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Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:32 pm
by GORDON
TheCatt wrote:GORDON wrote:I read a long time ago that there is a trade-off between how much you can mine vs. how much it costs you in electricity. This was long before bitcoins were worth 1k.
Thus the reason for using someone else's electricity
Keep in mind, that's probably grounds for termination...
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 7:04 pm
by Paul
TheCatt wrote:I was thinking of buying one and plugging it into a work computer to see what would happen...
How do those devices work?
I understand that they site there and crunch numbers all day, but I assume you have to link them to some account somehow?
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 7:29 pm
by TheCatt
GORDON wrote:Keep in mind, that's probably grounds for termination...
Ssshhhhhhh....
It's not that much electricity. I'll turn off a server in exchange.
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 7:30 pm
by TheCatt
Paul wrote:TheCatt wrote:I was thinking of buying one and plugging it into a work computer to see what would happen...
How do those devices work?
I understand that they site there and crunch numbers all day, but I assume you have to link them to some account somehow?
Yes. Generally, you join a pool, since the odds of you finding an actual chain/block/whatever is exceptionally low. You then get shares of what the pool find based on how much work your machines contributed.
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 7:43 pm
by TPRJones
Think of it like a lottery. Mining on your own has a very tiny chance of getting a block, but you get the full $25,000 worth of coins yourself. Join a pool with thousands of people and your odds go way up but the payout goes way down.
There are many pools and multiple payout methods. Some will pay out a steady - but low - rate regardless of how the pool is doing (Pay Per Share). Some you get a slightly bigger share in exchange for only getting paid when the pool gets a hit (Proportional).
For small amounts of mining I recommend finding a pool with both options and go Proportional. For the pool I'm in at least I tend to get about 10% more that way than PPS. But I've only tested with a slow rig, so other options may be better if you throw more processing power at it.
I just bought a SheevaPlug off eBay for cheap that I'm going to make into a little dedicated linux mining box.
Edited By TPRJones on 1386204357
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:22 pm
by TheCatt
According to my math, my bitcoin mining was making about $0.20 a day... not the $2.00 I thought it was making. So that sucks. With the miner, I might make $0.40/day... Although, it bitcoins hit $2k some day, I guess that's almost $0.80/day.
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:55 pm
by Malcolm
Wait a sec...
What determines your rate of increase?
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:58 pm
by TheCatt
Mining litecoins seems simpler, since there's no megahardware for mining them that i know of yet. running my laptop and my server i've made 0.0027 in about an hour i think. Of course, they are only worth $40 each, so the scale is different. I'll check the payouts tomorrow.
Only downside of the pool I joined is a minimum of 5 LTC to withdraw. That could take months.
Edited By TheCatt on 1386212907
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 11:22 pm
by Cakedaddy
So, if I have an email server running 24/7, how hard would it be to set something up? I could dedicate 90% of the CPU and GPU because email doesn't take that much. What could my 'income' be?
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:06 am
by TheCatt
Your best best would be Litecoin mining, I would think. CPUs tend to fair quite poorly for bitcoin mining, based on my limited experience and googling.
One of my CPUs (last-gen Intel, not Haswell) generates 10 Khash/s per physical core. So with 3 cores, I get 30 Khash/s. Using GPU miniing, I get 160Khash/s, which works out to about 0.08 LTC per day, based on the past 6 hours. At $32/LTC (current price), that's $2.56/day. So, if I were CPU mining instead, it'd be about $0.60/day of LTC.
$0.20/day of LTC per CPU core at $32/LTC. The amount of LTC will go down with time as the algorithm gets harder, like BTC does, iirc. But it could be offset by a rise in prices. Or, not.
I was able to setup my mining in about 15 minutes or so. I can publish instructions that I'm using tomorrow if interested.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:43 am
by TheCatt
China's central bank just said financial institutions shouldn't trade bitcoins, or something to that effect.
LTC went from 40 to 27 to 35 in less than an hour.
BTC went from 1050 to 850 to 950.
I bought 0.5BTC at 910, sold them at 990.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:51 am
by TheCatt
Apparently ATI 7950 GPUs are the best for LTC mining. They are sold out everywhere. NewEgg, Amazon, none in stock at normal prices.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:28 am
by TheCatt
Overnight bought another 0.5 at 862/BTC. Just sold it at price of 1030/BTC. My stomach bug made money
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:49 am
by Paul
I just read this: http://www.cryptobadger.com/build-your-own-litecoin-mining-rig/
It talks about investing $1,500 into building a mining machine.
And yeah, he says the video cards are hard to find.
In the notes he says the best way to sell LTC is to convert them to BTC, and says to stay away from PayPal because 30-60% of sales there are charged back, and PayPal usually sides with the buyer.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 9:24 am
by TheCatt
Yeah, I got a note from PayPal that they don't allow BTC/LTC sales, so my little scheme ended pretty quick.
Most of those chargebacks are due to fraud (stolen accounts), which is why I was doing the physical verification. But either way, doesn't matter now.
Yeah, all good videocards are sold out across all major websites. All gone.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 9:26 am
by Paul
eBay has some, for lotsa monies.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 11:17 am
by TheCatt
Running an old GPU at work, my laptop, and my home server (AMD 7770), my pool estimates my daily income at 0.082 LTC. At current prices that's $2.87/day. If I could figure out how to get the CPU miners to work, I could experiment with my workstation cluster to see if it could help.
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:31 pm
by TheCatt
So in about 1 day I made 0.055 LTC, or $1.87 at current prices.
Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 12:00 am
by TheCatt
Bought a 280X video card... may mine it and see what happens.
Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 11:35 am
by TheCatt
Just realized my bitcoin miner (guiminer), which had been disappearing every time I switched networks on my laptop was actually still running, and had spawned 12 processes, and was killing my mining. Rebooted, and started up the LTC mining, and it does 130kH/s on my lappy, versus the 30 it was doing yesterday.