Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

Tripamang

Tripamang

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Soriak_sl said:
Any details on ASICs? I understand that is hardware especially designing for one purpose (in this case bitcoin mining)?

If so, what price range are we talking here? Commercially available or built by enthusiasts?

I don't see it as a way of making money, but I very much like the idea of bitcoins. Maybe a small buy-in wouldn't be a bad idea just to stay interested in following developments.
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Given the current price of a bitcoin, though, I can't help but think "bubble." But that's ok, a bitcoin doesn't have to be worth $30 for the currency to serve a purpose. In fact, the USD exchange rate doesn't seem all that relevant, as long as it can reach some kind of relatively-stable exchange rate in the near future.


edit: ok, some googling returns this thing for $150:http://products.butterflylabs.com/ho...oin-miner.html
It's about 100 times as fast as my GPU... yeah. There's one about 7 as fast for 4x the cost. Probably a good deal for people way more serious about this than me.
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No one has actually delivered a commercial ASIC unit yet. A company named Avalon has shipped two demo units to purchasers and I believe there is another company with a finished product but they aren't shipping to end users and they make up about 10TH (1/4) of the current processing power of the network. Butterfly labs has finished testing their chips and getting them bumped, they're currently getting shipped to their assembly line this week and hopefully they'll start shipping finished units next week.

Anyone you order from now and you're looking at a couple months before you're receive a product, so if you were going to invest in some hardware you'd want the best Gigahash/Watt which is the Butterfly labs product line at roughly 1Gigahash/Watt. By the time you'd get it you're looking at 7-8 months before you'd see a return on your money though, vs the preorder people who are looking at weeks/days to pay it back.
 
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Soriak_sl

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Iannis_sl said:
The entire thing just seems like a terrible idea unless it's backed by some authority with access to guns. And the guys with that kind of authority, they issue their own money.
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That's definitely not a requirement of fiat currency. See the numerous examples of community currencies:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._United_States(they actually exist around the world)

All you need is people willing to give up real world (or digital) goods or services in exchange for bitcoins. Sure, one can wonder why on earth they would... but both legal hurdles (e.g. online gambling) and high transaction costs for credit card processing (think micro payments) could make it sensible.
 
Alkorin

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Iannis_sl said:
A quintillion I'm pretty sure.

And the money still spends.

That's the point.
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Not sure that's the guns talking. I think that's more an unhealthy lack of knowledge of basic economics and an overdose of "we don't give a fuck". But, hey... at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.
 
Alkorin

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I've started mining at home, just to see how long it'll take me to mine 1 BTC. So far, about 0.0075 BTC in ~6h. Seems like it would take forever to accumulate any kind of reasonable amount of currency this way, so there must be another way (or this is just a scale thing).
 
Arative

Arative

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Alkorin_sl said:
I've started mining at home, just to see how long it'll take me to mine 1 BTC. So far, about 0.0075 BTC in ~6h. Seems like it would take forever to accumulate any kind of reasonable amount of currency this way, so there must be another way (or this is just a scale thing).
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I'm just shy of 1 g\hs and it takes me about 1 month to generate 5 btc at current prices it will net me $230. Thankfully I can do this at work where the electricity is free. The price per coin has gone up a lot recently, like $20 in the past 2 weeks or so. I'd look for it to drop fast soon. No way it can sustain $46 a coin. The last time there was a bubble like this, the price per coin went up to around $30, then dropped to $2 a coin. The alternative to mining of course is buying and selling the coins.
 
gogusrl

gogusrl

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The last time it was 30$, it dropped to ~16-18 when the bubble did burst and it went down to 2$ after the mtgox hack when for a week or so no one could trade. I had almost 3 Ghash running about 2 years ago, sold everything when it dropped under 5$ ... if only I knew it was gonna go like this.
 
Alkorin

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I don't dare mine at work. I figure the server at home is on anyway, so I might as well let it run, but yeah, I wonder how much it's costing me to do so...

Edit: It's genuinely disappointing how horrible an nVidia Quadro 2000 is at mining. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I'm only getting something like 32 mh/s.
 
Arative

Arative

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Alkorin_sl said:
I don't dare mine at work. I figure the server at home is on anyway, so I might as well let it run, but yeah, I wonder how much it's costing me to do so...

Edit: It's genuinely disappointing how horrible an nVidia Quadro 2000 is at mining. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I'm only getting something like 32 mh/s.
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Nvidia cards generally suck at mining. You can find the hardware comparisonhere

I'd say if you really want to get into mining, look at asic rather than video cards. Avalon is the only one that has shipped any units so far, BFL is suppose to shipping soon or buy shares in ASICminer, they're doing about 4 th/s at btcguild pool
 
Alkorin

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Arative_sl said:
Nvidia cards generally suck at mining. You can find the hardware comparisonhere

I'd say if you really want to get into mining, look at asic rather than video cards. Avalon is the only one that has shipped any units so far, BFL is suppose to shipping soon or buy shares in ASICminer, they're doing about 4 th/s at btcguild pool
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Wow, you're not kidding. Maybe I should invest in an ATI card for now. I can't float the purchase price of an Avalon without my wife disowning me.

I'll see how the first BTC works out. I might be able to convince her that I can make back what I'm going to spend on the ASIC box in time.
 
gogusrl

gogusrl

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I'd buy 10 ASIC's right now if I'd get them in a week or two. With the backorders & shit, if you order one now you'll be lucky to get it in a few months and who knows what will happen until then.

With an overclocked 7970 you can get around 600-650 Mhash/sec, or about 2 bitcoins / month. The card will use 250-300 W/hour so there won't much left after you cover the electricity cost.
 
Arative

Arative

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Alkorin_sl said:
Wow, you're not kidding. Maybe I should invest in an ATI card for now. I can't float the purchase price of an Avalon without my wife disowning me.

I'll see how the first BTC works out. I might be able to convince her that I can make back what I'm going to spend on the ASIC box in time.
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You might try a BFL Jalapeno, those are $149 a pop. Granted they haven't shipped any yet and if you ordered today, you probably wouldn't see a product until June or July at the earliest. At least a video card you can use for gaming.
 
Alkorin

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Might try that. With what I have right now, I'm only doing an aggregate of ~300 Mh/s, so there's really very little point in this unless I want to invest some money, I guess.

Edit: I ordered a Jalapeno. We'll see when it gets here.
 
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Tea_sl

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Alkorin_sl said:
Edit: I ordered a Jalapeno. We'll see when it gets here.
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Get a refund. Even if you optimistically received it by December that would would mean 10's of thousands of other ASICs would have have hit the pool and pushed the difficulty so high that the Jalepeno would be spitting out a couple pennies a day.
 
Alkorin

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Meh. I emailed them and told them the order was placed in error. Hopefully they'll just cancel it since it's still processing.

Too much back and forth with this shit, I'm not gonna bother. I won't buy a video card just to mine BTC, and if ordering an inexpensive ASIC makes no sense, then forget it. This isn't for me.
 
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Tea_sl

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Today is another great comedy day for Bitcoin though! I can't believe how much money people are throwing at $50 bitcoins. The crash is coming, and it will be glorious.
 
Alkorin

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Well, I managed to mine 0.015 BTC total. I don't dare figure out how much money I spent on electricity doing that. =D
 
Tripamang

Tripamang

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Alkorin_sl said:
Meh. I emailed them and told them the order was placed in error. Hopefully they'll just cancel it since it's still processing.

Too much back and forth with this shit, I'm not gonna bother. I won't buy a video card just to mine BTC, and if ordering an inexpensive ASIC makes no sense, then forget it. This isn't for me.
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Honestly ignore Tea and keep it. They're saying they're going to deliver in May to late June if you order today. Even at a 25x increase in the network hash rate, you're still making 4-5$ a day at 45$ bitcoins. A 45$ bitcoin sounds ridiculous but the fact that you can use them to get around US gambling laws and there are companies who have come up with secure storage for long term/large bitcoin investments it will probably continue to grow for the foreseeable future (hopefully not at the recent speed). The more people who use bitcoins, the more demand there is and the higher the value will be pushed.

Just to be clear though, at the rate bitcoins have shot up 45$/coin it's priced too high, but there is definitely a lot of room for positive growth in the coming months after the price smooths out from this bubble.

Edit: I also suggest doing the math yourself and look at worst case scenarios and whether or not you think it's worth it to you.http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
 
T

Tea_sl

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Tripamang_sl said:
Honestly ignore Tea and keep it. They're saying they're going to deliver in May to late June if you order today. Even at a 25x increase in the network hash rate, you're still making 4-5$ a day at 45$ bitcoins. A 45$ bitcoin sounds ridiculous but the fact that you can use them to get around US gambling laws and there are companies who have come up with secure storage for long term/large bitcoin investments it will probably continue to grow for the foreseeable future (hopefully not at the recent speed). The more people who use bitcoins, the more demand there is and the higher the value will be pushed.

Just to be clear though, at the rate bitcoins have shot up 45$/coin it's priced too high, but there is definitely a lot of room for positive growth in the coming months after the price smooths out from this bubble.
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The same company that said they would ship in November of last year and has yet to ship anything more than a couple test units. Late June is a pipe dream for batch 3 orders. It's also laughable to think that there is any pressure being exerted on the market that isn't speculation. Bitcoins are an intermediary method of payment. It doesn't matter what the exchange rate is for Silk road or gambling since those bitcoins are being immediately converted into dollars. Not only is it a market driven by pure speculation, it's also a speculative market where the end game is essentially a worthless commodity. Bitcoin will never gain widespread acceptance because of the inherent faults with it: enormously long transaction times, deflationary, and lack of protections.
 
Alkorin

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Refund received. Too speculative for my tastes, especially given the uncertainty of the status of the market once the systems actually ship. If I could have the box tomorrow, I'd be all over it. 6 months is a stretch, and that's not even for sure, so... forget it.

At least they didn't argue, so, points for them. If I do buy a miner ASIC, it'll be from them.
 
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