Really... an environmental disaster? Wow, I've never seen someone's credibility get hurled from their body before.
The thing is, you can't make a train out of bitcoins, whereas you can out of real mined metals.
The only point is that it gives people free money for doing maintaining a work station that's not even doing any meaningful work. The only thing it is good for is showing us a major flaw in our society system. A black hole. No matter how little energy it takes to mine bitcoins, in the end it's not much more than turning electricity into money.
[QUOTE=Drury;40288858]The thing is, you can't make a train out of bitcoins, whereas you can out of real mined metals.
The only point is that it gives people free money for doing maintaining a work station that's not even doing any meaningful work. The only thing it is good for is showing us a major flaw in our society system. A black hole. No matter how little energy it takes to mine bitcoins, in the end it's not much more than turning electricity into money.[/QUOTE]
You have no idea how Bitcoin operates, the work is meaningful.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40288910]You know, I was thinking about that.
I know it'd be pretty expensive for me to start mining.
Hell, my electricity bill would probably go through the roof; but what if i'm able to get and sell enough coins to help offset the cost?
I still haven't really done enough research into it yet.
All I know is that if I don't get on board with it soon I'll probably miss the opportunity to make a shitload of money. (Hell, I probably already have)[/QUOTE]
To make a decent amount you'd have to invest a lot into hardware, if you're lucky you'll get that back in a year or so.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40288910]You know, I was thinking about that.
I know it'd be pretty expensive for me to start mining.
Hell, my electricity bill would probably go through the roof; but what if i'm able to get and sell enough coins to help offset the cost?
I still haven't really done enough research into it yet.
All I know is that if I don't get on board with it soon I'll probably miss the opportunity to make a shitload of money. (Hell, I probably already have)[/QUOTE]
Nope, unless you have a GPU suitable for mining, your bill [I]will[/I] be higher than your mining winnings.
[QUOTE=danharibo;40288866]You have no idea how Bitcoin operates, the work is meaningful.[/QUOTE]
From what I read about it, it's always seemed to be only a self-sustaining peer-to-peer system to me.
What's so meaningful about it?
They should use the power for something meaningful instead. Don't know how, but it would be nice.
Here's something to put that in (very needed) perspective:
[QUOTE]Mining Engineer here. I just did a rough calculation to give this a sense of scale:
In the past 24 hous, my operation has used 53,382 liters of diesel fuel for its hauling fleet of 31 trucks. The kWh equivalent of this fuel burn is 572,373 kWh. The energy used in BitCoin mining (at the quoted price of $0.15 per kWh) is 980,000 kWh.
This single mine uses 58% of the energy that global BitCoin mining currently uses. For its HAULING fleet. That doesn't included the drills, explosives energy, processing energy (which is substantial, I assure you.) nor does it include the cost of the diesel fuel for the 4 locomotives to take the material to the port. For this one, single, lowly mining operation.
I don't condemn the factors or the article, but I don't think that it draws an accurate comparison. What would be a better comparison that might actually suprise some people is the Energy Cost-Economic Gain of the currency. What's the value of one BitCoin compared to the energy cost it takes to produce it?[/QUOTE]
credit to [URL="http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cay04/what_bitcoin_teaches_us_about_the_internets/c9ev313"]user crsf29 (reddit)[/URL]
Also, power/performance ratio is about to go way up when specialized mining ASICs like the [URL="https://products.butterflylabs.com/"]Bitforce line[/URL] go widespread.
[QUOTE=Codename 47;40289007]They should use the power for something meaningful instead. Don't know how, but it would be nice.[/QUOTE]Last time I checked making money is kinda meaningful.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;40289029]Last time I checked making money is kinda meaningful.[/QUOTE]
I'd imagine he means making the actual number crunching meaningful, like for example those calculations being used for something like Folding@Home.
If I still lived in University halls where electricity wasn't billed I'd be investing in some ASICs right now
[QUOTE=itisjuly;40289029]Last time I checked making money is kinda meaningful.[/QUOTE]
not when the cost of consumption is higher than the output you end up getting, therefore netting yourself 0 profit~
I did the math for best case scenario bitcoin mining on my single fastest supercomputer.
It was not possible to produce enough bitcoins to cover the electrical cost just for the computational time. The energy efficiency would need to be much, much higher per bitcoin.
I heard on the bitcoin wiki, that gpu mining is not very profitable (if it all),and even if you have free electricity the gpu rigs are unlikely to pay for themselves.
When the rest of the bitcoin ASICs start shipping (I think only one brand has shipped so far) the difficulty
will start raising dramatically.
[QUOTE=Doomish;40289334]not when the cost of consumption is higher than the output you end up getting, therefore netting yourself 0 profit~[/QUOTE]
[quote]Blockchain said the rough cost of that amount of power was $147,000 (£95,000).
However, it also suggested profits of $681,000 (£444,000) may have been made as a result of the mining.[/quote]
I don't know, the profits seem to far exceed the cost.
But eventually with the way bitcoins work and how they are mined, it won't be worth the power consumption costs (for the miner mostly), and then what? It won't stop people from mining for more because the coins will continue to rise in value as they get harder to obtain, even though the cost of mining them rises with it.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;40289354]I don't know, the profits seem to far exceed the cost.[/QUOTE]
Overall, yes. Because you have people with dedicated, proper hardware and they offset the scrubs
[QUOTE=Doomish;40289405]But eventually with the way bitcoins work and how they are mined, it won't be worth the power consumption costs (for the miner mostly), and then what? It won't stop people from mining for more because the coins will continue to rise in value as they get harder to obtain, even though the cost of mining them rises with it.[/QUOTE]I don't get it, first you say mining bitcoins will cost more than returned profit but then you counter your own argument by saying coin value will rise so people will continue to mine since it will be worth it anyway. As long as coin value yields profit people will mine. Once it doesn't they will stop, or at least the smart ones will.
it's not countering my own argument at all, you misunderstood
bitcoins will continue to rise in value because they take longer to mine, but taking longer to mine means more energy consumption, which means higher power bills all around; power bills that cannot be met by the bitcoins, which [I]take longer and longer to mine as time goes on[/I]
[QUOTE=MIPS;40289343]I did the math for best case scenario bitcoin mining on my single fastest supercomputer.
It was not possible to produce enough bitcoins to cover the electrical cost just for the computational time. The energy efficiency would need to be much, much higher per bitcoin.[/QUOTE]
your supercomputers are shit for mining - they're ancient and not very parallel
I'd like to know how they even come up with the electricity cost, It's probably really overinflated.
[QUOTE=BrainDeath;40291006]your supercomputers are shit for mining - they're ancient and not very parallel[/QUOTE]
MIPS supercomputers are shit for doing anything really apart from messing about with - which is all fine and good if you enjoy it but if you actually want to use them then its kind of pointless.
I don't understand how this works, okay you mine but how does that translate into currency.
[QUOTE=laserguided;40291058]I don't understand how this works, okay you mine but how does that translate into currency.[/QUOTE]
How to have very basic understanding of bitcoin:
1. Learn the basics of economy in highschool.
It would be awesome if the computing was somehow used for something like one of those open simulation programs, like when you mine bitcoins your computer is actually being used to simulate something instead of it going no where.
ITT: people who don't have asic's preordered.
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("ITT" - MaxOfS2D))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=Falchion;40291091]How to have very basic understanding of bitcoin:
1. Learn the basics of economy in highschool.[/QUOTE]
I did and the concept of bitcoin mining is blank to me.
[QUOTE=laserguided;40291158]I did and the concept of bitcoin mining is blank to me.[/QUOTE]
Some people are willing to exchange bitcoin for services and commodities (drugs) or other currencies, therefore it has value.
The reasons why people want to use bitcoin are that it's decentralised and anyonymous, also the early investors made mad profits because mining used to be much faster.
It is a bit fucking stupid, having the only way of generating currency being banging your computer's head against a wall computing useless hashes. Could put that computing power towards something useful tbh.
[editline]15th April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=MIPS;40289343]I did the math for best case scenario bitcoin mining on my single fastest supercomputer.
It was not possible to produce enough bitcoins to cover the electrical cost just for the computational time. The energy efficiency would need to be much, much higher per bitcoin.[/QUOTE]
What supercomputer is this?
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