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Thread: Do any of you do this bitcoin stuff?

  1. #1
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    Do any of you do this bitcoin stuff?

    So a friend of mine told me about this bitcoin thing a few months ago or so. I didn't really pay any attention to it at the time. He started with 1 video card and a shitty computer, and now he just bought this...


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    Picture is blocked by my work firewall, what is it?

    I heard about this the other day. Some blog suggested it as currency when the US economy crashes since it isn't backed by anything

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    it's a picture of like 90 5830 video cards and other assorted parts.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sparc_it View Post
    Picture is blocked by my work firewall, what is it?

    I heard about this the other day. Some blog suggested it as currency when the US economy crashes since it isn't backed by anything
    As far as I understand it, he's using a shit-ton of video cards to do computations for the Bitcoin provider, and in return is being paid in Bitcoins for every "block" of hashes that is solved. As with other things, though, it's apparently getting harder and harder to make money as more people do it and the cost of running a computer 24/7 for it (in terms of power) is making it only slightly profitable without some insane rig.

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    No idea what it is but I'm gonna check it out.

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    after pissing around with this for 2 hours I gave up. Too much work for little reward. People who got in on this early might have made some money, but like Mack said there is nothing left to be made without running a killer rig 24/7. Thanks but I'd rather not fry my graphics card for a couple bucks.

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    ^^ I just briefly searched and it looks pretty complicated to get started.. Am I assuming correctly? How much do you make roughly, for an average computer per day?

    ^^ Really old picture.
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    Quote Originally Posted by robisconfusedd View Post
    ^^ I just briefly searched and it looks pretty complicated to get started.. Am I assuming correctly? How much do you make roughly, for an average computer per day?
    If you haven't gotten into it 6 months ago you then it isn't worth it to start. There are a finite number of bitcoins and each one is getting more complicated to process and requires more work from each PC to create. If you just heard about it now, you're late to the game. Go invest in bitcoins if you like but for now I don't see the point with so many people mining these days.

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    As someone who works in finance and has read up a lot on bitcoins, I can say pretty confidently that it's not worth the time. Totally illiquid market, no central bank to back it up. Can't persist as a real currency.

    Anybody with an Nvidia card is SOL when it comes to bitcoin mining. See here: http://hardocp.com/article/2011/07/1...e_comparison/2

    Tor isn't anonymous. The government can still track you. Bitcoins can be stolen from you and you have NO recourse. A guy had tens of thousands of bitcoins stolen from him recently because he got hacked. He's fucked. With a real currency at a bank, the bank covers that (well it wouldn't be hacked in the first place).

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    So people make dedicated rigs to "mine" a virtual currency in case the U.S. currency completely crashes?

    How is mining done, exactly? I've never heard of any of this but it sounds interesting.

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    you download a mining software, then connect to a server and run either your CPU or preferably GPU and slowly generate bitcoins. Read the two posts above yours before you get excited.

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    nathancarter is offline Stretch Haters Club #1 BMW CCA Member
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    Something that I couldn't quite figure out from all the reading: Is the computation that's being done for the mining actually good for anything? It it solving any real problems, cracking the Enigma code, searching for extraterrestrial life? Or is it just computing for computing's sake, a big e-peen measuring contest, in which whoever has the biggest video card gets the most imaginary currency?

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathancarter View Post
    Something that I couldn't quite figure out from all the reading: Is the computation that's being done for the mining actually good for anything? It it solving any real problems, cracking the Enigma code, searching for extraterrestrial life? Or is it just computing for computing's sake, a big e-peen measuring contest, in which whoever has the biggest video card gets the most imaginary currency?
    For the moment, the currency can be used to buy black (well, grey) market goods.

    The GPU power would be better spent folding.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathancarter View Post
    Something that I couldn't quite figure out from all the reading: Is the computation that's being done for the mining actually good for anything? It it solving any real problems, cracking the Enigma code, searching for extraterrestrial life? Or is it just computing for computing's sake, a big e-peen measuring contest, in which whoever has the biggest video card gets the most imaginary currency?
    Oh it's doing work for someone, but it's never clear who... you don't get money, even fake money, just by running your PC at full load for shits n giggles. It might be IBM, but just as likely you are working for chinese hackers or something

    There are genuine sites where you can donate your computer's cycles at night for science, medical research, DNA cracking, astronomy...

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    Wonder how many coins he was able to mine and if he kept them for this crazy spike.

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    You know what's cool? If you threw a hundred down after this thread started you'd have $125,000 today.

    Instead, we bought Yoder tires.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ImplicitFiber View Post
    You know what's cool? If you threw a hundred down after this thread started you'd have $125,000 today.

    Instead, we bought Yoder tires.
    Nerd.

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