HLQ73RY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405573715&sr=8-1&keywords=antminer+u1
2 x http://www.amazon.co.uk/RockMiner-R-BOX-~32-37GH-Bitcoin-Asicminer/dp/B00KU39CDS/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405573743&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=Rockmine+R-Box

The Antminer were bought a while back and from the BTC they have generated I bought the two R-Boxes.

So I buy that second one, how do I got about setting it up to make money. Is it easy?

*edit*

I just watched some videos. It 'seems' easy enough. What power supply did you buy for that?

They should come with one, they have just use a 12V power pack so nothing special needed.

They are very easy to run, I use MinePeon and a RaspberryPi to run it as it is uses much less power than a PC and the "host" doesn't do much, it also gives you a nice web interface for controlling it.

Wrote this in a PM to someone the other day but mind be useful be post it for others.

Basically to get started you need the following.

> Bitcoin Wallet.

You can run this locally on your machine, but if the machine does and it isn't backed up it is lost. So I use a "cloud" based provider. After much searching I decided on https://blockchain.info/ but [url]coinbase.com[/url] works just as well. I just prefer blockchains interface and features.

> Some mining hardware

You start off using your GPU to mine its a good way to get an idea of how the software works and stuff like that before buying kit, but really its going to work so it just delays stuff really.
I started with these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antminer-U1-USB-ASIC-Bitcoin-Miner-1-6Gh-s-2-2Gh-s-UK-Seller-IN-HAND-/331254579392?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4d204fc0c0
They are cheap, just stay working and dont really need any additional cooling so are silent, and as they are only slightly larger than a USB key you can just plug them into your PC and leave them running. I have 10 of them in a 10 port USB hub connected to my server.

> Mining Software

There are a couple of options here.

1. BFGMiner http://bfgminer.com/

This is what I use on my server, its got drivers built in for most miners so you just have to plug the miner in start the software with something like



It also makes over clocking of the ASIC easy too, for my AntMiners I use



That starts all antminers it see and clocks them up to 2 gigahash.

2. CGMiner

I know very little about this other than ever time I have used it for mining I get very pissed off. I hate it.

3. MinePeon http://minepeon.com/index.php/Main_Page

This is a OS distro for the RaspberryPi, it lets you use a Pi as the host for your mining kit and provides a web interface for managing pools, miners etc. It is very good if you dont want a PC running all the time as it is lower power and silent. Only thing to be cause of is there are some USB hubs that dont work on a Pi.

> A Mining Pool

This you have which is my one, but you can use others. There are a few other there. CEX.io is a massive one. You wont really gain anything by moving pools. You get basically the same payout everywhere the only difference is some pools are bigger so you will get lots of small payments others are smaller so you few big payments.

Personally I prefer P2Pool which is what my pool runs as it pays directly to you from completing the block, in a traditional pool your money sits with the pool until they pay it out and if they get hacked/ decide to be a banana split they could just not payout. P2Pool the system just does the payout I have no way of stopping you getting your moneys.

My pool details are here: http://errkal.homeserver.com and anyone is welcome to use it if they want, but there are quite a few pools out there.

Basically that is it, once you start making some money you can then save it spend it or exchange it. I do a mix, so I use Netagio https://secure.netagio.com/ as a Bank, they let you store coins and can sell instantly into £ or Euro or use it to buy gold if you have enough. I send about half my earning there, the other half sits in my blockchain.info account as that wallet lets you spend quickly which I then use for more hardware when I want it what ever I want to buy really.

So it's been a pretty rocky start to the year for BTC so far.

Has anyone taken advantage of the low prices and bought some in the past day or two?

Why would anyone want to?

Buy drugs/ guns/ woman?

I can do that with real money

[iup=3511878]Errkal[/iup] wrote:Wrote this in a PM to someone the other day but mind be useful be post it for others.

Basically to get started you need the following.

> Bitcoin Wallet.

You can run this locally on your machine, but if the machine does and it isn't backed up it is lost. So I use a "cloud" based provider. After much searching I decided on https://blockchain.info/ but [url]coinbase.com[/url] works just as well. I just prefer blockchains interface and features.

> Some mining hardware

You start off using your GPU to mine its a good way to get an idea of how the software works and stuff like that before buying kit, but really its going to work so it just delays stuff really.
I started with these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antminer-U1-USB-ASIC-Bitcoin-Miner-1-6Gh-s-2-2Gh-s-UK-Seller-IN-HAND-/331254579392?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4d204fc0c0
They are cheap, just stay working and dont really need any additional cooling so are silent, and as they are only slightly larger than a USB key you can just plug them into your PC and leave them running. I have 10 of them in a 10 port USB hub connected to my server.

> Mining Software

There are a couple of options here.

1. BFGMiner http://bfgminer.com/

This is what I use on my server, its got drivers built in for most miners so you just have to plug the miner in start the software with something like

Code: Select all

bfgminer.exe -o **mining pool address -u **your worker name** -p **worker password**

It also makes over clocking of the ASIC easy too, for my AntMiners I use

Code: Select all

bfgminer.exe -S antminer:all --set-device antminer:clock=x0981 -o **pool address** -u **worker username** -p ** password **

That starts all antminers it see and clocks them up to 2 gigahash.

2. CGMiner

I know very little about this other than ever time I have used it for mining I get very pissed off. I hate it.

3. MinePeon http://minepeon.com/index.php/Main_Page

This is a OS distro for the RaspberryPi, it lets you use a Pi as the host for your mining kit and provides a web interface for managing pools, miners etc. It is very good if you dont want a PC running all the time as it is lower power and silent. Only thing to be cause of is there are some USB hubs that dont work on a Pi.

> A Mining Pool

This you have which is my one, but you can use others. There are a few other there. CEX.io is a massive one. You wont really gain anything by moving pools. You get basically the same payout everywhere the only difference is some pools are bigger so you will get lots of small payments others are smaller so you few big payments.

Personally I prefer P2Pool which is what my pool runs as it pays directly to you from completing the block, in a traditional pool your money sits with the pool until they pay it out and if they get hacked/ decide to be a banana split they could just not payout. P2Pool the system just does the payout I have no way of stopping you getting your moneys.

My pool details are here: http://errkal.homeserver.com and anyone is welcome to use it if they want, but there are quite a few pools out there.

Basically that is it, once you start making some money you can then save it spend it or exchange it. I do a mix, so I use Netagio https://secure.netagio.com/ as a Bank, they let you store coins and can sell instantly into £ or Euro or use it to buy gold if you have enough. I send about half my earning there, the other half sits in my blockchain.info account as that wallet lets you spend quickly which I then use for more hardware when I want it what ever I want to buy really.

strawberry float that for £4 per day.

I've killed the server off now, I make more from investing the few BitCoins I have in Peer to Peer loans. It is slowly building now but I haven't had to blow thousands on hardware

Falsey wrote:I can do that with real money

Not from the comfort of your own home. Unless you don't mind being arrested

In fact I suppose if your dealers good you could. More choice online though

Is anyone here (still) interested in crypto?

Personally I have ethical problems with using bitcoin due to the amount of malware proliferating around its production and use.

The fact that banks are still allowed to trade in and accept it as currency is troubling. If the global community is serious about tackling fraud then this needs to be stamped out, although given the lack of technical savvy of governments and the general unethical behaviour of the banking sector this seems unlikely to happen any time soon. China at least seem to be more on the ball on this front.

Governments and banks seem to be getting on board, I think blockchain technology could be very good for states, IOs etc. I'd say it's better to be proactive and put it to good use than try to suppress it, but I do understand your concerns.

Its so unstable and the pips are so high on forex, you can swing between +$1000 to - $1000 in minuets.

I have a friend who is a massive nerd IT wizard, who has been starting to do somethings in Ethereum which got me interested in it as well.

It's a very interesting concept, basically you can use the block-chain, which for BTC would be only for validating transactions between users in many more ways, like to execute code. It's almost like cloud computing as you have code run on multiple machines through the block-chain.

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-ethereum/

BTC has gone up by $2000 in the last 12 hours and is at $15,000 USD now.


How I feel not getting in sooner.

Rightey wrote:How I feel not getting in sooner.

But this is how you'll also feel if you buy the day before the bubble bursts.