I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across the
concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create' money on my
PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone here doing this, and how easy is
it to get started?

Tried a bit of googling but the noise is deafening, so would appreciate
comments! Might be an interesting discussion.

--
David

On 08/02/2014 17:51, Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across the
concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create' money on my
PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone here doing this, and how easy is
it to get started?


http://www.corsair.com/us/blog/bitcoin_mining/

"Special" ASRock motherboard[1], a few graphics cards and electricity
consumption that's not very green...

Bring it on!!!

[1] - http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H61%2...0BTC/index.asp

--
Fat Cat Barstool

Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across the
concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create' money on my
PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone here doing this, and how easy is
it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap electricity. Now
ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are blown out of the water unless
you're prepared to invest in banks of GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for heating
that you would have used anyway - could potentially work instead of an
electric fire. But noisy.

Be interesting to do the comparison between bitcoin mining and air/ground
source heat pumps in terms of the financial return.

Theo

Theo Markettos wrote:
Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across
the concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create'
money on my PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone here doing
this, and how easy is it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap
electricity. Now ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are
blown out of the water unless you're prepared to invest in banks of
GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for
heating that you would have used anyway - could potentially work
instead of an electric fire. But noisy.

How much electricity are we talking about here?

If I wanted to run a machine almost 24/7 for, say a year, how much would
that be and what's the probability / possibility of finding some of these
things?

Also, taking into account I'd need a 'ASIC miner', whatever they may be, or
the cost of a bank of GPU's, whatever they may also be


Be interesting to do the comparison between bitcoin mining and
air/ground source heat pumps in terms of the financial return.

Just wondering about the mathematics of it, even though I don't fully
understand the process, just wondering what the outlay would be, coupled
with the overall running costs, versus the possibility / probability of
getting something back.

On 08/02/2014 18:46, Phil L wrote:
Theo Markettos wrote:
Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across
the concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create'
money on my PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone here doing
this, and how easy is it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap
electricity. Now ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are
blown out of the water unless you're prepared to invest in banks of
GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for
heating that you would have used anyway - could potentially work
instead of an electric fire. But noisy.

How much electricity are we talking about here?

If I wanted to run a machine almost 24/7 for, say a year, how much would
that be and what's the probability / possibility of finding some of these
things?

Running a decent desktop PC flat out might suck say 500W - so 12kWh per
day...

There are two difficulties to overcome as I understand it - firstly with
that level of hardware you are unlikely to generate many coins. Also
IIUC, they have to be redeemed in blocks of 50, so even if you do
collect a few, you will not get paid for them until you have lots more.

This is what leads many people to join teams to mine them - pooling
their compute resources to generate coins faster and then taking a share
of the earnings based on their input.

Also, taking into account I'd need a 'ASIC miner', whatever they may be, or
the cost of a bank of GPU's, whatever they may also be

ASIC - Application Specific Integrated Circuit - i.e. a bit of hardware
designed to do one specific job and do it very fast in hardware.

GPU Graphical Processing Unit - the chip at the heart of a decent
graphics card. These are in fact massively powerful processors tuned to
certain types of parallel computation. They can be very well suited to
these types of task, and can often dwarf the performance achieved from a
normal CPU running software.

Be interesting to do the comparison between bitcoin mining and
air/ground source heat pumps in terms of the financial return.

Just wondering about the mathematics of it, even though I don't fully
understand the process, just wondering what the outlay would be, coupled
with the overall running costs, versus the possibility / probability of
getting something back.

Yup, if you can use the mining effort for heat production, then the
money is essentially free - so long as you can generate enough of it to
claim it.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 08/02/2014 20:56, John Rumm wrote:

Yup, if you can use the mining effort for heat production, then the
money is essentially free - so long as you can generate enough of it to
claim it.


I suspect that if you power your machine from solar panels, you make
more from the FIT

"newshound" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 08/02/2014 20:56, John Rumm wrote:

Yup, if you can use the mining effort for heat production, then the
money is essentially free - so long as you can generate enough of it to
claim it.


I suspect that if you power your machine from solar panels, you make more
from the FIT

You get the FIT money whether you use the electricity or export it.

On 08 Feb 2014, John Rumm grunted:

On 08/02/2014 18:46, Phil L wrote:
Theo Markettos wrote:
Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come
across the concept of mining them and gather this can be used to
'create' money on my PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone
here doing this, and how easy is it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap
electricity. Now ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are
blown out of the water unless you're prepared to invest in banks of
GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for
heating that you would have used anyway - could potentially work
instead of an electric fire. But noisy.

How much electricity are we talking about here?

If I wanted to run a machine almost 24/7 for, say a year, how much
would that be and what's the probability / possibility of finding
some of these things?

Running a decent desktop PC flat out might suck say 500W - so 12kWh
per day...

The link posted by Adrian suggests a 1600W dedicated PC wouldn't be
beyond the pale!

I do wonder how many of these things are run on the QT by IT staff in
their employer's companies' server rooms!

Still struggling here with the concept of how you can actually create or
mine a valuable/tradable commodity like this!


--
David

On 08/02/2014 23:08, Lobster wrote:
On 08 Feb 2014, John Rumm grunted:

On 08/02/2014 18:46, Phil L wrote:
Theo Markettos wrote:
Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come
across the concept of mining them and gather this can be used to
'create' money on my PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone
here doing this, and how easy is it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap
electricity. Now ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are
blown out of the water unless you're prepared to invest in banks of
GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for
heating that you would have used anyway - could potentially work
instead of an electric fire. But noisy.

How much electricity are we talking about here?

If I wanted to run a machine almost 24/7 for, say a year, how much
would that be and what's the probability / possibility of finding
some of these things?

Running a decent desktop PC flat out might suck say 500W - so 12kWh
per day...

The link posted by Adrian suggests a 1600W dedicated PC wouldn't be
beyond the pale!

I do wonder how many of these things are run on the QT by IT staff in
their employer's companies' server rooms!

Still struggling here with the concept of how you can actually create or
mine a valuable/tradable commodity like this!

Well compare it to oil - its there, free, sat in the ground, all you
need to is extract it. Same applies ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:
On 08/02/2014 18:46, Phil L wrote:
Theo Markettos wrote:
Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come
across the concept of mining them and gather this can be used to
'create' money on my PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone
here doing this, and how easy is it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap
electricity. Now ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are
blown out of the water unless you're prepared to invest in banks of
GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for
heating that you would have used anyway - could potentially work
instead of an electric fire. But noisy.

How much electricity are we talking about here?

If I wanted to run a machine almost 24/7 for, say a year, how much
would that be and what's the probability / possibility of finding
some of these things?

Running a decent desktop PC flat out might suck say 500W - so 12kWh
per day...

There are two difficulties to overcome as I understand it - firstly
with that level of hardware you are unlikely to generate many coins.
Also IIUC, they have to be redeemed in blocks of 50, so even if you do
collect a few, you will not get paid for them until you have lots
more.
This is what leads many people to join teams to mine them - pooling
their compute resources to generate coins faster and then taking a
share of the earnings based on their input.

Also, taking into account I'd need a 'ASIC miner', whatever they may
be, or the cost of a bank of GPU's, whatever they may also be

ASIC - Application Specific Integrated Circuit - i.e. a bit of
hardware designed to do one specific job and do it very fast in
hardware.
GPU Graphical Processing Unit - the chip at the heart of a decent
graphics card. These are in fact massively powerful processors tuned
to certain types of parallel computation. They can be very well
suited to these types of task, and can often dwarf the performance
achieved from a normal CPU running software.

Be interesting to do the comparison between bitcoin mining and
air/ground source heat pumps in terms of the financial return.

Just wondering about the mathematics of it, even though I don't fully
understand the process, just wondering what the outlay would be,
coupled with the overall running costs, versus the possibility /
probability of getting something back.

Yup, if you can use the mining effort for heat production, then the
money is essentially free - so long as you can generate enough of it
to claim it.

I run my details through an online bitcoin calculator, based on the price of
my electricity and my processor speed, graphics card etc, it's estimated I
would find one bitcoin (and they can only be redeemed in blocks of 25) after
4044237 hours, about 461 years, so after about 11,500 years I would be able
to cash in my bitcoins and pay the leccy bill

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 14:36:09 +0000, Phil L wrote:

I run my details through an online bitcoin calculator, based on the
price of my electricity and my processor speed, graphics card etc, it's
estimated I would find one bitcoin (and they can only be redeemed in
blocks of 25) after 4044237 hours, about 461 years, so after about
11,500 years I would be able to cash in my bitcoins and pay the leccy
bill

Weta Digital have 32 water cooled machines each with 40,000 processors
and 104 terabytes of memory. When they are not making a movie they may as
well make some bitcoins!

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...ata-crunching-
powerhouse-behind-avatar/

On 08/02/2014 18:46, Phil L wrote:
Theo Markettos wrote:
Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across
the concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create'
money on my PC. I'm nothing if not fascinated! Anyone here doing
this, and how easy is it to get started?

A few years ago it wasn't worthwhile unless you had cheap
electricity. Now ASIC miners are on the market, I think PCs are
blown out of the water unless you're prepared to invest in banks of
GPUs.

In all cases you're creating 'money' with electricity, so it's your
electricity cost that really matters. /Unless/ you're using it for
heating that you would have used anyway - could potentially work
instead of an electric fire. But noisy.

How much electricity are we talking about here?

If I wanted to run a machine almost 24/7 for, say a year, how much would
that be and what's the probability / possibility of finding some of these
things?

Also, taking into account I'd need a 'ASIC miner', whatever they may be, or
the cost of a bank of GPU's, whatever they may also be


Be interesting to do the comparison between bitcoin mining and
air/ground source heat pumps in terms of the financial return.

Just wondering about the mathematics of it, even though I don't fully
understand the process, just wondering what the outlay would be, coupled
with the overall running costs, versus the possibility / probability of
getting something back.


The bitcoin value has fluctuated widely, driven largely by media
interest. Now that people like you are asking this sort of question,
they are becoming a commodity. Market principles mean you won't get a
particularly large return on your capital investment (or electricity
costs, if you just use spare processor cycles). There will be a bit of a
premium because of the risk of the value collapsing either because of
legislation or because of media scare stories. The days where a £100
punt ends up buying you a nice flat in Oslo are gone.

On Saturday, 8 February 2014 17:51:40 UTC, Lobster wrote:
I know vaguely about bitcoins, but I've heard about just come across the
concept of mining them and gather this can be used to 'create' money on my
PC.

Not on a PC. BitCoin is clever. The more there are, the more work is needed to mine the next one. We're now up to a level where only those with free access to serious hardware are credible as cost-effective miners.

I got into this a few years ago. I was working with people who were (literally) a graphics CPU factory. As they had to do burn-in tests etc., they did indeed have suitable free hardware going to waste, and had turned it to mining. No-one got rich, but a few did get "well paid" for their time.

I strongly suspect that their Chinese counterparts in production now simply own the whole shebang.