Cryptocoin Mining?

[Chiropteran]

new miner parts arrived.

the hardware:

results:

This is actually less than 1/3 of the total USB miners I bought, there are 30 usb miners in total, will have 3 full 10 port hubs and a few working individually. I don't expect to get rich, but based on my estimates even with crazy 25% difficulty increases they should still break even in 4-6 months. I'm not too concerned with make a large profit, but I think I will come out slightly ahead given those assumptions. And, if the current BTC value "crash" turns away some mining players, maybe difficulty will increase slower than I estimated, in which case they will pay off much sooner.

 

[thilanliyan]

^How much were each of those? Where did you get them?

 

[Binky]

My Asicminer's are stuck at the damned post office.

 

[Chiropteran]

1 btc each, and something like an extra half bitcoin for shipping and insurance? I paid about $150 for the usb hubs and fans.


7.3ghz running now, will be just over 10ghz when i get the rest next week hopefully.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

You're in deep now :|

 

[Chiropteran]

Got all 22 running for now, 7ghz on a tiny shelf, using less than 50W.

You're in deep now :|

I bought them with BTC that I wasn't going to cash out anytime soon anyway, so it's a minor risk IMO. Based on my calculations, they will earn back the full BTC cost in 4 months at the current pace of difficulty increases. If the pace gets worse, they are still likely to pay for themselves within a year, and if the difficulty truly skyrockets, like a 50X increase this year, then I will indeed come out behind, but I should still earn back at least 90% of my investment. So I don't think it's a huge risk, a 10% loss would be okay, it's too boring just sitting on BTC and doing nothing with it- and I think ASICMINER shares are vastly overpriced.

 

[notty22]

I'm not up on the hashing.
How many 7970's@925mhz is that equal to / the 22 miners@7ghz?

 

[Accord99]

I'm not up on the hashing.
How many 7970's@925mhz is that equal to / the 22 miners@7ghz?

~12-13

 

[TheUnk]

ouch $67

 

[ultimatebob]

So... why is Bitcoin crashing in value THIS time? It was holding for $100 for awhile, then it tanked 35% again.

This is NOT a good sign for all those people who think that Bitcoin is a currency to be taken seriously, and it's an even worse sign for the GPU miners. I can't see how you can make a profit at this point.

 

[Chiropteran]

I have no diea what caused the last fall in value, but I can't say that it bothers me much.

The way I see it, value will go up eventually, it is almost inevitable. The markets continue to grow, the number of bitcoin being created continues to shrink, value must go up in the long term.

In the short term, this crash is actually somewhat beneficial to me. As a miner, I figure lower cash value of bitcoin will result in less competition, which in turn means difficulty will rise slower. All my profit calculations were based on difficulty increasing by 20% each adjustment, so if things slow down and we see it only increase by 10% for awhile I'll be making extra profit, which is simply a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Since I am mining and holding instead of immediately selling, the current USD value of bitcoin isn't really important to me, it's only important that I earn more than 1 BTC per asic usb block eruptor before they are completely obsolete due to difficulty.

 

[crashtech]

At some point they'll have to start paying transaction fees to miners to keep the network operating, won't they? Though I imagine the fee will be pretty small, keeping all but the most efficient operators from participating.

 

[Chiropteran]

At some point they'll have to start paying transaction fees to miners to keep the network operating, won't they? Though I imagine the fee will be pretty small, keeping all but the most efficient operators from participating.

The fees per transaction will probably go down, but the number of transactions will go up and the value of a single bitcoin will go up such that those tiny fractions used as fees will actually be worth significant money in 5-6 years.

 

[crashtech]

Will the fees begin to be paid in already existing BTC before all coins are minted? I envision a transitional period where there is minting and fee for hashing going on, once all coins are minted obviously transaction fees paid in existing BTC alone will have to be enough to keep the system alive.

 

[Chiropteran]

Will the fees begin to be paid in already existing BTC before all coins are minted? I envision a transitional period where there is minting and fee for hashing going on, once all coins are minted obviously transaction fees paid in existing BTC alone will have to be enough to keep the system alive.

Fees are already being paid. It depends on the size (in data, not BTC) of your transaction, transactions requiring a lot of data have a mandatory (but small) fee. Many people include a small optional fee for large transactions to assure that they are processed quickly.

Some pools pass fees along to miners, other pool operators take the entire transaction fee as part of their pool operation fee.

http://blockexplorer.com/

Take a look at some recent blocks if you are curious.

245508 Generation: 25 + 0.2125847 total fees

245507 Generation: 25 + 0.26014992 total fees

...

245499 Generation: 25 + 0 total fees (block only contained one transaction, it was found only 19 seconds after the prior block)


Just looking at the last 12 or so blocks it looks like the fees are usually around .1-.4 btc total per block, not much yet but things have to start somewhere. There have been a few larger fees sent, historically, but they aren't common.

 

[crashtech]

Interesting, thanks. I thought the mining I was doing was generating only new coins, but there is some existing BTC being earned as well, albeit a small amount.

 

[Chiropteran]

I did some Primecoin CPU-mining Sunday evening when it was started. It can't be GPU mined (yet) and can only be CPU mined, solo, no pools either. Found a total of about 250 primecoin so far, interestingly enough they seem to be going for about .17 LTC each, 1 ltc being $2.40

So about $100 worth, just from mining for 2 days on two computers. I probably should just sell them now and take the profit.

Primecoin is interesting because compared to the hundreds of cryptocoin bitcoin clones it actually has some essential differences. I don't think it will topple bitcoin, but maybe it'll reach LTC levels of usage eventually.

 

[Binky]

Got my asicminers running finally. Sadly, my plan to cash out by selling them on ebay for ~$200 each was crushed when they fell to ~$140. I'm going to run them for a bit and (probably) still ebay them.

 

[Chiropteran]

Got my asicminers running finally. Sadly, my plan to cash out by selling them on ebay for ~$200 each was crushed when they fell to ~$140. I'm going to run them for a bit and (probably) still ebay them.

Still rather crazy, since you can buy them for 1 btc each. I just hate dealing with ebay, but that would be tempting.

 

[dualsmp]

Got my asicminers running finally. Sadly, my plan to cash out by selling them on ebay for ~$200 each was crushed when they fell to ~$140. I'm going to run them for a bit and (probably) still ebay them.

Be careful with ebay, I got burnt on my first sell. It was only .1 BTC luckily so I didn't lose much, but there are ebay accounts with good feedback that are completely 0wned. Ebay will tell you to take it up with Paypal, and Paypal will not reimburse for digital goods.

 

[philipma1957]

the usb sticks are hard gear.


as for a coin sale sell a screen shot of the coin transfer info with your signature.

then mail it via us priority mail. a hard paper good with proof of delivery.

 

[Keysplayr]

new miner parts arrived.

the hardware:

results:

This is actually less than 1/3 of the total USB miners I bought, there are 30 usb miners in total, will have 3 full 10 port hubs and a few working individually. I don't expect to get rich, but based on my estimates even with crazy 25% difficulty increases they should still break even in 4-6 months. I'm not too concerned with make a large profit, but I think I will come out slightly ahead given those assumptions. And, if the current BTC value "crash" turns away some mining players, maybe difficulty will increase slower than I estimated, in which case they will pay off much sooner.

Looks nice. But there may be a 12 step program in your future.

 

[Chiropteran]

Looks nice. But there may be a 12 step program in your future.

Possibly. I have a few more running now.

 

[Binky]

Possibly. I have a few more running now.

I'm seeing about 1.3%-1.5% HW errors. I think this is normal. Are yours about the same?

 

[Chiropteran]

I'm seeing about 1.3%-1.5% HW errors. I think this is normal. Are yours about the same?

3.7% currently, which seems a little high but I've only had it running a couple hours since last reset so might need more time to really average out. My understanding is that lower temperatures help reduce hw errors.

Edit: Oh. Found this, this is why my error rate seems higher:

Higher difficulty threw more errors in my testing.

Because you need to convert your shares to Diff1 to calculate HW errors correctly.

I increased minimum difficulty, so my error % seems higher. Going back down to diff 2 and will see what it looks like after a day of mining.