Bitcoin Forum

There's a debate and many think Scrypt coins are better than SHA256 but the biggest reasons I see is a lack of belief that ASICS will be affordable.

In reality, ASICS are starting to ship in mass quantities already and by next year anybody will be able to buy an ASIC for $300 which will mine up to 20 times faster than a really good computer today while eating only 1/10th the energy.

In my mind ASICS are here and they're way better than GPU's so why launch a coin which won't be future proof?

If people prefer scrypt then that's fine but I'd like to know how difficult would it be to do a hard fork and turn a scrypt coin into a SHA256 coin if everyone does wanna use an ASIC rig next year?  Is this something that can be done with ease?  TIA

I don't think ASIC's are going to make a huge difference to 95% of the crypto community.

Those other 5% who have heavily invested in GPU farms will be hurt the most but they could either mine Scrypt coins or sell their GPU's and get ASICs.

You should really add to the poll that the poll is what would be the best encryption for a new alt coin.  And not what is the best in existence.  Since your on a Bitcoin forum.  Things are going to be a bit biased towards SHA256 if they think in any way the question is related to Bitcoin vs Litecoin.

Sorry, I thought the debate was about the mining protocol itself and not encryption.  I mean, bitcoin is as secure as can be so why even debate that.

Sorry, I can't alter the question and I had no idea security was even in question here. 

Scrypt is better for emerging coins, definitely, because SHA256 is now in the realm of ASICS.  Getting a new coin going you'll want upstart miners, which probably are more likely GPU miners than the people that load off they're cash on ASICs.  Though, I think new altcoins in general will have a hard time getting out of the gate.

Man, I'm shocked by the responses to the poll, most want scrypt.  

I don't have an ASIC although I ordered some 2 months ago but I badly wanna merge-mine so for me that alone means SHA256.

I expected most to want SHA256 for the same reason.  

I'm very surprised here but hey, if that's what people want I'll do it.  This isn't the right time to be stubborn.

Can somebody tell me if a hard fork is easy to Implement say next year if people all of sudden wanna switch to SHA256?  Hypothetically speaking - would this be hard to do with a scrypt coin?  TIA.

But that's not true if you make it a merge-coin?  People will Simply merge mine it the way they do ixCoin (which would have died had it not been for SHA256 and merge mining) and devcoin and a few others.

So for me that's not a great argument for a scrypt coin.  So far I have not heard why scrypt is a better idea.

To me merged mining is a huge winner but if this can be switched to a SHA256 coin next year in the event people change their minds then I'd be ok with scrypt.

That's a HUGE security issue to take on after a coin starts out ... the basis of the entire blockstack can't be suddenly changed to a new protocol like that ... old transactions will no longer be verifiable, etc.

I'd say it's next to impossible to do.

I see your point with merged-mining - but I am wondering, are you starting an altcoin?

Well what about other coins that did hard forks, including Bitcoin or is it the fact we're switching the encryption model?  

If that's true then I have a problem with this cause ASICS are the future.  In a few years the only way to mine will be via ASICS.  I think Satoshi knew this and he's a smart anonymous guy.

Seriously, you guys want me to launch a coin that may be obsolete in 2-3 years?  You can't merge mine scrypt coins.  What if I'm right and Bitcoin goes to to $1,000 next year - you guys don't want to be able to mine this coin and Bitcoin, plus a few others together?  That would be so much better than mining a single scrypt coin.

I'm hoping to start an alt coin but I want to do something very different.  I want to design it as much as possible with the advantages and preferences going to the miners since nobody has put them first, from what I can tell.  

I'm running these polls to find out what people want and what they care about most.

Odd, some want Cherry Coke and think Justin Bieber is a hot lady.  Weird group of individuals but I still wanna put out a coin to their liking.

ASIC's will be $300.00????   :o

I thought they were thousands...

In my opinion most upstart coins will be obsolete in a few years ... SHA256 for ASICS doesn't equal longevity.  Bitcoin already exists, so unless you are bringing something revolutionary to the table, it will be hard to see a lot of potential in it.  LiteCoin will probably keep its spot in second because it is the first/most used scrypt implementation.  Merge-coins may survive a while because they are mergeable [is that a word?], but they often don't have much value, and aren't traded for anything but bitcoins, adding little to nothing to the value of just mining bitcoin.

Most altcoins are miner driven coins, and scrypt mining is often more profitable than BTC mining, so I think that a coin is often most profitable in scrypt.  Otherwise they aren't very popular at all.

EDIT: Profitability is most important to most miners, and longevity has little or nothing to do with what they care about.  It doesn't matter to most miners if TRC or PPC or LTC or DGC goes bust in a year, they are profitable this second, so miners jump to the most profitable one.

AsimMiner USB miners are down to what?  1BTC or so?  That's plenty under $300 ... Jalapenos are also $274, and about the only thing shipping en masse atm.

EDIT: I may be redefining "en masse" here, but these two are the only things shipping more than a few atm that I know of. >_>

ASICs are a problem because it costs a lot of money to sustain a GPU mining farm (enough to somewhat offset the profits made from them), whereas it does not cost a lot of money to sustain an ASIC farm. The problem is 99% of the people who spend these coins do not have the time or patience to create an ASIC operation in their garage. By consolidating the creation process you are only alienating people who wish to support it without having to deal with a company like Butterfly Labs. I think everyone can agree that AMD is a respectable company that is not out to scam people. ASIC providers? Not so much

GPUs have other uses besides mining, bitcoin ASICS do not. This allows people who are interested in computer hardware but do not know about cryptocoins (aka, huge amount of people) to be able to discover and enter the foray out of their own interest, not because a bunch of short-sighted shysters found a way to create a temporary separation of power that forced people to conform to their ways or get out.

considering we are talking about a currency that is all about having built in mechanisms to counteract possible exploitation, ASICs certainly spit right in the face of that.

Except you haven't a clue as to how to do this and are relying on polls to find answers rather than actually working on researching this yourself. You are the laziest and probably least competent person to ever try making a shitclone. But kudos for trying to come up with super original ideas like "paying myself 1%" and such, I am positive this will be a keeper.

This thread makes me wonder if there really is a surplus of idiots in the world. "What's best, chocolate or strawberry?"..

Just stop you absolute moron.

It's not about CPU vs. GPU vs. ASIC vs. ??

Are people really so fucking clueless that they don't understand that with value comes innovation. If SCRYPT would have been the algorithm to become "mainstream" first we would already have optimized SCRYPT ASIC. It's all about the market driving research and innovation.

FUCK people are just dumb.

In 1 year there will (if the altcoin muppetry keeps up) be SCRYPT miners and some moron will ask " what's best: SCRYPT OR "next algorithm without a turn key game changer""

Fucking humans!

No, you can buy a 5GH ASIC miner from BFL right now for $300.  And 5GH is 15 Times faster than a similarly priced ATI Radeon 7870 while consuming 50 watts compared to closer to 200 watts.  

Only problem now is they're taking about 3-4 months to ship if you order today but by next year they will definitely be doing much higher production.  The slow hard part is over - they spent the last 12 months designing the ASIC.  Now it's shipping in volumes.

And there's other ASICS companies coming online and like all tech, imagine ASIC 2.0 and 3.0, they will get much faster and much more efficient while getting cheaper.

Anyone thinking they'll make any money with GPU's by next year is nuts.  

And this is part of what will bring in the masses - cheap and effective ASICS costing 1/8th the price of a good computer like the one I bought for mining.

That's why I think SHA256 is the way to go cause you'll be able to mine and get your coin mined via a merged pool or a mergeCoin along with 10+ other coins.  Cause at that point there won't be any money left in mining 1 coin so people will find ways to mine more and more coins together but if your coin is scrypt it won't be invited to the party so scrypt coins will be fringe coins and that's a very bad thing for valuation. You want a coins as mainstream as possible.  

Satoshi wasn't a fool - SHA256 is the way to go for the future.

how do you figure?

Ok I hear you but those people can mine SHA256 with their GPU rigs so they're not getting shut out and they'll be able to merge mine as well which can be huge once they launch a merge coin.

While if you go scrypt you are cutting out everyone who does buy and ASIC and that's gonna be millions of people.  An ASIC can be had now for $300 and by next year it will be cheaper and better (And available) so many more new entrants will buy an ASIC rather than a computer or in addition to their computer.

I don't see how excluding the future - millions of ASIC miners from your coin can be good for that Coin's value.  I think this is shortsighted mentality thinking only about what I can mine for myself right now rather than what's best for me for the longer run.

You can program an ASIC to do any one thing.  Right now they hunt Bitcoins but I think they can be fooled into merge mining other coins.

I hate to break it to you Vlad, but in a world of ASIC miners (Future-proofing you claim) at a time when you can purchase a 50 G Hash/s ASIC miner for $300, the difficulty will be so high on every decent SHA256 based coin, that you will still be looking at making pennies a day.  Meanwhile the guys sitting on their 500 T hash farms will continue to pile in the profits from mining.  The algorithm you choose isn't going to change this.

The reason scrypt is better for a start me up alt coin is the fact that it is far more secure, especially when most big miners will be in the big coins, and not in your little alt coin.  You will be bound to attract smaller GPU based miners first until you can prove the coin to be worth something.  During that time, anyone that wants to watch your coin crumble will be able to do it with relative ease with a handful of ASIC's at their disposal.  Or possibly even 1.  

For you, sure you think "who cares, I didn't but any money into it" but in order to even get the coin off the ground, people (miners) need to put their money (electricity and time) into mining you coin.  Then people have to put money into your coin to give it worth.  If you as a developer only see the coin as your personal playground, and who cares if I cause everyone to loose their money ect from it, you shouldn't be developing a coin to begin with.  

    

No they can't.  LOL.  The AS part of the name "Application specific " says it all. 

I would be losing time and money as well. 

Don't you think merge mining will mitigate the difficulty issue cause I agree, the difficulty will skyrocket.

And I don't want a coin to be a forever niche player in the scrypt underworld - I'd rather take my chances.  And people aren't gonna lose their money on my coin - nobody buy a rig just for ixCoin, they buy them for mining and they mine the most profitable things out there.

So if this doesn't work out I'm really the only one losing out, both, Time and money.

But it seems everyone wants scrypt so that's it.  I guess there could always be a re-launch, like a separate coin if it ever comes to that.  I mean, I can easily see a SHA256 version of Litecoin.  People will follow the namebrand regardless of which encryption it uses. 

I didn't mean me or you reprogram an ASIC..  I meant you can design an ASIC from the ground up to do any one thing well.  If LTC gets to $50 and demand goes nuts they'll build Scrypt ASICS, but those will only do that one thing they were programmed to do and not also go after SHA256 coins.

That's what I meant.

Edit:

I see what you meant.  I thought I saw guys using BFL rigs to merge mine Bitcoin and one other coin on Bitminter.  I'd have to double check.  

Cryptocurrencies will forever be a niche so long as they remain anonymous. But that is the very thing that created the niche

So either be good at being a niche, or fall on your face trying to become what they set out to combat.

Can't have it both ways

Cryptography not encryption.  Neither BTC or LTC use encryption in the protocol.  Both use AES to encrypt client files.

I'm certain Bitcoin will get its own ETF soon and if that happens its gonna blow the roof off alt coins.

The bankers will come in - big money, pro developers and then the ASIC buying craze will happen and everyone you know will be a miner.

I expect this to really kick in high gear sometime next year.  It's gonna happen very fast and furious.  Lots of alt coins will go very high very fast.  Lots of money to be made for anyone storing up alt coins now.

Bitcoin was just the beginning and that ETF will probably make Bitcoin's price blow past $1,000 and it will drag most of the other alt coins with it.

So can you do a hard fork then in the future to turn say a Scrypt coin into a SHA256 coin?  Thanks.

You can do a hard fork to do anything in the future. 
You could fork Bitcoin so the mining reward goes up to 50,000 BTC per block.
You could fork Bitcoin so that transactions are irreversible.
You could fork Bitcoin so early adopter coins which haven't been spent are erased.
You could fork Bitcoin so that the UN has complete oversight of address allocation and the ability to block transactions, seize funds, and identify users.

Technically these are trivial changes to the codebase.  However it is very likely 99.9999% of people will never use your fork.  It is unlikely that any crypto-currency will have a hard fork on a fundamental aspect.  You will never get the consensus necessary for it to be effective.

On Bitminter as on many other pools it is possible to merge mine Namecoins together with BTC.

Besides, you can mine any SHA-256 coin with current ASICs.

Ok, you think that and I'll think what I think. Why pay 1,000 dollars for something with no face or unique tangible backing to it besides highly illegal and completely anonymous marketplaces?

A Bitcoin ETF is the beginning of the end of the BTC as we know it, and will only quicken the rate of people switching to alt coins.

Wake the fuck up and stop thinking with your wallet, which is being dominated by the thought of how to gain more fiat currency. You are becoming what you hate

Oh please, this guy has been a broke joke trying to make a payday from the start under the guise of "hay I'm honest, trust me".

Thanks a lot.  The part about NATO is interesting cause I think the govt will drool over the potential of digital money and what better way to implement your own than to hijack the most popular one (in the name of national security, of course).

Are you a programmer by the way or can you code?  I really need to ask a few questions to see if what I want is doable and how difficult it would be but the 2 guys helping launch coins aren't responding.  

And I'm worried if this is a good idea someone will steal it before I do it but you seem like a reputable guy but I don't know if you're a programmer or not.  TIA

Man, that's awesome news.  See, this is the biggest reason to go SHA256 - to have your coin merge mined with other coins.

I knew you could merge mine with a BFL ASIC but I thought you could only mine BTC as far as single coins go.  Where did you see you can mine any SHA256 coin with an ASIC, I even talked to josh at BFL and be said you can only mine Bitcoin so I was thrilled when I saw people successfully merge mining other coins WITH bitcoin.

Define large.  Is 128KB (yes kilobytes not Megabytes or Gigabytes) large?  You are aware the Scrypt memory parameters chosen are far below what is recommended for low security real time use by the Scrypt designer.   It is roughly 1/100th as memory hard as recommended for low security applications and about 1/8000th as memory hard as what is recommended for high security applications.

Man, that's such a good point.  This sucks.  Maybe I should just put it out here and that's that.  If its good its gonna get copied anyway, but I would like to be first to offer it.

Ahahhahahaaa.  You know I wanted to correct him too but after seeing how he was cursing at people I didn't bother but you're right.  They can build ASICS but SHA256 has an advantage.

I have to presume Satoshi thought or this stuff cause ASICS have been around a long time.  Another reason I like SHA256 over scrypt - besides merge mining many coins together it feels good staying on the path build by the genius who put together bitcoin.  

yeah it feels good hoping Bitcoin makes its way to the largest collection of financial institutions in the world

You can tell the people who are all about Bitcoin with money in mind, and those who actually use their minds

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic.

Bitcoin getting an ETF will definitely change everything but it will be a boon for all alt coins.

In the long run, like anything good - politicians and bankers will take over and destroy all that is good, and bitcoin is no different.

I laugh when I hear bitcoin millionaires talk about how bitcoin is private and the banks and the govt can't track you and watch you, etc.

That's laughable - they're all just waiting to really catch on with the masses before they come in and hijack the most popular one and kill or cripple the rest, in the name of national security.

Digital money would give the government and banks absolutely and total control over the masses with zero privacy left.  That is a guarantee and that's actually what drew me to alt coins cause I know they won't be allowed to fail.

Those pros in the media and wallstreet who laugh at bitcoin getting an ETF license and say it's not possible are truly clueless.

stereotypical remaining Bitcoin supporters at this point in time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KrNpxODiDA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KrNpxODiDA)

I think you guys know how Denzell winds up in the end

Aahahhahaaaaa.  Great movie.


That's so funny.  That's the exact clip I imagined the second you said Denzel.

Here's some advice for you Vlad.  Since your semi broke, and don't seem to have the basics down yet.

You aren't the developer.  Satoshi is/was the developer.  If you make an alt coin you are doing so because Satoshi gave the code out for free to anyone that wanted to make a few changes to it (Hense why it isn't costing you $500,000 to launch an alt coin).  Everything here is open source.   You are surrounded here by programmers and people who want to change the world.  Most aren't doing it for the money.  Keeping your ideas to yourself, and paying a programmer upwards of $10,000 for each groundbreaking change isn't going to net you anything, since all the code you paid $10,000 for is free for everyone that wants to use it right after you put it out there.  If you do have groundbreaking ideas, it is probably best for a person with no programming skills and not a lot of money to release them to the public now.  Someone may write the code for you for free, or when you finally get ahold of someone to make a coin for you, you can get them to copy that part of the code for your coin as well.

You keep claiming you want to make a coin for the miners.  But 99% of the alt coins being released are made for the miners, as 100% of the coins minted  are released to the miners.  In your coin you are always trying to have the miners pay you a "tax" for being the one to "develop" the Miners coin.

Before you think ASIC's are the way of the future, and that when Bitcoin becomes popular everyone and their dog will have a Miner.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  Only the tech nerd types will be wanting to continue mining.  As more people get into mining with ASIC's the less and less money they make with them.  Only a certain amount of coins gets released, and that number halves every so often.  I really hope the future doesn't involve 2 billion people fighting with 5 Thash/s machines for 5 Bitcoins.  Lol, it's not hard to see even at 300W, everyone will be losing money with that one.  The way you make money is to buy into the product, not the mining aspect of it.  Not sure if you realize it, but even a 50 G Hash/s ASIC miner, if the difficulty went to only 2 billion would only make $0.03 a day after power at $0.14/KWh.  And 2 billion difficulty will happen if probably less than 50,000 people all bought a 50 GHash miner.  Even if everyone was mining on 50 T hash/s machines, the amount of coins distributed to all the people mining would still be the exact same payout as if everyone went back to CPU's and mined at 5 khash/s

And yes ASIC's can mine any sha256 based currency.  What they can't do is mine Scrypt.  And the programming behind scrypt was designed to make it quite expensive of an endeavor to create a scrypt ASIC miner.  Not to say that day won't happen.  But if Bitcoin needed to go above say $50 before it became profitable to start creating it, Litecoin would probably have to be sitting near $250 before someone figured it was time to pour a few million into developing a Scrypt based ASIC miner.  

But again.  It's your coin.  Don't rely on polls to tell you what coin you should have copied, since I can see you have your heart set on SHA256 no matter what the polls say.  You have to many other things going against you that really I don't think this aspect will be what sinks you.

Thanks for your input.

First let me clear about SHA256, in no way did I even think anyone would compare my coin to bitcoin, that's silly.  Maybe ixCoin since that was a total clone, but not my coin as my coin would be quite different, I hope.

The biggest reason for SHA256 for me is to give the ability to merge mine it.  I watched ixCoin being abandoned and yet it didn't die and that impressed me cause it should have died so I have been buying ixCoins ever since cause I think there's something there and I think people and bankers alike will soon compare it to Bitcoin. I mean, even the developer's name is a derivative of Satoshi.  

The reason ixCoin survived was cause of merge mining.  Merge mining is gonna get bigger and bigger and it's a sure thing to help any coin looking to get popular and build a strong network.  Without SHA256 there is no merge mining.  

My second reason for SHA256 is making it future proof and this is where we disagree.  I see a huge wave of awareness coming as soon as Bitcoin gets its own ETF.  I watched it happen with the Internet funds in the early 90's.  At first everyone was laughing and when those funds made mad money there was a rush to copy and make more big Internet funds.

Wallstreet will look to copy bitcoin so I think they'll choose ixCoin.  

At any rate, there will be a huge boom coming (next year) in awareness and with cheap ASIC miners the masses will get in on it.  I see it as foolish to design a coin which will not meet the needs of millions of ASIC miners in the very near future 12-24 months.  

These are my legit reasons - absolutely nothing to do with confusing newbies.

As for just giving out my ideas, I know this is open source which is why I don't care if anyone uses anything i can think of but since I think it's a good and original idea I wanna wait in case I launch my own coin.  I'll know in a matter of days and if not then I'll give the idea away in case it is a good one.

But hey, I thought routing 25% of the coins back to the miners was a great idea and it wasn't so who know, this feature I'm thinking of may be seen as a joke.  But I'm glad we had some position and informative conversations on these new threads and polls.  And the polls did help me a lot - I gave up on the idea of launching CatholicCoin and OrphanCoin due to the polls.  Helpful indeed.  But I haven't heard any solid arguments for scrypt - just mostly fear of ASICS and that's not a good reason cause ASICS are the future and the future is less than 1 year away.

Just watch bitcoin get the ETF license and then we'll talk cause nobody thinks they'll get it. Not the pros and experts anyway.  That's gonna change everything overnight like it did for the dot com era.  Buy and store as many alt coins as you can cause it's coming.  Good luck.

The reason and the only reason not to choose SHA256 is because of ASIC's yes.  But not the fear of them coming.

The reason is.  Right now ASIC's are worth a pretty penny, and Bitcoin is struggling.  Everyone is going to be focusing on getting their money's worth with their miner which means they won't be mining a coin worth a penny or 2.  So when you launch you will only be attracting GPU miners that are interested in the next new coin.  And it will be that case for quite some time until after you can generate some value into your coin.  During that time, you may be looking at having 10-20 Ghash/s of hashing away on your network.  It's not hard to see that anyone that has just received their 50 GHash/s BFL ASIC miner can easily 51% attack your coin.  Just to say they did it.  This is where the security risk is when launching a new coin based on SHA256.  If on the other hand you had your 10-20 MHash/s scrypt coin going.  It will take someone with a decent sized GPU farm to pull it off.  It would essentially be a guy with that $20,000 rig you liked the photo of his equipment.  There are a lot less guys like that then there are guys receiving their BFL shipment (Well that can still be debated  LOL ) And that is where the security in Scrypt lies for newly launched coins.  It takes fairly dedicated equipment to pull it off, and not a rogue guy having fun.

If your coin survives it's infancy, and someone actually decides to write to code to merge mine your coin along side Bitcoin (which would be a longshot), or you get a few ASIC's mining for you, then suddenly your security problems are no worse then they were if you were on a scrypt coin.  Here is a promise though.  The Scrypt coins will always be around, and GPU miners will always exist.  Heck a few of the new coins are going back to the basics and only allowing CPU processing.  The purpose of Hashing in the first place is to spread the power over as many people as possible.  Video cards will always have a purpose outside mining, and Scrypt based coins like Litecoin won't be flipping over to SHA256.

I'd probably like to point out that if you're trying to do this for profit, it's going to be a pump and dump scheme. That's all there is to it. Treating it like a playground, a game if you will (because that's what it is to be honest), will deter the larger players and encourage the very smaller players. Much like a penny arcade where people are just enjoying themselves compared to that big ass casino down the road where everyone is trying to game the system. Once profit comes into it, you lose your objectiveness as money is a bit different.

Now. Scrypt is apparently somewhat more difficult to break by big miners, this is a protection to smaller miners who aren't going to be fussed about any kind of multi-mining to begin with at least for the first year or so. It's quite possible that you could start up another alt-coin, a sister coin that you could do merge mining with but that's apparently the only advantage of Sha-256d. Basically, by going with Sha-256d you are saying that you don't have any faith in your own currency and by going with Scrypt you are supporting smaller miners.

Ok, now we're making progress.  I finally got a clear answer.

I didn't know what you meant by scrypt has better security.  You were talking about the ease of 51% attacks on SHA256.  On that regard I don't care, I truly want to let the market decide:  make or break this coin.  I think that will be a true test.

And of course a person can have a great coin and some idiot kills it cause he's got 5 Tera Hash ASIC rigs and like you said, not cause the coin sucks but just because he can.  That's my only worry but I still want to see if this coin can pass such a test as it would say a lot to me.

Then the code writing - it would help so much if I knew more cause I hear different things all the time. I thought to make a coin so it can be merge mined was fairly simple if you think of it from the get-go, which I am.  Cause without the possibility of merge mining it doesn't make much sense to do SHA256.  That was the biggest reason.

So I need to ask some programmers - how difficult is it to make a new SHA256 coin so that it can be merge mined with the likes of Bitcoin.  I mean, I imagine 95% of the code is copy and paste, I don't see what would require so much work for a merge mine feature but then again, I was saying SHAW instead of SHA until some guy corrected me today so that's how much I know.

If a programmer can chime in I would appreciate it cause the best profits are in mining multiple coins at once.  TIA!

@zas,

I have faith in this coin otherwise why would I launch it with a 3 day warning and on SHA256 where it can get killed?

Why would I want to avoid SHA256 if you yourself are saying the price of the coin will go considerably higher than scrypt?   You're saying I'll lose my objectivity and become corrupt and dump everything and ruin the coin, right?  What am I gonna dump, there's no premine and the 1% I'd get would be peanuts compared to the whole market.

And I have a bit more control than that. If I was doing this for profits first I Would have gone with my CatholicCoin idea cause I personally believed that coin would have brought in a large stable Christian user base. 

So far I have altered this coin launch per the wishes of the miners and the alt community cause I want to avoid another crap coin but I have to tell you, this SHA256 vs Scrypt part is hard for me to let go cause it makes so much more sense to do SHA256.  And I disagree, it shows I have a lot of confidence in the coin as it means I think it will survive a very likely 51% attack.


I get the feeling most people voting for scrypt are doing so simply out of personal interest - it's easier to mine a scrypt coin if you're a small miner but that's because most people don't realize how cheap and available ASICS will be in the coming year so they're just misinformed and acting out of fear.  I'm a small guy and I'm buying what ASICS I can cause I see huge money in merged mining.

Not the $1.20 per day I was clearing with a new dual 7850 GPU rig.  For that money you can get nearly a 40GH BFL ASIC and make 10-20 times more money even with a way higher difficulty by focusing on merged mining.  It looks like the majority of miners aren't seeing this possibility or maybe they don't want to risk buying ASICS.

I've been very outspoken on here, there's gonna me a lot of guys gunning for any coin I launch. 

So I say it all rides on what a programmer says about how hard or easy it would be to make a new SHA256 coin so it can merge mine. If it's easy then it's a done deal but if not then i'll probably go with Scrypt cause if rather spend my money on real features.

And I'm not seeing this as a playground but a Serious endeavor.  That's why I'm asking all these questions and running all these polls.  I really want to release a serious and respectable coin so I don't care about the short term profits - long term is where things get interesting and more rewarding for everyone.

Hey how about this?

What rule says I need to be stuck on one or the other?  Why can't I launch a SHA256 coin and the same exact coin on Scrypt.  I mean its a total cut and paste job for the most part so I can probably get a break on the programming for the second coin.

I mean, if you saw a dual Litecoin launch wouldn't you say, oh cool, I can mine that later when I get an ASIC but for now I'll mine the Scrypt version.  Why not?  It's just more money for the launch but if they survive each will be supported by their respective mining community - SHA256 vs Scrypt.

And what a wonderful experiment - this would answer a lot of unknowns and a lot of questions for future coin launches and you get to see how each one performs by comparison since everything is equal except the cryptography.

That's the best way and I think a lot of debs would be curious to see what happens and which version stays on top or succeeds more and many may tweak their future launches based on this experiment.

Now I need to find out how much extra a programmer would charge for a dual launch.  This way everyone is happy, a true miner's coin.

Nuggets 1.0 and Nuggets 2.0....lol

Vlad, the miners want scrypt apparently. (I voted undecided and unfortunately I can't change my vote) and Wolf has a point two different block chains mean two different coins. The market would choose the Scrypt coin and dump the Sha because they see it (I see it) as a coin that's likely be around for a while. The best long term coins offer low yet consistent reward.

Justin Bieber got more votes than SHA256. That was the reason for that question.

Yeah, it's pretty clear, most people aren't ready for ASIC mining or merge mining.  And since this coin is designed for miners then scrypt it is.  And that's final.  If this works out I can always launch an even better coin for SHA256. 

Thanks for all your inputs.  It was hard letting go of the merged mining idea.  I just assumed most people were already doing it or in the process of buying ASICS. Maybe in a year or two.

Perhaps most people are. I'm not, I simply just want to be able to take part, nothing more nothing less. It's of my opinion that mining should be for everyone not just the few with high spec computers.

I agree, i'm part of the small miner group.  That's why I wanna do a miner's coin.

I got so frustrated with my first mining rig which cost $1,700 which barely mined enough to pay the electricity (LTC POOL mining) that I took it back to Fry's and lost $300 on the deal.

I wanna help change that experience.  I want mining to be a bit more fun And rewarding and not such a flatline experience and I really think this VGB Protocol will help and this 10% distribution will be the icing in the cake.

I can't wait!

I'm gonna get to bed.  Hopefully tomorrow these programmer guys will get back to me.

Goodnight.

your surprise could come from the basic error in the question that you asked - you made some assumptions in the topic that were basically flawed , you equated ASIC shipments and access with "Profit Ratio".

these two things are very different .

I voted Justin Bieber, because its just true .

{although that whole MJ thing she's doing is getting a little creepy}

as opposed to the people who pre-ordered ASICs over a year ago? What form of interest would that fall under?


More like acting out of foresight. Keep thinking we are misinformed when you and every other fuckhead who found out about bitcoin 3 months ago plugs in their ASICs and gets the same fucking results as they do now with GPUs. The only difference is, the manufacturers of these machines are obviously stalling as long as possible in the interest of pure profits. They do not care about you or anyone else desperate enough to pre-order their shit.


You spent 1,700 dollars on your mining rig and turn around and wonder why you don't make any profits? People like you are the reason ASICs even exist in the first place. You are totally looking at them the wrong way, and can't see anything beyond your own fucking greed. People who tout ASICs as the future are solely saying that because they feel like they can still gain a leg up on everyone else by buying them. The problem is when the product you are banking on being released is currently being used to do exactly what you plan to do with it before too many people get their hands on them, you have already lost. Bitcoin is not about furthering the coin's widespread support anymore, it is just operating under that guise with the real agenda being OBLIGATORY, OBVIOUS, and OBLIVIOUS greed.


You act like your future project coin will gain any sort of respect, when you constantly contradict yourself and provide no evidence of the ability to look at things objectively. You are not part of the "small miner group" when you fully support the very thing that is pushing that group out of Bitcoin. People tout Bitcoin as being decentralized and allowing anyone to be able to join network, when in reality, a handful of companies are releasing stalling the very devices that will wipe it's ass with that notion while keeping foolish people such as yourself running in line to attach themselves to the puppet strings.

That's a tad harsh. People  do whatever is likely to net them the best rewards. In this case, they see bitcoin as somewhere to 'make' money and to do that they need to invest in ASICs. It is not the fault of the miners who are doing everything they can to be the best they can be. It is the fault of the designer for not taking into account Moores law and defending against it. (It's obvious that there was some thought, to tech advances, just not enough).

Scrypt is what has arisen out of this need to help smaller players and the new digital currency will be born eventually. Bitcoin will not, cannot succeed, but it has done its job and carved out the niche the path forward for developers to search after. I don't even think that any digital currency based on Scrypt is going to make the cut either. If anything then it'll be a currency based on SHA-3 that's likely to hit the big time. You'll probably see Bitcoin and a variety of others flounder until the next economical problems arise and then there will be another flurry of activity, that much is obvious.

In the future I hope to see cryptocurrencies that are designed with an extremely wide reach and not just those with high spec computers designed specifically for Bitcoin mining, because that's the whole point and I think...the point behind Scrypt. But even still it's wrong to eject those who are doing the best they can with what they are able to get a hold of. It's just simple capitalism.

The mechanics of SHA-3 offer little different from SHA-2. Scrypt, on the other hand, is a fundamentally different beast. The way forward is almost entirely likely to be with scrypt unless something that is similar-but-better to scrypt comes along. Continually wasting money and resources on completely useless pieces of machinery (ASICs) is not good for decentralization or sanity.

The problem isn't based on people being afraid or not willing/ready to buy an ASIC.  I myself am in the process of purchasing an ASIC, I am just watching the BFL backorder log to dissipate.  And I'm not buying it to make money, as I know for a fact it will be losing money very shortly.  Just watch the Bitcoin difficulty jump by millions every week more ASIC's are slowly being shipped out.  Merged mining a coin that is worth $0.00001 won't make them turn into money making beasts, it's more "Woohoo I just earned an extra $1 this month merge mining Vlad's coin    

Our advice to you was based on what would be the safest alternative for a new coin coming onto the market.  SHA256 does not mean the coin will be worth more.  Not even having 1 million miners on your coin make it worth more (Just more secure).  And small GPU miners can mine SHA256 just as easily as they can mine scrypt.  It makes no difference to them what they mine.  Aside from the fact they will want to invest their time/electricity/cooling costs into a currency that they think is stable, and not be killed at any time.

The problem is you don't understand even the basics of what your getting into.  You believe your coin which will be worth less than a cent in the beginning will be embraced by Bitcoin miners, and that people will go out of their way to do all the programming to get your essentially free coin merge mined with all the big players.  And you believe your coin will easily survive a 51% attack on it, because you believe in it.  

First off, your coin will be worth nothing at all, no matter if you choose scrypt or SHA256.  The reason coins start becoming worth something is not because people start mining it.  It's because people start believing your coin is secure, and they start putting their money into it to make it worth something.  You also need to have services willing to take your coin as an actual currency.  No one is going to be sitting there with a 50 BTC buy offer the moment your coin hits Cryptsy (if it even manages to get there with your attitude of who cares if my coin is 51% attacked) when you are treating it like a playground.  You have said it multiple times in your many posts, it isn't costing you much, and your the only one that will end up losing your money and time if the coin is crushed.  That attitude will drive away any investor you're hoping to get, which will leave you sitting on a coin still worth $0.0001, which will stop being mined because people lose faith in your currency.

To put it in perspective, I will give you a real world analogy for what you're doing.   Its like you are building a new bank.  You don't have the money for insurance, you are asking people if you should build it in a safer neighbourhood, or in a neighbourhood where banks get robbed on a daily basis.  And to make matters worse, you announce you're not having any guards on staff and you can't afford the lock on the vault.  But you want people to store their millions in your bank, and if everything does get robbed and your bank gets burnt down, you don't care because the building only cost you $500 because of the neighbourhood you choose.  And to make matters worse, you want to charge the people that are storing their money 1%, because you are sticking out your time and $500 to build the bank in the first place.

A successfull 51% attack could cause everyone's assets "Money they put into your currency" to be cashed out by the attacker.  He makes a fortune, or nothing becuase he just wanted to see if he could destroy a smaller one to hone his skills on a larger target.  After a coin is 51% attacked, it is almost always dead after that.  I can only think of 1-2 exceptions where I believe the coin still exists.  In cases like Powercoin, which was 51% attacked recently, the attacker took around 2 million Powercoins.  No exchange would touch it after that, since the guy could cash in those coins at any time after.        

If you truly want to become rich in the Cryptocurrency game.  I will tell you the EASY way to do it.  DON'T become a coin developer.  Find an established coin that is trading for about $0.00001.  Put $10,000 into it, and start buying.  This alone will drive the price upwards.  Next put your "marketing skills" to work, and get an economy going in that coin.  You don't need a developer's ok to build an economy for them.  And I am sure they would readily do whatever they could to promote you in your venture.  Get that $0.0001 coin to have a value of about $1.  Congrats you're now a multi-millionaire.  Sell it off slowly, so you don't crash your market, and lose your value.

*cough* That doesn't help the rest of us Vivi... i.e the people who can't mine with GPU.

The only think I disagree with primarily and that is that someone has to treat it as a commercial venture. They don't. The more attention, care, time that is paid to a coin will make it successful not how much money you can throw at it, because that is a pump and dump scheme. It's very much like taking a bag full of coppers into a penny arcade. You went into it to have fun...not to be a high stakes gambler and if you play your coins right you could end up walking out with a copper more than you went in.

Rome wasn't built in a night and neither was Bitcoin.

Sorry you misunderstood what I was going with there.  Vlad has self admitted he has no programming skills/experience what-so ever.  What he wants people to bank on is even though he would never even be able to tell if an attack was happening on his coin, that he wants us to bank on his skills as a really good marketer, and for him treating his coin as a commercial venture.

I didn't say building an entire economy on a Crypto is an overnight thing.  It would probably take years.  And I didn't say it was the best idea to rush that either.  But he seems more preoccupied on making a ton of money more than taking the time to even read enough to understand the basics.

But I will disagree with you somewhat.  Attention, care and time won't make a coin financially successful.  The only thing that will make a coin worth alot of money (truely) is to have alot of people using it as an actual traded currency, and for people to put money into it.  What you are talking about is speculated value, which is when the price rises because investors believe that eventually the coin will take off.  Pump and dump is when you push up the speculated value and then dump it when it's not actually "worth" anything.  It is not a pump and dump when you create a functioning economy, which raises the price, then you sell yourself out of it.  Here is an example of the difference.  I make a company, Tell everyone that I have a product that will put Intel out of business because my product is 1000X faster for 1/3 of the price.  The stock value in the company (That doesn't actually make anything yet) rises to astronomical amounts.  Then I sell my shares, make millions, and everyone is left holding shares to a company that doesn't actually make anything.  What I am telling him to do is essentially Buy a company worth $10,000.  Actually create the processors that put Intel out of business.  The company is now worth billions, because of actual sales, and products being released.  Then he sells his shares off.  He still leaves as a multimillionare, but the stock holders aren't left with a steaming dump, but with an actual money making company.  This is NOT pump and dump.

BTW which part of what I said doesn't apply to those that can't mine with a GPU?  CPU miners can infact also mine SHA256 or Scrypt.  It makes no difference.  Bitcoin was originally only able to be mined with CPU's.  What you might be thinking is CPU mining Bitcoins (Not SHA256), at the current difficulty level.  Which is a totally different ballgame.   If Vlad did release his coin as an SHA256 coin, the ASIC miners would not be interested in using their expensive new miners for mining a coin worth nothing.  So the difficulty would start low, just like if he released a Scrypt based coin.  The only way it would jump to super high levels would be if he himself started mining with his 60 GHash/s ASIC, when he finally receives it.  In which case he would probably end up pushing all the miners out, and the currency would have a single point of failure, and losing the interest of all the people he needs for the coin to take off.

Um there is nothing that prevents Scrypt based coins from being merged mined.   Then again they are all copy and paste pump and dumps so nobody spent the time and effort to write the code.  When merged mining was added to namecoin nobody did it to make a fortune they did it to "save" namecoin.

Point taken Vivi  ;D

Though I'm not actually interested in trading the currency for another currency... I'm more interested in trading the currency for items that are useful to me. That's the difference here. You could pump in as many dollars as you want, but what matters here is the trust that fair value is being transferred efficiently and not how much it is worth compared to a dollar. That's just financial garbage. If I can trade 5 xCoins for a kilo of cheese, that makes the coin valuable to me... instead of having to bring the farmer those eggs that haven't been laid yet.

It looks to me like a big part of the confusion or problem is fast-buck syndrome.

It used to be pretty normal for a business to lose money its first few years.

People made fortunes from BBQcoin precisely because there was no profit at all during a year or so of CPU-mining it at really low difficulty; that happened because the fast-buck people were not interested in making a fortune in a year or so, they saw they would be spending pennies now without getting pennies back now so weren't interested. So the people who did spend a year putting in pennies were able to take a huge profit a year down the line.

Right now you can merged mine GRouPcoin, I0Coin, CoiLedCoin, and GeistGeld at low difficulty because there is no well-known and web-based way of cashing them in for pennies each day as you mine them. Just like happened with BBQcoin you are looking at spending pennies for hopefully even several years since the more years you get to rake them in at low difficulty the more you will have of them come the day they come out into the limelight, if they ever do, like BBQcoin did. Small miners can get their small trickle of bitcoins still to pay all or part of their electricity bill, and still get to rake in any or all of these "sleeper" coins all day every day. The more days they get left in peace to do that the better for them in the long run.

Sure some script-kiddie might come get some laughs pretending to "kill" a coin, so what? CoiLedCoin was "killed" how long ago now? For a few days someone took all the blocks, not building on other people's blocks or something like that. The coin was declared "dead", and just like happened with BBQcoin the masses spent a year or more believing it was dead while anyone who chose to do so picked up as many as they wanted for almost nothing.

The fast buck people aren't willing to risk a few pennies to make a bunch of dollars, if they don't get more than a penny today for a penny they spend today they are off chasing whatever they think will give them more than a penny today for a penny they spend on it today. That is why BBQcoin miners made such fortunes, and it might well turn out to be how merged miners of the merged mined coins that most pools are not including in their merged mining mix end up making similar fortunes.

-MarkM-

*nod nod* Almost completely agreed. Some of us here aren't actually to make a profit as it were but simply to get involved and play around a bit. (Maybe it's just me  :-\). So I'm not fussed about spending time or electricity so long as I've enjoyed myself >.<;

Ahahahaaaaa.  That's totally off-topic.  Wait, it's not.  Lol.

Thank you mark.  This is what I was trying to say.  Merged mining is a gold mine becsuee you're still getting your target coin but also a bunch of other coins that can pay off down the line.

According to the other guy on here you can also merge mine scrypt coins and I didn't know that so that's a big plus.

So mark, you're a programmer so let me ask you 2 questions:

1) If you would launch your own coin, a new coin would it be SHA256 or scrypt and why.

And

2) What special feature do you feel a new coin should have which doesn't really exist right now.  Something hopefully useful and new in some way. 

Thanks a lot.

Thank you, I didn't know that.  I just haven't seen any merge mining pools for scrypt like I have for Sha256.  Maybe it's due to the much higher demand for Bitcoins.

So can they make one coin, a MergeCoin that people can then mine and essentially mine 3 or 30 various coins?   Cause as difficulty skyrockets the only way for most people to make money at that point would be via merged mining.  Like mark said, you get say a few bitcoins to pay for the elctricity and then make money from the other smaller merged mined coins and once in a while one of those coins, like BBQ coin, will take off and that would be a huge break for those who merge mined.

And with the coming bitcoin ETF, I think we'll see a lot of Alt coins take off.  Just like namecoin and LTC took off in April for enrmous returns all cause bitcoin ran to $266. Only this time there's gonna be way more coins on the market, way more people speculating on alt coins (including investors) so more coins doing what namecoin and litecoin did.

You still don't get it, do you?

We already launched new coins, well over a year ago. Since we still have not enough hashing power hashing those coins, it is stupid pointless premature wasteful and so on to keep churning out more and more "new" coins.

First lets get all the coins we already put out there a year or two ago all up to secure levels of hashing before worrying about adding yet more coins.

We are getting ahead of ourselves. We haven't even updated the existing merged mined coins to latest bitcoin code yet. We haven't got even one public pool yet that merged mines all of them. We don't even have software yet that can divvy up all of them to pool miners giving each miner the appropriate amount of each of the coins. We don't even have free open source apps all coins need such as exchanges, payment processors and so on, heck we don't even have thin clients yet for most of them nor even any plugins for browsers that would allow actually-secure webwallets to be built.

Spewing out more and more coins each of which still needs all these things we have not yet built isn't helping. Lets build all these things first, and get all the existing merged coins all up to comparable levels of hashing.

Its like inability to focus or concentrate syndrome or whatever they call it, long before even those apps that have been built for bitcoin have even been standardised in free open source form so that a second third etc coin can off the shelf open up all those same apps for public use already people are making more coins and more coins. We cannot even keep up to date codewise the few merged coins we already have. Lets prove we can do that before spawning even more coins that will only increase the support/update burden. We cannot keep up with the few coins already existing, we need to catch up on all that backlog of work still needing to be done, not create more and more and more work that will need to be done while we cannot even keep up with all the work already needing to be done.

-MarkM-

ADHD....Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the one you're looking for.

...looks like I'm just going to be excluded from the game after all. Oh well. 

New kid on the block. You should add PRIME to your poll.

Prime isn't an encryption algorithm

Neither is SHA

Beg to differ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2

Excluded how?

Fire up p2pool, bitcoind and geistgeldd, merged mine geistgeld alongside bitcoin. Even with a GPU, the bitcoins will subsidise your electricity, and because geistgeld is incredibly low difficulty, you will rake in geistgeld.

Or do i0coin, or coiledcoin, or groupcoin, heck do them all if you have the RAM to run them all. I0Coin and GeistGeld use the most RAM so if you don't have tons of RAM just do bitcoin, coiledcoin and groupcoin.

(For the high difficulty ones like namecoin and ixcoin its roulette, if you actually want some of those you might as well use mmpool at bitparking).

Only you are excluding yourself. Heck you can CPU mine fairbrix and/or tenebrix, are you even doing that? Seems like you are determined to exclude yourself, unwilling even to pick up these virtual-freebies laying there for the taking...

Remember its all limited pies though, if six billion people all divvy up one pie it does nto matter whether they divvy it up with ASIC or FPGA or GPU or CPU, they'll still only get the same fraction of the pie... So the best money might be in picking pies no one else sees value in, until you have a big enough piece of it for it to start looking worthwhile to consider starting to help others see some value in it...

(IXCoin is so difficult it will be maybe years yet before i have enough of them for it to seem worth my while to start convincing others they are valuable, since most others already have many more than I do. I0Coin though got dropped by bitparking, so lately I get to pick up more I0Coin than I can get of IXCoin. Basically as a small miner I need coins that not a lot of miners are mining yet, so I can hope to get a nice enough chunk of one someday for promoting it to others to start to look more like increasing the value of my holding than like urging competitors to take more of the pie leaving less for me...)

-MarkM-

Can PPCoin be merge mined with Bitcoin? I was of the understanding because of the POS it cannot.

Bearing in mind I'm stuck with CPU mining. Bitcoins are impossible, Litecoins are impossible, Primecoins too difficult along with a variety of others that I've tried that weren't obviously pump and dumps. Unless I start up my own fork of Bitcoin/Litecoin (of which my programming skills are lacking), there seems to apparently be no way for someone to just hook up and mine for a bit, perhaps get maybe one or two coins and then disappear for a day or two, come back... and so on. Effectively if you don't have a decent i7 processor or running two or three really high high GPU's... there's no way for you to even think about getting involved.

...fairbrix? O.o (It would help if these were actually listed in places where people go looking for cryptocurrencies). I'll take a look through the list and see which ones I can actually get fired up. Links?

I'm not purposely excluding myself (I don't make it easy apparently by a) running linux b) having a rather old computer) but with everyone jumping on GPU's it does leave mining to only those who have lots of money to spend...apparently.

I'd like to actually mine rather than collecting handouts if I can help it.

Hey, nothing wrong with using Linux. Compiling coins is easier.

Fairbrix is a pain to use on headless server as it only has GUI no headless daemon. So I have to have stupid GUI cluttering my desk at home while I run fairbrix-qt on a remote server, and any loss of connection between home and remote server screws it up.

Tenebrix the Tenebrix-QT in Lolcust's github is the one that works, fairbrix I don't recall where git pull pulls it from since git pull doesn't bother to tell me, when pulling, where the heck it is pulling from. But I don't think there are even options, else one of the options would have a deamon one would hope, so likely its hobbs choice, there is only one repo out there...

Lack of a daemon for Fairbrix means I cannot even see its difficulty so cannot actually really tell whether it is really still only being mined by CPUs.

Some GPU user did come to Tenebrix one day, but within hours had realised we all only use CPUs so turned off his GPU and likely is still thereby saving electricity like the rest of the people mining it.

-MarkM-

Where does that say it is an encryption algorithm? It is a hash function, there is a big difference.

Man, I had no idea these established coins had that many issues or needed that much work.   Too bad those coins with a higher value don't pitch in more money for the rest of the alt coins.

I've been doing the same thing - accumulating devcoin and ixCoin and once I have enough I really want to start telling people about them cause I really do believe they have huge potential for different reasons.  It's easy to sell something you believe in.

I tried mining fairbrix and tenebrix but I haven't been successful. 

How much ram is enough ram, Mark, to be able to merge mine more of these coins.  If I could merge mine a few coins until my ASICS get here I won't feel like I'm getting left behind in this huge opportunity.  That's one driving force to want to launch another CrapCoin.  I feel like nothing I do is getting me ahead.

I'm paying outright for some coins, earnings some but mining, that's where it's at and I don't have the expertise to do it, at least not for these out of sight coins which offer little support and advice.  I can mine coins like litecoin but its not profitable.

lol I was wondering if that's what he was referring to, I thought ADHD was a pretty well known acronym

Cryptography = Cipher = Encryption.

SHA-2 is a set of encryption hash functions.
A hash function is an algorithm

SHA-2 is an encryption algorithm.

QED.


Edit.

Can't mine Fairbrix ... am using Fedora -_-; Fairbrix uses everything that is specifically not on Fedora apparently.

I set up a Dell Optiplex 755 with 8 gigs of RAM, installed live fedora linux, which caused only 10 gigs of swap space to be created, and ran GeistGeld. It was killed due to out of memory error before it even got to the point where it had rescanned and was ready to actually work.

I0Coin though I have often run along with bitcoin and BBQcoin or bitcoin and devcoin, or even all of those, plus fairbrix-qt, all on an 8 gig machine.

I am actually starting to think about hacking a copy of IXCoin into a version of GeistGeld simply because such a hack is cut and paste trivial so even though its nicer to wait until I have even more coins thus nicer to wait for a full update to latest bitcoin code, the sheer RAM needs of GeistGeld are getting annoying enough I start thinking it might be worth my time to do the quick hack to make an out of date copy based on IXCoin just to save me some RAM.

But then I just got 16 gigs of RAM for an IBM Intellistation Z Pro I have here, and found even with only two gigs of swap I can run GeistGeld in that so far, and once it no longer runs in that I can take the time to make a proper sized swap space for it. So hey, I am content to keep on racking up GeistGeld by throwing RAM at it for now, since once a merged coin based on latest bitcoin does happen its not only GeistGeld but also GRouPcoin and I0Coin and CoiLedCoin that will suddenly have many more miners flooding to them eating more and more of those pies leaving less of each for me.

Basically if you want something so easy to do that every computer-illiterate using Windows can do it you will hardly make anything because there are so damn many such people out there who will all easily grab part of the pie. If you want more than just the tiny crumbs such vast unwashed masses would leave you you need something as many as possible of those masses consider "too hard" or "too complicated" to grab a piece of. Something its easier for them to buy than to mine, maybe.

If six billion people can all grab a slice without hardly even trying, you're not going to get more than one six-billionth unless you have some edge they don't have, simple as that...

-MarkM-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption


Are you aware that PGP uses SHA-2 as it's encryption algorithm.

I get it.  So I need to befriend a local programmer on craigslit to come over and set up merge mining for the harder coins like fairbrix.

I bought an older dual quad core Xeon L5420 dell server (so 8 cores) with 16 gigs of ram.  Is that enough?  If not I can buy another 16 gigs and with 32 gigs of ECC ram I imagine it's plenty.  Or I can actually network 2 of these servers together (if that's possible) cause I gave my brother one but he doesn't use it.  

They each have 4 76GB 15K scsi drives, on board controllers. Ethernet cards, etc, nothing was stripped from them so I think they can get the job done but now I need to find a programmer in my area to come help me out - I'm losing precious time.  These servers are low voltage so the electricity bill should be ok, although they're pretty noisy but I do have a spare room.  They sit here I start them once per month - what a waste when they could be merge mining.

Wish you lived on Oregon, Mark, lol, hard to find trustworthy people when you have small children in the house.  Scary. Thanks again and sorry my idea for another CrapCoin upsets you.  I understand your frustration but without being able to mine I feel a sense of urgency to start something - to do something and accumulating devcoin and ixCoin has been slow.  

I've had large orders (over 120,000 ixCoin) on vircurex for days now and only 5,000 coins were bought and I've moved up the bid 4 different times.  That's it - I'm not gonna keep chasing it, someone will take my offer which is way generous compared to last week or I'll just let these orders sit there.  

And spending money is risky - mining, once you pay off your rig is pretty much risk free so I'd rather merge mine something - anything.  

Thanks again, Mark.

Fairbrix, like Tenebrix, is scrypt based, they are what litecoin eventually came out of.

You should be able to CPU-mine them. Maybe put a third of your cores on each of those and a third on primecoin.

Or maybe put just one core on each of them and the rest on primecoin, if primecoin looks like it will pay something sooner, since it is likely more liquid currently.

On a sixteen gig dedicated server out on the net in a datacentre I run p2pool and used to have all the merged coins right on that machine too.

Then though p2pool would complain that some coins took more than five seconds to respond to getwork requests, so I moved geistgeld and i0coin to a separate machine and told p2pool to use them from there. I still though at times also run geistgeld and i0coin on the p2pool machine I just don't tell p2pool to ask getworks from there as it is into swap space enough that it would get those over 5 seconds problems. I run them there simply because the time when all other miners momentarily vanish I still need a connection in order to mine. I0Coin dies almost daily, so there still are times when everyone's happens to have died at once, so I like to run some spares to lower my unable-to-mine time. GeistGeld people tend to stick to for a while then decide their RAM could be put to better use so they go away once they have accumulated however much they feel will be enough to be a decent nestegg when it comes back into the limelight, so from time to time I would find zero connections, so it seemed reasonable to have a spare copy of it myself to tide me over those times.

So yeah a couple of 16 gig machines should be fine, put p2pool and all the merged coins on one, but tell p2pool to getwork for i0coin and geistgeld from the other. Run I0Coin and GeistGeld on both, in case all other miners happen to be down at any particular moment. You should be able to run Fairbrix-qt  (*) on one and Tenebrixd on the other also, with both using all their cores to (with "nice", see "man nice") cpumine using minerd. ("nice" primecoin too, I have that on both servers too. Once it has a standalone cpu miner, "nice" that.)

(*) Note I don't have GUI of Fairbrix-qt on either server; the GUI shows up on my desktop at home.

-MarkM-

Sounds great but I can barely understand half your directions.  I'm sure a programmer looking at your post can figure it out so i'll put an add on Craigslist in the next few days to see how much it would cost me to have a guy come here and spend a few hours (hopefully not more - programmers aren't cheap) setting these servers to mine these coins you're recommending.  Once it's all set-up I'm confident I can fix any bugs or issues.

 Thanks again.

May I ask what your background or education is for programming/computers?  If you're self learned that's fine too - I've personally met 16 year old hackers all self learned who hacked in NASA servers and the pentagon.

Yea and I've met 10 year olds who hacked into the NSA and the CIA.

Get real

You're joking right?  You think that's easy?

Why then would the CIA show up in Eastern Europe and offer one guy an immediate flight to America and a job for the Feds? They literally took him on the spot with his parents permission of course.  If its no big deal why don't they hire you?

And the other guy got busted by the Feds and google bailed him out and paid the Feds near $400,000 fee - their cost to track him down, and now he works for google but since he's living in a 3rd world country (eastern Europe) and google basically owns him he doesn't get paid jack.

You think google would pay $400,000 upfront cost for you or the 10 year olds you know.  Both these kids had ZERO programming training and obviously they're unique and talented otherwise the Feds and the google wouldn't pay big money for some kids with no formal education.

I'm just saying a person can be self taught and be very talented and capable so a degree is nice but not necessary.  Creativity is something you can't teach and I'm guessing that's what set these kids apart.

That's awesome dude.  Respect.

That's a hard language to master.  I took a C++ class in college and I was a 3.8 GPA student and that class was way harder than I expected - barely got a B+ although i bypassed buying the 3 required textbooks which may have helped a bit.  

It was my first computer class and I jumped over the pre-requisites to take it but still, it was an intro class.  I have a newfound respect for hackers and programmers, especially if they're self taught.

It is simply nobody has written (ported) the code.  Period.  If tomorrow someone released a coin which was merged mineable with LTC as the parent chain it would exist.  Until that happens you aren't going to see any pools as no Scrypt based coins support merged mining.


That isn't how merged mining works.  One coins is the parent or master coin.  This coin doesn't even need to be aware that it is being used for merged mining.  It would make sense for this coin to have lots of hash power.  For Scrypt based coins it would make sense for the parent coin to be LTC.

Then each coin that wants to be merged mined along side LTC (and other merge mining capable coins) needs to be modified so that it supports finding block solutions either in its own chain or in its parents chain (LTC). 

@Wolf0,

Allow me to be straight forward with you, bro.  I like you but I'm a bit skeptical cause of your attitude.  Maybe you're going thru personal issues so you're short tempered and that one guy you cut down yesterday, well, he had it coming but in general your posts are very short tempered and combative.

I'm not judging you cause I have a short fuse but from the perspective of someone who doesn't know you it's hard to trust a guy who appears volatile.

I really need to talk to someone who know how to code to see if these ideas I have can be feasible and how much they would cost but I don't know who to trust.  The guy with 10,000 posts didn't respond to me.  

My feeling is that, like MArkM, most Sr guys here are sick of crapCoins so they doesn't wanna help me.

I'm trying to not launch another crapCoin, which is why I'm doing polls and asking for input on favorite features.  It may not be a PPcoin but I definitely want to add value and a new angle - something most crapCoins don't even ask the community about let alone care enough to pay for extra features.

And let's face it, like I said months ago, massive alt coins are coming and they can't be stopped - at least I'm trying to get valuable input to launch a coin for the miners, a coin with some innovation to help level the playing field.  So why not help these coins who add some value and care long term cause you know soon, by next year we'll see a logarithmic jump in alt coin launches so why not help the few guys trying to launch a coin right with little payment and a long term view.

I desperately need a programmer to talk these things over but hazard and C4n10 just don't respond. I hope this poor service ain't normal.

@Wolf0

Ok, I get it.

Ok, I'll PM you with my feature idea.  I know for sure I'll at least get some brutal honesty from you - I just hope if it is a good feature that it won't leak until I launch a coin, if I ever do. Coming your way, bro.  Thanks again.