Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys!

https://i.imgur.com/rAJDw.jpg

I just wanted to share my achievement of hashing around 5% of the Litecoin network as of today.  ;D

The screenshot is not completely up to date, I'm around 14500 Khash with average optimization. I think I could attain 17000 khash soon.

Well, this topic is not only about how awesome I am.  8) I also want to say that I endorse publicly what Litecoin is trying to achieve and I hope, with the ASIC debacle coming in the next months, that Litecoin will attract the GPU miners left behind. A currency needs people to have value, and the more it is distributed in people's pockets, the bigger it has value.

I think many underestimate the faster transactions that Litecoin brings. At the moment, it's not that useful, I agree. But with every technological evolution, people want technology that go faster. Faster transportation, faster calculation, faster execution, etc. It's going to take a long time before BTC has a problem of slow transaction, but it could become one, especially with faster options around it.

Also, in less than a year, Litecoin became an interesting alternative for miners. It's a nice accomplishment considering the quantity of alt-currencies that have been launched in the last year. It's now strongly positioned for GPU miners that don't want to simply sell their equipment.

The development team is smaller, but they can be trusted. coblee proved his awesome integrity to me 1 month ago, and I wanted to find a way to return the favor. There's a lot of bigger miners than me, and I hope I can influence them somehow to send a couple of khash toward Litecoin in the next months.

Some FUDers will say that going to Litecoin is a way to divide people, I would say that it proves the concept of crypto-currency. Seeing Litecoin growing next to Bitcoin will show that Bitcoin is not a one-hit wonder, and that decentralized currencies can work.

Since you seem to be an advocate of litecoin: please enlighten me.

In what way does litecoin bring innovation towards the cryptocurrency ecosystem?

Faster transactions? Doesn't mean anything if the associated risk for double spending is not reduced... (faster block generation does not reduce the risk of double spends)
Different Hashing algorithm? Doesn't protect you from 51% attacks...

litecoin was created at a time when everybody tried to pump&dump without effort.

It's an alternative to bitcoin. Simply put.

Examples: Pepsi and Coke.

Ford and Honda

McDonalds and Burger King.

Illusion of choice is not innovation. It more falls into the category of knock-offs.

Right...Pepsi took the same product and changed a few things.

Same with McDonalds. Oh wow some burgers have onions and some don't.

I think you are blinded by the fact that innovation isn't always what drives something to be accepted as a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE.

Silver coins back in the old days changed the surface design. They didnt need to invent another precious metal in order for their silver/gold coins to be accepted as a medium of exchange. The free markets dont care about innovation. If people agree that something has value, who the fuck cares how innovative it is?

EDIT: Don't buy or use litecoins if that is your view. Just use bitcoins. Go choose. Be part of the free market that you choose to be a part of. No one will care if you don't use litecoins. I certainly don't.

Litecoins are the way to go  ;D

What pool is that ?

Where did I mention innovation? And why innovation is a requirement for making something? If you were forced to use innovation whenever you build something, China would be the poorest country of the world.

The game-changing innovation has already been done with the birth of Bitcoin. You cannot create a disruptive technology every time something is made. Many things are born by increment or by moving sideways. I see Litecoin as a sideway move for crypto-currency. It's Bitcoin with different parameters, who could give a different outcome.

Faster transactions are worth almost nothing right now, because there's no need for faster right now. But with new network technologies, where some business are making new transmission methods and considering the network could evolve to become a lot more faster and where blocks are propagated in 0.002 seconds, maybe waiting 10 minutes for a block would be irrelevant where 1 minute is enough. Everything is possible.

The different hashing algorithm right now is giving to GPU miners like me an alternative to "hey, ASIC are coming, sell your stuff". The different hashing algorithm currently represent 25 000$/year for my equipment. There's a ton of GPU out there, and releasing ASIC are not going to make those GPU disappear. They are going to be used for another purpose, and mining Litecoin is simply a purpose more lucrative than gaming. The market has currently thousands of parts made for cheap calculation, and they're going to be available really soon. Litecoin could certainly profit heavily from that. All this because of: different hashing algorithm.

Pool-X:  http://pool-x.eu/

Because of me, it's now the biggest Litecoin pool out there  ;D

But I'm mainly using it for testing purpose right now because it's easier to detect problems. I'm probably going to solo mine in a couple of days, when my system is ready.

touché

That will result in a myriad of forks. The main requirement of any decentralized system which has to establish consensus is that:
time for information progression << time for generating new information
Otherwise you risk symmetry breaking. E.g. if you generate a block every 10 seconds and it takes 100 seconds for the system to equilibrate, you may have solved 4-5 blocks before you get corrected by the network. And in the worst case the whole network splits due to maturity criteria and you get two realities for the block chain and only one can be true. Someone can exploit that by using the same coins in two environments which are topographically apart (network connectivity speaking...)

So you're making an economical argument: Litecoin allows bitcoin miners to use their old hardware which (hopefully) paid for itself. (However, GPU may be the last device which can be used by both networks). While this statement is true, it misses the point of the valuation of a commodity: It needs to justify existence by showing utility (in the long run). Valid selling points are:
- lower transaction fees (lower cost of use)
- more or equal acceptance in specific environments (fungibility)
- different resilience to attacks (risk of outage)
- incentive system for maintaining source code and software infrastructure (sustainability)

going back to the china argument, yes china is successful, but they score in utility: lower cost of production
And I admit that the assertion that litecoin needs to innovate is not necessarily true. However, I wonder why someone would want to acquire a cryptocurrency which does not improve anything and instead has a higher risk of vanishing from the face of the earth?

Yeah, right now, I agree with that. But technology will evolve and communication systems will be become faster and better. It's possible that, in 20 years from now, the whole system needs 2 ms to equilibrate, and having 10 minutes blocks instead of 2.5 will become useless. It's really hypothetical though, so there's not a lot to argue.


The economical argument is a part of it. Another part of why people want to acquire Litecoin is with the potential of it, like people are doing with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is far from being mature, but people are already buying it at a high price. We're only scratching the surface here, there's so much lying under and so much to try, I don't want to dismiss possibilities. As of today, I'm now using two different blockchains for my transactions, the Bitcoin blockchain and the Litecoin blockchain. What can we do with two well-supported blockchains? Can we jump from one to another for privacy purposes? Can we use one of them to back the value of the other? In the case of a 51% attack, can the other blockchain serve as an insurance for the economic value of crypto-currencies?

I'm not an economic specialist, but Bitcoin has always been alone. Now, we have the possibility of having a similar blockchain to it. I'm pretty sure we can find a use to this relation between them. Consider the quantity of different fiat currency or the different precious metal available, I don't see why we should be stuck to only one crypto-currency.

Yeah, the market is still small, but you need to have opportunities to see it grow. You can't have a Bitcoin market if Bitcoin isn't made, like you can't have a Litecoin market if you don't make Litecoin first. And anyway, the markets have already priced the value of the two currencies. Don't wonder why Bitcoin is around 12$ while Litecoin is at 0.04$. People prefer Bitcoin and the price reflect that.

Anyway, in the next months, we'll see how it goes. GPU miners are not going to disappear from the surface of the planet and the chances that they go for Litecoin (like I did) exists. When they're going to have their pockets full of Litecoin...well, that's what I call an opportunity.

*EDIT*
The more I think about it, the more I wonder. How can you track somebody who trades between the blockchains? If you send 10 BTC for 1000 LTC to somebody else....how the hell are you supposed to match the transactions? I mean, if I want to launder 10 BTC, I send them to Litedude. Litedude sends me 1000 LTC for it. My 10 BTC transaction is written in the BTC blockchain, and the 1000 LTC transaction is written in the LTC blockchain. I send my 1000 LTC to Bitdude in exchange for a fresh 10 BTC in a new wallet address. Somebody who follow me on the blockchain will think that I have 10 BTC less, but I still have it in another address. And transactions on the BTC blockchain are not executed at the same time as transactions on the LTC blockchain, matching BTC and LTC transactions would be a hell of a job. Especially since you can delay them as you wish.

It is speculation and risk. Just as bitcoin was and still is speculative. If people choose to risk then so be it. Stop questioning it. What do YOU choose? Stop worrying about everyone else's decision and make up your own mind.

Also good job not replying to my previous post. It shows how much you had to retort on the fact that innovation has nothing to do with free markets choosing a medium of exchange.

OP: 17 MH/s is A LOT - care to share your seekrit?

Canada has a lot of space with big houses and a climate illness called winter half of the year. The rigs were bought for making money AND heating my house   ;D

Where I live, the climate also has an illness... Summer.

Sorry if I offended you by not directly replying to your post. I agree with the general assessment that innovation in not a REQUIREMENT to be successful. The more an economy is governed by emotions instead of rational criteria, the more important BRANDING becomes. That's what you were quoting earlier... examples for substitutes... Hence I presume that your speculation is based on the assumption that cryptocurrency is yet another economy where branding is important.

So, let me ask you a simple question: Which is more fitting to cryptocurrency?
a) Pepsi vs Coke?
b) BP gasoline vs Shell gasoline?

I have my miner out in a shed in Alberta.  I've already seen my cards mine in the mid 40s, I expect when it gets really cold here I will see temps below 0C.

Where did I show that I was offended? Good job once again making up assumptions of how I perceived your lack to respond.

Concerning your question.... :D

Some would interpret that as sarcastic. I did.

Oh really? No one would have ever thought I was being sarcastic. LOL! :D

The gasoline brands analogy is interesting. Why indeed should I care which of the many cryptocurrencies a shop is willing to accept for a nice pair of alpaca socks as long as it happens to be one that I have enough of in my wallet?

If it happens to be an Ixcoin-only shop and I have no Ixcoins hopefully I can easily trade some other coin for Ixcoin, maybe even the payment provider will handle that for the merchant, taking whatever I like to pay with and giving the merchant his Ixcoins. Why should I care as long as something I have some of will buy those socks?

-MarkM-

well hey there brunic welcome to heh :)

Litecoin is another interesting social experiment.

Currency is backed by confidence and trust, or force, not innovation, not directly.

Brunic, I think you are touching upon something here. Though I have a legit job and income myself, I does not require much of an imagination to see how some people would find LTCBTC use of mixing services before cashing out on a deep enough exchange and get perhaps get a identity tied to the transaction.

I have aggregated LTCBTC data for some months now and are eyeballing the ratio. I am especially interested to see if a spread betting (actually pair-betting) opportunity will emerge. Will it be possible to hedge the volatility in BTC with a stake in LTC? And so forth and so on... (I have written a little bit about this in my blog here: http://blog.aramisw.com/index.asp?action=view&filter=Economics&post=altcoins&creationdate=120724 (http://blog.aramisw.com/index.asp?action=view&filter=Economics&post=altcoins&creationdate=120724)).

Nice blog post!

We never had two legit blockchains before that are completely independent from each other. It's not about what Litecoin brings that Bitcoin don't have, it's about the dynamic between them that was impossible before when you had only 1 currency. Namecoin can't serve the purpose well in my opinion, because it have a different purpose than simply being a currency, and also because merged mining cause it's value to be somewhat tied to Bitcoin. It acts more like a bonus and less like a different currency. You cannot secure your funds in Namecoin because in the case of a 51% attack, Namecoin is affected as much as Bitcoin.

Litecoin, by using Scrypt, can't be 51% at the same time as Bitcoin. Miners are also forced to choose one of the currencies, they can't choose both of them. The fact of choosing influence people toward that currency. Now, people are more used to Bitcoin, since it was the only choice before. But with the ASIC coming, all those GPU miners will be forced to choose Litecoin for a while (until Litecoin ASIC are made, if they are made). All those gamers who mined Bitcoin with their graphic card will be forced to mine Litecoin now. I said before, those GPU are not going to disappear, they are going to be used for something else.

If more GPU miners drift toward Litecoin, the interesting dynamic between blockchain will start to appear. Like you said, you could bet or hedge on one blockchain against the other, something that was impossible before. You could easily enter the market by buying BTC, transfers your BTC into LTC and get out by cashing out the LTC. Or vice-versa. Even if some freak make a program to analyze the blockchain, analyzing TWO blockchains makes following the money impossible and irrelevant, especially since they have a different tempo of validation.

If you wanted to hedge against Bitcoin before, the only option you had was using fiat funds. Now, you can hedge indefinitely by switching back and forth BTC-LTC without anybody knowing. Litecoin is the only viable option at the moment to enable this, because it needs to have small differences(different algorithm, different tempo), but staying similar enough to Bitcoin (same basic functions, same functional logic). Bitcoin needed a small brother, and I think we have it  :)

You bring up some good points.

ah...the future where we have a multi-BTC/NMC/SC/LR/LTC/PPCoin/Others Debit card...

We are getting toward that. Take a look at http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html

Those tables are used in commerce already.

For example a miner deides to shop a million units of deuterium to a General Mining Corp depot to make a payment against his startup loans.

GMC has a price in GMC scrip they pay for deuterium delivered to their depot.

Miner says uh guys actually I want to credit this against my loan, which as your records should show was refinanced in DeVCoin by General Financial Corp.

GMC sends their script to GFC, or, if they happen for some reason to have a bunch of DeVCoin on hand, they send "equivalent" in DeVCoin.

If it is GMC scrip that is sent, GFC looks up "equivalent" in DeVCoin to credit against the miner's loan.

They implement "equivalent" by looking at the latest row of those tables.

Its not all that complicated, really. Banks do it all the time, oh customer deposited USD icheque nstead of CAD cheque? Look on table... Its pretty much normal practice, albeit usually with each bank likely using its own customised version of the table.

-MarkM-

The reason to buy litecoin is diversity.

I would second that, but that remark actually brings me back to a point made earlier about innovation. If a cryptocurrency doesn't innovate it doesn't really add to diversity. It only adds to the illusion of diversity.

Has ford innovated in the last 30 years?

Exactly. Ford doesn't really contribute to the diversity of the car industry either.

Okay I think now we're just in an argument over what the word 'diversity' really means here.

Different brands (diversity of sellers or product offerers) or diversity of the actual product

Correct. Diversity doesn't mean much if it's just relabeling. Relabeling creates an illusion of diversity (which is powerful, people like to make choices, even if they don't mean anything...)

There is one aspect which I consider valuable about a knock-off, and that's the development team. Having an independent group of people working on an implementation of cryptocurrency decentralizes the source and thus adds to the resilience of the overall project. Then, if one development team turns bad, people have somewhere to go.

However, since LTC is more or less a plain copy of the bitcoin concept, the community could be served better if that team would just create a different implementation for the bitcoin reference client.

Lot's of talking going on here. With all your great wisdom how is it that you haven't started a better version of bitcoin?

It really doesn't matter what you think. The free market will choose what is a medium of exchange. Quite frankly it appears that there is quite a following for litecoin miners and buyers of the coin. Whether or not it is a copy doesn't remove the fact that it was a fairly started block chain. No premine and an announced launch date ahead of time. It is just as functional as bitcoin and can do very much the same thing.

Having an alternative to bitcoin is not a bad idea unless you are a large holder of bitcoin and don't want people (suckers/latecomers) to divert their attention and money to an alternative to the Holy of Holy, Bitcoin (i'm referring to some early adopters who have been very vocal about litecoin being a scam).

+1 Well said i think LTC has a bright future we must support what is needed and not be mono-minded

1. Laziness.
2. I think there are other bitcoin related projects which need more attention right now (e.g. decentralized asset systems, coin swapping, smart contracts and the like). One of the things I see emerging on the horizon is that the cryptocurrency acts more or less as a transport layer for higher order functionalities.
3. No need - the bitcoin development team is doing a good job right now.

I am glad to hear that. Otherwise I would feel quite a pressure :)

Exactly. Although the developers of LTC need to keep up with the development in bitcoin (unless they can do a simple merge). Also, an interesting aspect, LTC effectively reduces the price of BTC because it reroutes wealth into a second blockchain.

Yeah.. I guess some don't like it if too much wealth leaks into other blockchains...

Maybe it helps to draw an analogy to linux. How mono is the linux kernel and why?

Wealth isn't leaking from bitcoin, it is being thrown away dirt cheap on fiat exchanges by miners and hackers.

There isn't a lot of point in buying half a million bitcoins hoping they will rise in price if everyone else is meanwhile throwing away half a million bitcoins to hackers or scammers to be sold dirt cheap.

Until people actually value their bitcoins instead of dumping them having lots of alternatives is good, especially if there enough alternatives that no particular one of them seems real tempting to hackers nor even worth mining to miners whose only goal is to dump.

-MarkM-

I sense contempt. What are you trying to say? People should hang on to their money and avoid scams?
As far as the 7% figures per week/day/hour go I agree. Even 1% per year is bullshit if there is no business model.

I guess a lot of people got overwhelmed by the sudden exposure to unsecured investment opportunities. It's usually something only bank employees have.

i heart LTC :)

It has been long predicted that Bitcoin will eventually become a "meta currency" in the cryptocurrency world, with other regional/smaller/specific currencies being more actively used for smaller transactions.

We may be seeing this happening.

are you suggesting LTC fits the profile of regional/smaller/specific currencies ?

What are you suggesting LTC is?
nothing, right?
Do you understand the concept called "community "?

From your confusing answer I deduce that with "regional" you refer to "community" in a sense of people with dedicated needs. Am I correct?

Partially, region is just one example of community. Bitcoin itself is a community too. Don't take these words too literally.

Confidence and trust are the foundations of cryptocurrencies. The longer a alt-chain exists, the harder it is to destroy these two precious commodities. LTC community has shown pretty good resiliency and growth potential as far as I can see. 

+1. Of all the knock-offs in 2011, it's the one which actually has potential.

There are applications that find it useful to have more than one type of asset / more than one currency / more than one type of coin.

For example, it can be useful to have something to deposit or escrow or lien as "collateral" and something to borrow.

It seems sometimes to make more sense that the thing that serves as collateral be a different asset / currency / thing than the thing that one borrows "against" that collateral.

Thus for example General Credit Corporation finds it makes sense to them to hold someone's bitcoins as collateral and transmit to them litecoins or ixcoins or i0coins or devcoins or groupcoins or coiledcoins or bbqcoins or whatever the heck other than bitcoins as the transfer medium by which the borrower will cause the buying power borrowed to manifest itself at the location where they want to use that buying power.

It seems to them to make less sense to hold bitcoins as collateral then transmit bitcoins to the borrower as the transmission method the borrower will use to move the borrowed buying-power to the location where it is to be applied.

For example consider someone who wants to borrow buying-power to buy a rice-paddy to grow rice. Even if General Credit Corp loans them buying power denominated in bitcoins it can make more sense to them to transmit that buying-power to, say, Cambodia or wherever the rice paddy is to be bought in the form of something other than bitcoins than to transmit bitcoins, due to their seeing it as useful to not transmit the collateral they are holding (bitcoins belonging to the person thinking of buying a rice paddy) but, rather, to transmit buying-power per se, unclothed in the stuff of which the held collateral consists.

So they for example might hold 1000 bitcoins as collateral, and transmit $10,000 worth of some other kind of coin, which the borrower will then sell on an exchange to obtain whatever the seller of the paddy actually wants in return for their paddy...

This approach could obviate the perceived need to have the infrastructure in place to actually implement a lien against the paddy, which could require soliders or lawyers or gosh knows what and possibly also present some potential threat to the anonymity of the loaner.

-MarkM-

Sorry if I didn't fully understand the scenario in detail, especially I didn't understand the "need" to change denotation.
However, am I correct that you describe a "mixing service", where the escrow takes your bitcoins and uses existing funds in another cryptocurrency to facilitate the trade? This has the obvious advantage that the coins cannot be traces directly (only inferred through statistical analysis). And if that mixing service only operates on cryptocurrencies it can exist outside of any jurisdiction, correct?

It has nothing to do with mixing, it has to do with holding collateral when making a loan.

If you put your car up as collateral, it does not make much sense for me to ship you your car as the form in which I transmit to you the buying-power you are borrowing.

On the contrary, I want your car safe and sound in my pound so I can sell if if you fail to pay back the loan, so I use something else as the medium of transmission when I transmit to you the buying-power that you are using your car as collateral to borrow.

Okay maybe a car is a confusing example.

How about a bar of gold.

You want to borrow some buying-power to buy something, I don't care what, could be anything.

You give me your bar of gold to hold as collateral, to sell it to make good if you fail to pay back the loan.

It makes no sense for me to hand you (the or any) gold to go buy what you wanted to buy, as gold is what I am holding as collateral.

Instead it makes sense for me to hand you a what you wanted token, or a bunch of fiat, or some cryptocoins, or basically anything other than gold.

(And preferably something that does not go up in value as fast as gold does, aka goes down in value faster than gold does, aka goes down in value as compared to / relative to gold.)

In order to be able to do that kind of thing with all the convenience of cryptocurrencies, I need there to exist at least two, and preferably more in case of only two their going up or down in relative value qualities do not happen to match my needs.

(Basically I need some that go up or down in value at different rates than others.)

-MarkM-

I think I get it. However, the whole scenario only makes sense if there is a difference in liquidity or fungibility between the collateral and the stuff provided in the loan. correct?
If both the loan and the collateral have the same level of liquidity or fungibility in the context important to me, the whole scenario doesn't make sense?

Liquidity and fungability aren't the key I don't think.

To me it seems the key is, collateral should hold value or maybe even tend to go up in value, whereas transmission method maybe doesnt even matter much its volatility as it will very very soon be converted into what the borrower wants to purchase with the borrowed buying-power. So the transmission medium needs to be liquid and the collateral should be good at retaining or increasing value.

-MarkM-

+1. I guess that sums it up.

how many cards have you got?

and what model's

Around 75 GPU. I have those models:
5770, 5830, 5850, 5870, 5970, 6770, 6950

and how many motherboard's do you have?

and how many power supply?

and what was your cost for all the hardware you bought

cooling and power... how do you do it? I coudln't imagine finding a way to deal with the heat from THAT many GPU's.

Live in a cold  climate and use it to heat your home.

Bingo! Summer is seriously a pain, from May to August, I had a total of 22 000 BTU of air conditioner running in my mining local to be able to survive the summer. But the rest of the year, I simply use a couple of fans to move air around and I also use the central ventilation of the house to help heat the house. It's 12C outside right now, it's pretty damn easy for me to deal with the heat. In winter, when the temperature is around -20C, mining is like a gift from heaven.


I have a total of 21 rigs, so 21 boards and 21 power supplies. The cost is kept confidential.

It's a mystery to me why miners with this much power aren't solo mining. 

It's for testing purposes. I'm going to solo mine soon, but it's easier to detect problems with a pool.

Why do you think it is that big of an issue to not be solo mining?

Espescially with a pool where it is only 2-3% fee, I find the ability to easily track online the stats of the work and to more easily know that everything is working correctly worth the price of admission.

Unless there are benefits above and beyond just the fee % savings?

brunic, I would recommend you change to solo mining with that much hashing power.  i did with my rig and i'm very happy with it. with your hash rate you should get a block in less than an hour, and no pool stales so you get about 5% more litecoins.

the guide is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83371.0

Basically all you have to do is install litecoin on each rig and then point the miner at the localhost

I see you've disappeared from pool-x  ;D

Yeah, like I said, I was there for testing purposes  ;D

Pool is useful to estimate the total hashpower, and I needed it to be able to planned the next month budget ;)

You still solo mining Brunic?

Seems we got some big players coming to LTC.

I'm still solo mining, it's pretty fun solving blocks  ;D

And yeah, I've saw that the network has jumped from 310 MH to 450 MH. I think it's really positive, Litecoin is gaining in credibility.  :)

It hit over 500mh/s earlier for a good 30 minutes or so.

Awesome. Seems to be growing over time.

Solidcoin forever!!





jk d:

Good one lol...made me laugh   :D

Solid:facepalm:Coin

Yeah! Yeah! Microcash :o

FTFY

RFTFY

Really Fixed That For You  ;)

Damn lol

Don't you guys know microcash will come out last november and will revolutionize the world?

We going back in time? :D

That shit is hilarious! What a bunch of Solidcoin losers!