Bitcoin
 

Anybody here tried out Bitcoin, a new cryptographic digital currency?

I've been (trying) generating coins for ages now, but not having a graphics card with the fancy new general-purpose GPUs, I'm not being terribly successful. Would be nice to generate some though since their value has increased from about $1 per Bitcoin a month or so ago, to about $15/coin today.

Also, if anyone happens to want to donate to me, you know, for being a fantastic admin, paying to keep this place online etc. etc. you can send coins to: 1LYog1JExoinAVisqK7YWfjyJxpQ62zoiE

Thoughts?

The increased utility bill for power consumption to mine for the things and the recent Bitcoin crash from $30 something to $12 doesn't really make this a viable currency.

The cost (in terms of time and energy - hence higher utility bills) is in part where they derive their value. The use of the term "mining" is therefore relatively appropriate, since it too takes time and money. Of course for something to have value requires it to be accepted for payment for goods/services, which is currently a little difficult with Bitcoin, although one would hope that the array of people accepting it does start to increase.

Would certainly agree that it's volatile at the moment, but that's not particularly surprising either. It does seem to be back around $24 now (which strikes me as still probably overvalued).

I'm intrigued. I've got an nVidia 460 GTX, I'll see how well that works...

Edit: A calculator I came across (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php) says that I should be able to generate just over 3 BTC a month, or about 50-55 USD. And that is, I'm assuming, if I leave it mining 24/7, which I don't intend to do.

The client is still downloading blocks, but it should be done soon. I'll leave it on overnight and see what happens.

Alright, the estimate the calculator gave seems fairly accurate, and it really doesn't seem worth the effort.

If you're really dedicated to the endeavor, you can buy/build rigs that can mine coins significantly faster than normal. The one I found includes up to three ATI 6990s (apparently the best card for the task), and purports a mining output of 2010 MH/s (with three cards). It costs $3,799.00, which you could theoretically recoup within two months of mining, depending on exchange rate fluctuation.

I honestly just do not understand what the hell this thing is. Guh.

i've gotta post just to let you know how much yours made me laugh. i'm drunk and was trying to follow the conversation but pfttt your post summed it up for me. i'm still laughing now. no, sorry, in seriousness, this is news to me... pretty cool.. interesting, expected, but i hadn't heard anyone talk about this before

It's a semi-anonymous currency (not quite as anonymous as cash, but much better than PayPal or whatever). New currency is created and added to the system by people solving some sort of cryptography something something whatever, which high end video cards happen to be good at apparently. It's complex.

It's not widely accepted, but there's a list of places that take Bitcoin somewhere. It's also apparently quite popular in the deepweb, Silk Road and such, since it's relatively hard to trace transactions or link them to actual people.

never heard of the deepweb. what sort of content do they hold?

Silk Road is basically an eBay for drugs.

It's the internet's Mos Eisley, and going there without at least 7 proxies results in a party vanning.

I can participate if you want someone with more powerful video cards.

Have a gtx 470.

Perhaps we should set up a Nexodyne mining pool. Anybody been able to find an open-source server for such things?

My friends have been talking a lot about Bitcoin as well. My one friend bought a $200 graphics card and has hence mined 5 (or thereabouts) Bitcoins. It seems pretty awesome to me. If you want to get a Nexodyne pool going, I'm down!

The pools aren't too hard to set up, message me if you'd like help Iridium.

I just figured out how to set up the client, but once you get past the initial learning curve, its a lot easier.

The HUGE benefit to starting our own private pool is that everyone involved would make more money than if it was solo. There would be more of an incentive for everyone to share CPU power, etc.

There's also a free browser miner, does require java:

http://www.bitcoinplus.com/

Which also has a site widget, but CPU mining is significantly slower than GPU mining. And BTC+ taxes 15% through websites. I'm just trying to give an example. This however, is not a solution for our own server/pool.

I've not yet got around to setting up our own mining pool, however if anyone happens to want to mine for Nexodyne (think of it like a donation for keeping this place going!) Then point your miners to:

http://www.nexodyne.com/pool/d/

And post here for kudos if you do.

Since I don't have a Linux server handy, and all the pre-packaged mining pool scripts that I've seen aren't intended to run on Windows, I've created a "Nexodyne" team on deepbit.net if anyone wants to join!

I'm currently the only member :(

Unless we have some miraculous resurgence in activity, or a few of the still-semi-active members happen to have mining rigs, the rate of return on this endeavor probably won't be significant. I think I figured out that it'll take my computer more than a year to generate a complete chunk of BTC (running full time, not being used for anything else), so I'm not even going to bother.

This isn't something that we (i.e. Nexodyne) is making any profit out of people joining the mining team, so whilst I'm under no illusion that the abysmal readership we currently have is probably not going to gain me many team-mates, it's still worth putting it out there!

Fair enough. Would be pretty cool if this does take off, and it might provide some motivation for the last few active (comparatively active, anyway) members to promote more activity.

*cough* botnet bitcoin miners *cough*

Tried out BitCoin a while back, doesn't seem to be worth the effort. There's always someone at the top that is making the most money (such as the creators and their friends). Also, wish it solved real problems (something like Folding@HOME), not just hard ones for the sake of it.

Anyone made any money yet?

I think I've mined about 1.50 BTC using CPU mining. Had I done that a few months ago, that'd be worth maybe $50. Unfortunately now it's about $5. I've been tempted to buy some more to give them as Christmas presents.

Oy, went ahead and joined the Nexodyne mining team.

I knew I wouldn't be the only one forever!

So what's the score? How's bitcoin going

Hmm, well it was apparently featured in an episode of The Good Wife on TV a day or two ago which has raised its profile somewhat, and it's been gradually creeping up in value over the past few months to about $6 apiece now. Still a way off it's $30 high, but anyway.

A bit surprised you're not all over it to be honest, I hear Silk Road has all sorts of... illicit substances purchasable with Bitcoins!

i'm sure it'll end up kicking off. and i've moved abroad to get clean actually.

Now that there's more infrastructure around Bitcoin, more places to spend and trade it, it might be somewhat more stable.

I actually use bitcoin quite frequently to purchase products off the Silk Road. In the US, it's difficult to get high-quality molly, yayo, and such..but abroad (specifically, the NL) there are people willing to send it to me. I get enough at a cheap enough price I can get a pretty good profit in my area. Yay for the internet!

How is everyone doing? Every time I think of this place, I'm always surprised it's still around. I can't believe how much has changed in 7-8 years..

You should contact me. PM me for my ICQ or MSN. I can beat their prices, and have no problem shipping within the US.

How would one go about joining the mining pool and mining in general? Care to put together a small guide?

I don't think it's much more complicated than installing Bitcoin, finding a mining program (I think there are various programs that work better or worse on different hardware, or something like that), and then plugging in the info for the mining pool.

Or something like that.

I believe that GUIMiner is generally considered one of the easiest to get running. It's pre-configured for a number of well-known mining pools, you usually just need to sign up at one (perhaps join the Nexodyne mining team on DeepBit!) select the pool in GUIMiner, enter your username/password, and start it mining.

GUIMiner comes with a number of different mining back-ends, which ones your particular computer will support (and which of those mines fastest) depends very much on the hardware/OS you have. This may help: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Made a site that dispenses a small amount of Bitcoin to users (small enough as to hopefully be more than covered by revenue). It has a referral system.

http://oscry.com/

So, who actually kept their BTC?