Bitcoins, anyone?

[Mario Kadastik]

None. I stopped mining Bitcoin back in early 2012. The barrier to entry is so high right now, I can't recommend anybody get into mining who doesn't already have deep pockets. It cost upward of $20K to mine at half the rate I was able to do with a single $140 video card two years ago. If someone was looking to get into mining now, I'd say go with mining Scrypt chains like Litecoin since you can build a 1+ coin/day rig for a couple thousand bucks.

Yes, there are good pools that even auto swap between various alternate coins and auto-trade them for BTC and return funds in BTC. I'm using one right now (hashcows) and it seems to work out quite well. The average profitability in comparison to BTC is ~25-30x more profitable to mine. With a reasonably good farm of miners one can still make quite a return. I'm contemplating adding a few 3MH scrypt miners as if this BTC price keeps going it might be enough to get your money back in 1-2 months and from there on it's pure profit.

But I do have to say I didn't anticipate such a run-up. Had I kept all my stuff I'd have had ~60 BTC and I only started mining in April. If you really started far earlier and stopped in 2012, then you must have gathered quite a lot of them Though had you kept going with a few GPUs and with litecoin or other scrypt based coins you'd be far richer in BTC by now still

 

[yobigd20]

well, it looks like that Model S wasn't actually bought with bitcoins at all. The dealer never touched bitcoins whatsoever. The dealer will not accept bitcoins for cars. The buyer converted his bitcoins to cash before wiring over to the dealer's bank. gotta love the way media spins things. Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA) Model S Bought For Bitcoins? Technically, No

 

[Johan]

well, it looks like that Model S wasn't actually bought with bitcoins at all. The dealer never touched bitcoins whatsoever. The dealer will not accept bitcoins for cars. The buyer converted his bitcoins to cash before wiring over to the dealer's bank. gotta love the way media spins things. Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA) Model S Bought For Bitcoins? Technically, No

Well yes and no, they priced it in BitCoin and then the transaction used a middleman service to lock the exchange rate, accept the bitcoin from the buyer and convert it to USD and forward this to the seller. So it was in fact bought with BTC.

 

[LakeForest]

Hey, I'm a college student looking to make some extra $. I have a few year old mac pro laptop I don't use anymore, a cool 'sunporch' and free electricity until the landlord notices. So, would you guys suggest litecoin, and then what pool should I mine from, etc. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Forget it. CPU mining as such is absolutely useless these days. And the GPU has to be from the top of the line and in most cases to make any money at all it has to be multiple videocards. So that Mac Pro isn't really going to give you much of any hashrate. But if you do get a rig I'd recommend hash cows (hashco.ws) as they try to mine the most profitable coin and pay out in BTC.

 

[LakeForest]

Forget it. CPU mining as such is absolutely useless these days. And the GPU has to be from the top of the line and in most cases to make any money at all it has to be multiple videocards. So that Mac Pro isn't really going to give you much of any hashrate. But if you do get a rig I'd recommend hash cows (hashco.ws) as they try to mine the most profitable coin and pay out in BTC.

Ok, Thanks Mario. Any sub 1k set up you suggest?

 

[ggr]

OK, you guys win. Three people today just randomly introduced the topic of Bitcoin while I was talking to them. It's time for me to get in on the act. I like the look of hashco.ws, but I need something pretty much COTS to mine with; I don't have any high performance hardware. Someone must be making money by selling hardware? I'm prepared to research it myself but this club has the best advice of anywhere, so... what's the best way to get going?

 

[Mario Kadastik]

To some extent this is gold rush all over again and in gold rush the guys who sold the shovels, lamps and generic mining equipment were the ones who won big This time around it's the GPU providers who are seeing excellent sales of their highest performing cards because of the mining Usually they only sold a few to the real extreme enthusiasts, but these days the high end ones are the ones sold out all the time

 

[TD1]

OK, you guys win. Three people today just randomly introduced the topic of Bitcoin while I was talking to them. It's time for me to get in on the act. I like the look of hashco.ws, but I need something pretty much COTS to mine with; I don't have any high performance hardware. Someone must be making money by selling hardware? I'm prepared to research it myself but this club has the best advice of anywhere, so... what's the best way to get going?

Due to market efficiency its practical its almost always better to just invest in Bitcoin by buying some of them.
Exception are:
- You have an infinite supply of electricity for free
- You are very close connected to an silicon producer so you can design your own ASIC machines.

Anything else is like going to a NuclearBomb fight with a blunt knife.
The ASIC game got way out of control
Visit of ASICMINER's Immersion Cooling Mining Facility
Those are containers each have 200 liter of a special M3 cooling liquid that boils at 37 celsius.
In each 200 Liter container there are 96 ASIC boards with a dozen of ASIC chips on it.
And Im pretty sure they got a very good price for their chips and not buying those in retail, and already working on the next generation of ASICs.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

TD1: mining bitcoin is indeed not worth the effort. Mining alternate currencies that are scrypt based (no ASIC due to memory transfer requirements, the algo was taken on purpose to kill ASICs) is however with average being 25-30x profitability of BTC mining and that does make it useful with higher levels than your power utilization.

 

[FluxCap]

To some extent this is gold rush all over again and in gold rush the guys who sold the shovels, lamps and generic mining equipment were the ones who won big This time around it's the GPU providers who are seeing excellent sales of their highest performing cards because of the mining Usually they only sold a few to the real extreme enthusiasts, but these days the high end ones are the ones sold out all the time

I'm actually wondering about this -- wondering if I should invest in a little AMD stock before they report earnings next. Apparently they are completely crushing sales -- you can't find their high-end cards in stock because of mining, and they also made the GPU's for the PS4 and Xbox One. I don't know enough about the company but this is interesting.

 

[stealthology]

Gonna research AMD now to potentially pick up some leap options.

I don't think we should all pretend that we know what will happen with the price. It could drop back to $100 again, sure, or it could be at $2,000+ sooner than we may think. I bought some several months ago at ~$100, sold them all at ~$450, and I just re-bought some on the recent dip with a cost basis of ~$750. I will continue to buy in increments, only during dips. Using BitcoinReminder.com for alerting me.

 

[wallet.dat]

Hey, I'm a college student looking to make some extra $. I have a few year old mac pro laptop I don't use anymore, a cool 'sunporch' and free electricity until the landlord notices. So, would you guys suggest litecoin, and then what pool should I mine from, etc. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks

Primecoin (XPM) https://www.primecoin.org

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Primecoin (XPM) https://www.primecoin.org

Handpicking altcoins is a tall order and takes a lot of work. Florin used to be a good coin for a whole month or two before dropping out again (it was netting me on average 150% on LTC profitability and LTC is anyway ca 2000% more profitable than BTC). That's one of the reasons I moved to hashco.ws as they change the coin that's mined based on continuous profitability computation and constant swapping to BTC.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

BBC News - Bitcoin: Price v hype

Nothing profound here except for an attempt to correlate BTC price fluctuations to media coverage.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

BBC News - Bitcoin sinks after China restricts yuan exchanges

 

[FluxCap]

Resurrecting this thread because of recent developments. Anyone still dabbling in cryptocurrencies? Mario?

Recent things that have caught my eye:

Janet Yellen, Fed Chair, speaking to Wacky Joe Manchin Today, saying the Fed has no authority to regulate Bitcoin, and FINCEN's existing laws are fine to cover it:
Yellen On Bitcoin - Business Insider

Mt Gox imploding, being investigated, and shutting down:
The Mt Gox bitcoin scandal is the best thing to happen to bitcoin in years | Money | theguardian.com

The Winklevoss' bros registering with the SEC for their Bitcoin ETF:
Winklevoss twins file with SEC to create bitcoin trust - The Tell - MarketWatch
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/000119312513279830/d562329ds1.htm#tx562329_18

Also here are some cool Bitcoin market tracker sites.

One complete with candle charts:
BitcoinWisdom - Live Bitcoin/Litecoin charts

One with adoption trends:
Bitcoin Pulse - Monitoring the pulse of Bitcoin

Disclosure: I have never mined or owned a single bitcoin yet, but I remain fascinated by the phenomenon.

 

[austinEV]

I will believe it the day I buy a sandwich with BTC. Still nothing around.

 

[hcsharp]

Resurrecting this thread because of recent developments. Anyone still dabbling in cryptocurrencies? Mario?

Recent things that have caught my eye:

Janet Yellen, Fed Chair, speaking to Wacky Joe Manchin Today, saying the Fed has no authority to regulate Bitcoin, and FINCEN's existing laws are fine to cover it:
Yellen On Bitcoin - Business Insider

Mt Gox imploding, being investigated, and shutting down:
The Mt Gox bitcoin scandal is the best thing to happen to bitcoin in years | Money | theguardian.com

Why didn't the implosion of Mt Gox cause the whole Bitcoin world to collapse? Didn't the news of a lot of people losing every BTC they had, and consequently fewer people using them for currency have a large effect? Hundreds of millions disappeared and nobody knows who stole it all.

 

[FluxCap]

Why didn't the implosion of Mt Gox cause the whole Bitcoin world to collapse? Didn't the news of a lot of people losing every BTC they had, and consequently fewer people using them for currency have a large effect? Hundreds of millions disappeared and nobody knows who stole it all.

I honestly have no idea. Like austinEV said, unless I can buy a sammich with BTC, I'm probably not going to be diverting any of my currency into this yet.

I just think the whole thing is a fascinating from a sociological and psychological perspective.