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Bitcoin

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obliguhl said:
Use a pool.
If you discover a bitcoin block it means getting 50 coins at once. With a pool you get less, but constant BTCs.

..and 15$/hour seems far off. I'm generating maybe 50-80 cents per 24h.
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Thanks for the tip. I may have to pick your brains in the chat sometime soon as it appears to be a little over my head :shock:
 
Here's a tutorial for bitcoin GPU mining for all those who are interested, some of you are probably already doing this but im sure there's a lot of people who dont know how and would like to know :)
 
۩ said:
I decided to upgrade my video card to an ATI 5850 which should be able to mine @ ~250mhash...we shall see...I may try overclocking it as well
Click to expand...

I've got a HD5870 and it's doing about 300mhash/sec. Thing is, I still have not seen it generate even one tiny piece of a bitcoin after several days off running.


Kind regards,

The Traveler
 
The Traveler said:
۩ said:
I decided to upgrade my video card to an ATI 5850 which should be able to mine @ ~250mhash...we shall see...I may try overclocking it as well
Click to expand...

I've got a HD5870 and it's doing about 300mhash/sec. Thing is, I still have not seen it generate even one tiny piece of a bitcoin after several days off running.


Kind regards,

The Traveler
Click to expand...

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@ a measely 9.5 mhash I've been able to generate almost .1 in the past 2 days ;]
Really looking forward to getting it up to where you are, trav!

also I use guiminer
 
I'm sorry I don't know much about WU.

Currently mining @ 292mhash with ATI 5850 overclocked. .25 btc generated in the past hour or so. I will update with more info later.
 
۩ said:
Currently mining @ 292mhash with ATI 5850 overclocked. .25 btc generated in the past hour or so. I will update with more info later.
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Okay now I'm confused. My 2x 4-core AMD Opteron running 8 concurrent threads is averaging 2.5 Mhash/s per thread for a total of ~20 Mhash/s. :cry:

How in the world can a ~$300 consumer-level graphic card pump out almost 300 Mhash/s? The $2,000+ Telsa card clocks just under 100 Mhash/s...

What's the important variable here?
 
I don't know what the mechanism is. I just checked the hardware comparison site ^ for a card that had a good mhash rating.

Right now I'm stable at around 275. I got it up to 350 but I crashed. If I push it then my comp freezes. I think I'll just let it run here I'm at .4 BTC currently.
 
Reading the boards, it looks like the ATI/AMD 58xx and 59xx series is really the way to go for any kind of return on investment.

BTC sell rate as of 25 May 2011 24:00 UTC = 8.2001 USD [1]

Asus Radeon HD5870 1GB Video Card EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2 @ $299.00
Potential generation rate = 400 Mhash/s [2]

299.00/8.2001 = 36.4630 BTCs to break even (not including time spent on set-up, electricity, wear on hardware, etc.).

It's difficult to calculate an accurate Mh/s to BTC rate given increasing difficulty - the best guess I can make is based on a member of the forum as of 7 May 2011:

wareen@forum.bitcon.org said:
Yes, today's difficulty level will be 100% of today's level - I agree on that But in 2-3 days it will be about 138% of today's level, in two weeks it will be at about 190%... My point is, that no calculation of expected return should be based on a steady difficulty level. Extrapolating the current difficulty increase rate of about 30% every ~11 days, works out to about 40BTC over a year for 100Mh/s - that is, if you had started at the beginning of the current difficulty level. If you start from the next level you won't get much above the 30BTC. Of course, nobody can predict how the difficulty will change during the next year and the current rate of increase is probably unusually high but it is a bit of a gamble.
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So, at 40 BTC per year per 100Mh/s the ATI card above would generate ~160 BTC this year if starting on 7 May. This means a $1312.016 return on a $299.00 investment at the current sell rate.

Just a note: Looks like BTCs were well under $2 in April of this year - now they're at $8 just a month or so later?1 [3]
 
۩ said:
~100$ a month at 100mhash? 0_0

If that's the case I could rack in around 275$ this month....we shall see....:twisted:
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Well, using the calculation above that's actually $27.33/mo at 100 Mh/s (40 BTC/yr per 100 Mh/s with 1 BTC = $8.2001).

Still not bad...
 
So, and please correct me if I'm wrong, basicly what bitcoin does is harness the computing power of al their users' GPU's and repays them in digital coins. What is that computing power used for? What algorythms are used and to what purpose with all these mhash "commands"

from Mhash :
"Mhash is a free (under GNU Lesser GPL) library which provides a uniform interface to a large number of hash algorithms. These algorithms can be used to compute checksums, message digests, and other signatures."

and on the mainpage for Mhash (mhash library)
i found this particular algorythm:

"SHA1/ SHA256: The SHA algorithm by US. NIST/NSA. This algorithm is specified for use in the NIST's Digital Signature Standard. In mhash these algorithm are defined as MHASH_SHA1 and MHASH_SHA256."

Wich (I googled this I confess) is a cryptographic hash algorythm, whatever that fully entails, Developed by the NIST(National Institute for Standardization in Technology) and the NSA(no need to spell that one out). I don't have a full understanding of what all this exactly means, and if there are any IT-professionals that could shed light on this rather esoteric material it would be greatly appreciated.

I find it hard to believe that there's not some hidden process underneath the lottery mechanism, all that delicous cpu power is worth big bucks me thinks. I'm suspicous of anyone claiming you can basically pull money out of your own ass and explains it by "mining" for digital coins. No free lunch, just saying.

Also they claim to be open source, but the mhash library is filed under a "lesser GPL". I'm not gonna get too deep into that one. Check its definition and its repercussions out for yourself if your interested.

I have my reservations concerning this service and it's claims.

*edit: But of course I could be wrong, I'm only a layman when it comes to coding :p
 
Pebble on the Beach said:
No free lunch, just saying.
Click to expand...

I'm a layman myself with just a bit of working knowledge - but here's my understanding.

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a world-wide standard for encryption on the net. If you notice the security certificate at the top of this page, it reads "AES_128_CBC" as the encryption method used to secure data between your computer and the Nexus Server in its datacenter somewhere. Every packet between the two computers is secure because of this encryption.

This standard was implemented by the NSA/NIST back in 2002/2003 for items up to "Top Secret" level. I believe "Secret" was AES128 while "Top Secret" was AES256. I'm not a cryptographer, but there's a good breakdown of the system by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich of the University of Luxembourg.

My understanding of 'mining for bitcoins' involves dedicating computer resources to solve equations of ever-increasing complexity of ssl encryption required to break standards like AES128/256/...

There is a given problem, a 'pool' of computers works to solve it, and the computer with the wining 'block' is awarded 50 BTC ($410.005./291.2588, €). There are groups of people who have teamed together to increase their odds of winning the prize, but must share it equally amongst users. There is ever increasing value in the BTC because something of real value is being generated. (Not to mention the intrinsic value of a 100% anonymous and international monetary system).

Anonymous means, well, anonymous - no taxes - no record - no third party - etc. -- and it's international. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System is a fantastic breakdown of the system.

I've been lurking the forums and the whole thing fascinates me. The folks on the board are intriguing with great arguments as to why the system works. Moreover, every single time I see someone post "I've got bitcoins but they don't do anything" senior members are eager to snatch up the l00t with hard cash.

Not saying the retirement is getting bitcoined, but a GPU or two towards a cool p2p project like this sounds fun...
 
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