Bitcoin Forum

Hi All,

I'm a newbie hobby miner that has been on the forums a couple weeks now.

I decided to get into hobby mining when I started learning about PGP encryption, which lead me to crypto currencies and then here! I had known about BTC for years but did not have the time to get involved. But I got laid off at work so I have time! (there's always an upside haha). I'm a geek but don't work in the tech world so my geek isn't as strong as it used to be. Part of my job is to look at global culture and what trends could possibly influence the future. I think BTC is placed potentially be really important in the future and I want to be a part of that in some small way!

I've found this forum invaluable! and the community is generally awesome.

I'm based in Australia so finding hardware has been a mission but I've picked up an antminer S4 really cheap which is on the way! So learning how to hit the ground running.

I'm planning to start on Kano and CK's pool and try some P2Pool mining in the near future also.

I'm not overly worried about making ROI as I have a cheap rig and free electricity atm. I'm loving the learning experience.

Thanks to everyone who has already helped me! My mind is a sponge atm loving it. If you have any advice I'm always looking to learn more!

Thebonenz :) 

Welcome to the forum.  Wish it didn't take you losing your job to get you here!

But if you have "free" power somehow you are pretty set on mining.  That eliminates a lot of the cost to say the least.  I am not that lucky myself.

Haha thanks it's not that bad hopefully I can pick up some freelance work for the rest of the year then see where next year takes me! But more than happy to accept donations to the cause haha

My flatmates might get pissed at the noise of my beast when it arrives though! :/

Welcome back to the forums.

Welcome to the forum and to the Bitcoin world! We are here to help if you have any problems, questions, etc. And yes, it wouldn't be bad if you could bring us a friend or two of yours into Bitcoin. :)

Good luck!

Good luck with your mining. Are the electric costs pricey there in Australia?

Welcome and happy mining.

Mining bitcoin is not really profitable nowadays, except you have free electric bills or cheap power.
you can see the difficult here: http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency not only bitcoin, you can mining other cryptocurrency too, but the lack of altcoin is easy to manipulate.

best of luck ... your electric bill is key to profiting!

Welcome to the forum mate :) and goodluck to your mining venture.

Welcome! I am happy to see more people jumping into the mining game! Anything to support the network helps!

On the other hand should you have any questions I am more than willing to help if I can and I am sure many others here would love to help as well!

Welcome to the Forum!

Have you done any reading on the Mining board? Here's the link -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=14.0

Good luck with the new hobby.

Yeah I've read everything I thought would be helpful in most of the forums here!

Thanks all for the support!

Wow thats a very inspirational story, yes a mining pool is great, help the bitcoin network, and lower TX fees.

I hope you get many australians joining you, i see you have a big community there!

Hi and welcome to the forum! Glad to see someone with such an interesting story coming to this forum to learn about new trends of the world ;D In my opinion, unless you have unlimited or free power, you shouldn't mine bitcoin. Bitcoin now is the big guys' game though you have free electricity. There are still a lot of coin out there which use the same algo to bitcoin for you to try ;D You can find more and more coins at the alternate currencies forum! Good luck on your journey!

Hello and welcome to the world of Bitcoin. I'm not a good miner and I dont want to give you wrong advice on mining. Here is some other tips you may want to take note of. 1. Faucets is good for transaction fees only - dont expect to earn too much with faucets. 2. Bitcoin is very volatile and so you must check the value everyday. 3. Buy and sell Bitcoin from trusted website only - my favorite one would be OKCoin. 4. Dont gamble your Bitcoin - there is lot of gambling website based around Bitcoin, but, dont ever gamble your Bitcoin. 5. Stay away from HYIP site - "120% return in 99 hours" alike site.

Also, keep up your post quality. With good post quality, you can expect to earn some extra income from signature campaign.

here is a great free online course about bitcoin & mining https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech

it should fill your sponge right up

Haha I just did a coursea course on advertsing through Duke yeah I'll have a look thanks!

Are alt coins worth the time? I thought we were struggling to get BTC mainstream?

In my opinion, I think that Bitcoin is the mainstream but it's kinda old at the moment. Furthermore, mining bitcoins is now nearly impossible for small miners so many developers create themselves a new coin. And yes. Many alternate coins are worth. There are a lot of project which are huge successes, for you to discover ;D I will try to suggest some: Burst for its unique mining method: with HDD, NXT for its forging method to earn (somewhat like Proof of stake (earn interest by opening the wallet for a long time) you can try litecoin - a version of bitcoin but with different algorithm, XDN for its untracable transaction, etherum- new kind of coin  but I dont have time looking into it yet, Spreadcoin for its truly decentralized mining and many more! However not all can be mined with your Antminers some need GPU some need HDD and some need RAM to mine ( forgot what the name of the coin is ;D ). One more thing some coins are just about pump and dump so please look into it carefully before try it

This is exciting and reminds me of the sleepless nights when I first started learning about mining. I am sure we all remember lol. Awesome, have fun, and welcome to the forum. Don't worry about ROI with free electricity. You will surly achieve ROI and then its all profits. Do realize your mining equipment will gobble electricity so, careful not to wear out your welcome on however you are getting the free electricity.

Yes haha I remember digging my way into mining when I first configured my laptop to mine. Hope you have fun with mining and don't worry about it that much, given that you state that you have free electricity and you are mining just for fun. Welcome to the forums, mate!

Thanks for the encouragement all!

I think I'm ready for my S4 when it arrives.

Are my step by step thoughts right?:
1 - back up sd card of s4
2 - Update firmware of s4 from bitmain
3 - Change to latest CGminer version
4 - Get on to a few pools to start mining! - Planning to start on Kano's pool (what other's should I get on or look at?)
5 - I want a GUI since I'm a noob so like the look of Minera! Thoughts?

And then I think that's the basics!?!?

I might use this thread as a blog to document my journey and post pics of progress etc!


What's a signature campaign?

Signature campaign is basically a program which advertisers pays you for your constructive posts on this forum with their signature. This is an effective advertisment as it gains lots of exposure. There is an overview here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0).

Cheers!

no they are worth even less than bitcoin nowadays, they were worth a tons in the past, in the mania altcoin era, started with doge and up to end of 2014

but right now you can probably find 1 good every 1k dead coin, and their profit is not greater than bitcoin...

Do any altcoins have the potential to become more valuable? Like will DNMs move to another coin in the future or something like that?

monero is the only valuable one for now, because it has something that is worth using, the other are clone of it or clone of bitcoin

i also like something like huntercoin, which offer gaming experience, but it seems that they are not attracting many new users

Alright she's arrived!

http://imgur.com/a/AUJ3F

And I'm already hitting walls! lol time to figure shit out. Will update when I have it hashing!

It's seriously too loud for the living room though...

Aaaaaand I just realised I need another program to access by SSH...

Alright we are hashing!

http://imgur.com/rvKGx5z

Pretty cool mate I will get some minning stuff i guess!

Wow 3TH, that's really good hash you got there mate. Keep mining! I know you are a hobbyist miner but try calculating whether you are making profit

Congrats! :)

It had only been up a few minutes so I'm actually running at 2TH.

Where is a basic calculator?

BitcoinWisdom is a good site for market stats and difficulty charts. Here is a link to their calculator:
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator (http://)

Or just google "bitcoin mining profitability calculator" if you don't like the answer that one gives you. ;)

Shit this is telling me that I've only got two weeks until difficulty makes me lose money?

I thought in first post it said "free" power?  Is it free or what is price of electricity?

We just need to know more to be able to anwser the question.

Ahh no it's free so I think I left it 0 or blank maybe that's the problem.

Alright I've been up on Slush's Pool for a few days now and it's going slow! But it's going!

I think everyone has been having trouble recently?

i would remain with CK pool, you can also try your luck there with solo mining, i don't remember if there only this option or it work also like a standard pool

Welcome Yggr. :) Are you mining as well?