BitCoin mining - Is there any point in trying?

[x5x3]

buy and hold has proven to be far more profitable for individuals than mining so far - but who knows what the future will bring.

There are some profitability calculators ( e.g.) so you can see if your GPU/CPU could be profitable.

Another option is nicehash which is easy to download and will automatically switch to mining the most profitable coin.

As someone else mentioned earlier it is very difficult to get hold of the decent GPUs - I've had 4 GPUs on order from Amazon (they were much cheaper than elsewhere) since June but there is no sign of them ever delivering them.

I'd recommend having a go though as it will help you learn about crypto in general.

[Wait Here Until Green Light Shows]

pc.iow said:

What is it you actually 'mine' for, and how?

The only people who know the answer to this question, are the sort of people you avoid talking to in the first place.

So, nobody really knows.

[OtherBusiness]

You'd be better off selling the rigs!

[768]

Wait Here Until Green Light Shows said:

pc.iow said:

What is it you actually 'mine' for, and how?

The only people who know the answer to this question, are the sort of people you avoid talking to in the first place.

So, nobody really knows.

You're trying to find inputs to a one way algorithm that produce a given output, generally. First to claim they've solved an input that produces an output gets that coin. A bit like what do I have to multiply 2 by to get 10? but with bigger numbers and for an operation that isn't reversible (division in this case).

Now you too can be someone to avoid talking to.

[MrLizard]

I would say the same has been true for a while. If (like me) you had the chance of free electricity then it might be worth investing if you can, however if you are paying for the rigs and the leccy then probably not.

You could either just start with the buy/sell rather than mining, or you could rent an s9 miner in a colocation datacentre somewhere, quite a few in america that are quite reasonable...

I did ok out of it but im not sure I would do it again... ethereum however is a more interesting proposition to me at the moment, though oddly end up exchanging it to bitcoin then selling that to take cash out..

[TameRacingDriver]

Wait Here Until Green Light Shows said:

pc.iow said:

What is it you actually 'mine' for, and how?

The only people who know the answer to this question, are the sort of people you avoid talking to in the first place.

So, nobody really knows.

I'm another one who isn't really any of the wiser.

I can't really get my head around it if I'm honest. There is no physical "thing" that is worth anything, so I don't really get why someone couldn't just add a few 0's to a "balance" without all this nonsense. I don't get how anyone (i.e. banks or businesses generally) takes it seriously, way over my head.

[feef]

AIUI the cost of the power and capital outlay on suitable hardware far outstrips any financial benefit from mining BitCoin.

An interesting development are some websites using site-visitor's computers to run bitcoin mining processes in lieu of implementing a paywall. Whether it's 'moral' to do so without explicitly asking the user or not is up for debate but it is an interesting concept

[TameRacingDriver]

feef said:

Whether it's 'moral' to do so without explicitly asking the user or not is up for debate but it is an interesting concept

Absolutely not moral whatsoever really is it? I'd say technically that's theft.

[The Moose]

TameRacingDriver said:

I'm another one who isn't really any of the wiser.

I can't really get my head around it if I'm honest. There is no physical "thing" that is worth anything, so I don't really get why someone couldn't just add a few 0's to a "balance" without all this nonsense. I don't get how anyone (i.e. banks or businesses generally) takes it seriously, way over my head.

What makes you think there is any physical “thing” worth anything behind, say, I don’t know, the pound?

[768]

TameRacingDriver said:

I can't really get my head around it if I'm honest. There is no physical "thing" that is worth anything, so I don't really get why someone couldn't just add a few 0's to a "balance" without all this nonsense.

There's effectively a shared ledger and transactions added to it have to be verified. I think the maths varies, but for simplicity's sake, if you controlled half of the machines on the network verifying transactions you could do as you suggest. It relies on no one entity having that much more processing power than the rest of the network.

TameRacingDriver said:

I don't get how anyone (i.e. banks or businesses generally) takes it seriously, way over my head.

Just time, IMHO. The longer it shows itself to be resistant to attack, the more seriously it has to be taken.

[MrLizard]

TameRacingDriver said:

I'm another one who isn't really any of the wiser.

I can't really get my head around it if I'm honest. There is no physical "thing" that is worth anything, so I don't really get why someone couldn't just add a few 0's to a "balance" without all this nonsense. I don't get how anyone takes it seriously, way over my head.

Quite a lot info available online, I think it is only worth getting into now if you are genuinely interested in how it all works and creating scripts etc to switch between pools.

Whoever mentioned about missing out on the last block of a chain earlier in the thread is talking rubbish

[TameRacingDriver]

Thanks - I did a bit of googling and understand a little better how it works, although I'm still a little confused. Computer does a bit of maths crunching and the end result is a bitcoin (give or take). I just don't understand who decided that this would be a currency, and I don't understand how they persuaded the rest of the planet it should be one. Example, if someone came up to me and said, I'll buy this thing from you, and I'll buy it with a made-up electronic currency that my computer sat and processed all night, I'd rightly go and tell them to foxtrot oscar off

The whole thing in reality is just too much for my tiny brain to process

[feef]

TameRacingDriver said:

feef said:

Whether it's 'moral' to do so without explicitly asking the user or not is up for debate but it is an interesting concept

Absolutely not moral whatsoever really is it? I'd say technically that's theft.

Is it?

stating on a site "we provide this content for free in return for some of your CPU cycles" isn't requesting explicit consent, but is it theft?

[TameRacingDriver]

feef said:

Is it?

stating on a site "we provide this content for free in return for some of your CPU cycles" isn't requesting explicit consent, but is it theft?

Not in that case, but you didn't say that originally...

TBH I'd probably avoid any site that did that anyway. You can certainly tell when websites start using more CPU cycles than they should when your machine suddenly starts becoming more sluggish, fan noise increases etc - I notice this on sites with loads of adverts. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of someone else getting "rich" at my expense either. However, that's for the end user to decide, but for me, I'm out!

[feef]

TameRacingDriver said:

feef said:

Is it?

stating on a site "we provide this content for free in return for some of your CPU cycles" isn't requesting explicit consent, but is it theft?

Not in that case, but you didn't say that originally...

TBH I'd probably avoid any site that did that anyway. You can certainly tell when websites start using more CPU cycles than they should when your machine suddenly starts becoming more sluggish, fan noise increases etc - I notice this on sites with loads of adverts. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of someone else getting "rich" at my expense either. However, that's for the end user to decide, but for me, I'm out!

It IS what I said, i.e. "without explicitly asking" however I accept that I could have been clearer

[98elise]

The Moose said:

TameRacingDriver said:

I'm another one who isn't really any of the wiser.

I can't really get my head around it if I'm honest. There is no physical "thing" that is worth anything, so I don't really get why someone couldn't just add a few 0's to a "balance" without all this nonsense. I don't get how anyone (i.e. banks or businesses generally) takes it seriously, way over my head.

What makes you think there is any physical “thing” worth anything behind, say, I don’t know, the pound?

Peoples effort, and the everyone's willingness to use the £ to exchange that effort.

The value in Bitcoin is how much someone else is willing to pay further down the line. No added value has been created yet loads of people are somehow richer for owning them.

That's just my simple view.

[768]

98elise said:

Peoples effort, and the everyone's willingness to use the £ to exchange that effort.

It's the same for bitcoin, isn't it?

[98elise]

768 said:

98elise said:

Peoples effort, and the everyone's willingness to use the £ to exchange that effort.

It's the same for bitcoin, isn't it?

What effort or added value have people put in to create the value in Bitcoin?

If you were to create more pounds, then the value of the pounds drop as there has been no additional value created.

If you create a new currency the value has to have come from somewhere (or devalued something else)

It just seems to me that its value is based on someone else will paying more.

I don't pretend to be any sort of expert though

[Durzel]

I don't have a dog in this fight, but value is an intangible thing.

Fiat currency has a fixed, stable value (domestically anyway) simply because it's government backed, and therefore is accepted everywhere. It has a known conversion rate.

So long as there are people out there accepting Bitcoin for all kinds of real, tangible assets - it has a value that is at least pegged to the equivalent Sterling value of those things.

Unfortunately for Bitcoin - the very thing it eschews (government regulation) is the thing that makes it critically unstable. However, that's not to say you can't make money on it, the same way you would with other investments.

To be honest, as with the whole supercar bubble, there have been "any day now" naysayers for years. Is it stable? no, but ROI often scales with risk.

[TameRacingDriver]

I get what you're all saying, the bit I can't get my head around is basically the fact that somebody, an individual like you or I, wrote some kind of computer program that does some complex calculations to produce a file / container / whatever that they then decide "is worth money". I kind of get that bit, but I just don't understand who would buy something like this, or why, and that's what I don't get.

I could invent some kind of weird thing on a computer tonight, but that doesn't mean anyone will buy it!