Bitcoin Forum

Hello!

I came across this thread while looking for coin loans, which is why my account is less than a day old (can provide proof of ID).  At any rate, my team is in need of quite a robust loan -- 65 BTC -- in order to begin work on a specialized group-source collaborative Mining program project at my university.  We're a team of 12 computer science students who have been active in bitcoin mining and trading from the early days.  Our goal is to "cannibalize" the framework of one of the larger mining programs and redesign the internals to streamline and enhance the end-user experience, which we hope will generate a greater interest in mining.  

We've calculated our predicted expenses and it comes to about $850 for the hardware alone; we're going out-of-pocket for everything else.  If the project goes as expected, we plan on introducing the software around late March of this year and monetizing it to 1. reimburse our potential financiers :) and 2. to fund the operation (with bux fixes, support, updates) and projects further down the road.

Now to the nuts and bolts.  We know $850 is a $&!#-ton of money, but that's low-end for the project.  We need a loan of 65-70 BTC to finance our project, so we can begin working right away.  We can work out the terms over private message, and we'll look at both loan and investment offers to keep things moving. Even a donation would be incredibly appreciated!  Transparency in communication is vital in this process, so please feel free to ask us anything about our plans in the space below.  We appreaciate you taking the time!

Cheers,

Jake G.
The TurMine Accelerated Mining Project

:D
TurMine Project Wallet Address:
1FsQyzHUGPgbtJ9sxGwS6759jZ9uiASVKw

I may be interested in this. Can you PM me with your .edu email address that's tied to a social media account or two? Thanks!

If you have being mining and trading BTC from the early dates, what are your accounts?

Account name on Mt.Gox is 'sblman78'. I started trading with Bitcoin to get some experience with trading on the real stock exchanges and forex, which is what I've been doing since. After I left Bitcoin trading, I got into mining and coding.  As a result, I haven't used Gox in a while, but my first trade was on 8/17/2011. Because Mt.Gox hosts this forum, I may have an account from way back that would corroborate my involvement in Bitcoin. I'll do some digging and see if I can find it. 

If i'm missing anything, call me out on it!

Can I ask what hardware you deem necessary (for $850) to reprogram mining pool code?

We were planning on purchasing 2 base-level laptops (Acer, Toshiba, or comparable) to use as dedicated machines for the project.  They'll be used for reprogramming, testing, quality assurance, and then end-user testing when the project reaches its final stages.  Because our team could potentially (hopefully!) profit off this project, we're barred from using the lab computers.

At the end of the project, we'll probably sell them back.  We have a suitable mining rig for implementation, and then any expenses following the project timeframe will be paid for by taking low-percentage cuts from blocks generated by users of the TurMine program.

Makes sense, thanks!

UPDATE:

The TurMine Accelerated Mining Project is now on Facebook! If you get a second, go and check it out and give us a 'like' :)
We'll keep posting daily updates on the current project status all the way into product launch. 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Turmine-Acclerated-Mining/520460727976155?fref=ts (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Turmine-Acclerated-Mining/520460727976155?fref=ts)

We're still in desperate need of a loan/investors, so if you or anyone you know can help us out, we would be EXTREMELY appreciative.  We're willing to provide proof of ID, social networking sites, we can even do a Skype conference to go over numbers if need be.

Thanks!!!

- The TurMine Team

I may be interested, but I am on my way out for the weekend. Can we arrange a time to talk on Monday?

For sure! PM'd

What's the minimum investment?  Or does it have to be all from one person?

It definitely doesn't have to be from one person!  We'd like to see many investors/financiers on the books with us, to keep us accountable and to help spread the word about our project and generate interest.  The more connections, the better. 

As far as individual loans go, we'd like to stay above 1 or 2 Bitcoins just to make book keeping easier. If you'd like to talk directly about it, feel free to PM me.

UPDATE:

The response and interest from this board have been great, and we've managed to get a good start on our funding.

We're still looking for lenders and investors!

Our team has a lab meeting tomorrow and then we begin development.  We're pretty close to hitting our goal, so please consider this opportunity to make some extra money and help support a game-changing new product in the Bitcoin community!

- The TurMine Accelerated Mining Team

From his FB page, doesn't look like he wants to reprogram a mining pool - he wants to reprogram a mining client.

Mining clients will become extinct when the ASICs come out.


Makes me wonder why the OP didn't correct the "mining pool" comment when he replied, and if he knows he is programming soon-to-be-useless software.

ASICs don't use mining clients? This is a serious question, I know very little about mining.

I didn't correct the "pool" comment because I didn't notice it--like you said, it's not a pool but rather a mining client. 

The client also isn't intended for those with ASICs.  It's designed for 1. users with little knowledge of Bitcoin who want to see what mining is about and 2. individuals with higher-end equipment who don't want to jump on the ASICs train right away, or at all.  Also included is the casual miner, who likely would have a gaming computer with nicer graphics cards to put to use.

Our primary goal is to create a program that gets beginners interested and attracts those miners not using ASICs, and delivers that mining experience with enhanced power and ease of use. 

I don't think you understand.  When the ASICs come out, no one will be running GPU miners anymore, since they will have a very very small fraction of the mining power they have today.  There will be no difference between your mining program, and a program designed to destroy video cards.   

Why would you and a team waste time programming this?   

Someone might run a GPU miner after ASICs arrive for a variety of reasons:
- Experiment with mining, if they haven't done so before, prior to dropping at least $150 on a dedicated miner
- Test out the stability of a GPU as part of a variety of tests
- Assure connectivity to a variety of pools
- Benchmarking purposes (benchmarking various mining clients)
- Mining coins with electricity they do not pay for and/or hardware they don't own
- Akin to playing the lottery with a 25 BTC prize

So, I completely disagree that no one will be running GPU miners anymore.  That's just a false statement.  Heck, I could run my GPU for 5 minutes after ASICs arrive to prove you wrong just like that.  You could say that very few will be running GPU miners anymore, which will most assuredly be true, but saying no one will is just plain wrong.

Now then, as far as monetizing such a client, I don't see it as possible to regain the $850 from casual GPU miners and experimenters only.  ASIC support will have to be included in the software, and if it is truly a step above everything else that is available for free, it should be cake to monetize at that point.  What ASIC miner WOULDN'T pay, say, $10 to gain an extra 2% efficiency?  At least initially, when difficulty is still relatively low?

And I am curious, why would a mining client be obsolete once ASICs arrive?  I didn't understand that statement.  Mining clients will be needed regardless of what hardware is being used to mine.

While our over-arching goal is to provide the mining program to the Bitcoin community... we're also trying to get an A here.  We're programming students and this is one of our larger projects, part of which is to procure funding. 

Because of this requirement, we figured we'd get a loan from the Bitcoin community, buy some computers to use and return, and then pay it back with a little on top. I hope by now no one thinks we're trying to rip anyone off.  We just want to get the ball rolling so we can develop the product, pay back our loans, and release the program.

And while it is all for a grade, we're really serious and dedicated to what we've decided to pursue.  Bitcoin and digital currencies in general are often severely underrepresented in computer science curriculums, so we're trying to publicize, educate, and release a great piece of software.  Our target market isn't composed of Bitcoin gurus like yourself; rather, we're aimed at those individuals who, for whatever reason, prefer to use a mining client over an ASIC. 

You're certainly raising valid points, but our goals are simple and clean and we hope other people see that as well.

The miner program doesn't contribute that much of a difference.  With GPU mining it is important to make a distinction between the mining client (minimal impact on performance) and the OpenCL kernel.  The days of 2% gains in the OpenCL kernel are long gone.   The code has been highly optimized and IIRC the most recent major change was something on the order of 0.1% performance increase.  The client itself has never been the performance bottleneck. 

With ASICs (and FPGA) the OpenCL kernel is replaced by the chip itself.  The client is just about management and reporting.   Further I would point out the OP isn't claiming any type of performance increase.

Correct.  We're focusing on end-user experience, which is why we're redeveloping the client, not the OpenCL kernel.  Like i've been saying, our hope is that this program will get beginners/general public more involved in Bitcoin.

Ah, ok.

How do you expect to be able to monetize this program?

We were sitting around the whiteboard last night discussing potential options for monetization, given the parameters and characteristics of the program.  We're trying to take a multi-step approach to it.

1. Ad revenue on the host site and potential sponsorships/partnerships with larger companies.

2. Skimming (1-2-3% of all generated coins)

3. Donations

Our biggest obstacle right now is just getting funded. Paying back the loaned funds is a non-issue because it just involves saving our receipts and returning computers when development ends.  We're not out to try to make millions with this, but we do this we stand to generate a bit of income. We just want to get A's, create the best mining client out there, introduce people to Bitcoin and how it works, and thank those who support us by giving them a little extra something back. As far as i'm concerned, everyone wins.

Why are 12 computer science students raising some funding for two Laptops? Would a build machine (and a collaboration server) not make more sense? If no build is needed , then i do not see the need for even one dedicated laptop. this will probably be a huge organisation mess. ( who keeps it, what happens on it , who had it last time, who installed that virus? ) you guys even have a mining rig,come on.

just program away, you don't need any money... no obstacles here.

It's part of the assignment.  Our team has to solicit and receive funding from an outside party or group of individuals.  We thought approaching the Bitcoin community itself would be a win-win for all involved; funders get interest paid on their loans, and we fulfill the requirement.

We figured using two project-dedicated laptops would be the best route, seeing as we can just return them back to BestBuy at the end of development and redistribute the loaned money (with interest of course!).  It's easy for both parties and extremely low risk; I don't foresee BestBuy going out of business within the next month or two. 

We're trying to highlight the benefits of Bitcoin in our presentation at the end, and receiving individual loans for a group-source project is the best way to really drive home the point that Bitcoin and online currencies in general offer incredible benefits. 

Would you be willing to provide the professors .edu email and name, as well as the course name?  This will confirm your story and make it much more likely someone will lend to you, since they can contact your school if you don't pay the loan back.

We've been divulging that information after speaking with potential investors privately.  We're only 20 Bitcoins short of our goal of 70 at this point.

Can anyone confirm this?

I would be very skeptical at this point.  That is one of the oldest scams in the book.  Claiming you already have X amount of investors and you just need a little more for the final push. 

That will be pretty obvious if no one credible steps forward to confirm they have invested and have an .edu email.

Believe it or not, we no longer need loans. Our low-end goal was 60, but we're sticking at BTC53.282 which is comprised of donations AND micro-loans. 

I'm not entirely sure of what you're skeptical of, but the loans were actually sourced from 3 main funders.  All loans and donations are on the books and will be reported when the program is published.  We also applied for a grant to help fund the project, so we're good to go at this point. 

Development begins Thursday!

I was born at night but not last night.

I don't know what to tell you.  We were just trying to get some funding, not rip anyone off.