Bitcoin Forum

Hello there,

Just took the time to read what bitcoins are all about. Got to say I like the idea.

I understand most of it, except what exactly are we calculating? Hashtables creating blocks, but of what? Just useless hard to find mathematical proofs to dispatch the new coins introduced in the market randomly? If it's the case, why does powerful computer should be advantaged? Shouldn't it be randomly decided? Otherwise, does the processing power is sold for real money to medical research and stuff and it get converted to bitcoins?

Questions that should be on the Bitcoin's main page FAQ:
-Does the Bitcoin client use any processing power on idle mode? What about network usage?
-Miners of course use your processing power, but what about network usage?

Problem encountered:
I used Bitcoin client + GUIMiner (as recommended on a random pool I picked). It worked fine, but when clicking on "Stop" in GUIMiner the computer completely shut down unexpected (fans stop and everything). Bad GPU call?
I try to enter the Bitcoin client again, and all I get is a "Error loading blkindex.dat" error message. Already corrupted my data after one run? Not very fool proof. How can I resume? Will re-install loose my address and progress?

Yes, they are "useless" calculations. They will not be used for any kind of medical research. What most people fail to realize is that miners support the network. These calculations ensure that money will not be spent twice. The network needs miners and as a reward for they work, they get a few coins. The discussion here (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/331/is-there-a-way-to-set-up-proof-of-work-systems-so-it-would-be-even-more-useful) might interest you.

The Bitcoin client does not use any relevant processing power. Network usage is high at first (until you download all the blocks), but then it is kind of low. As for your problem, I can't help. But you should be mining at a pool. To mine at a pool you don't need the Bticoin client. You only need to enter your pool credentials at the GUIMiner.

PS: If you don't have any bitcoins yet, you can reinstall your client. And mining is not "resumable". The work you have previously done does not influence the work you will do in the future. It's like a lottery. You just are throwing random guesses at something.

Thanks for the reply.
Using processing power to secure transactions make sense, but I still don't see why all the biggest datacenters should get the big part of the money.

I was not talking about resuming a mining operation, just how to keep my account and wallet when re-installing or switching computers.
I also won't try GUIMiner again unless I get an answer on that crash. Seems like there's a lot of other applications available, which one should be best for an high-end Intel+Nvidia combo on Windows7 x64?

Right now, there aren't many "big datacenters" because this is a very specific problem and the performance depends on the hardware you use. I can beat 100 PCs that mine with a CPU just by using an ATI 5970. So instead of big datacenters, we have shortage of ATI cards.

To backup your wallet you only need to save the wallet.dat file:

See here (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Restore) for more info.


GUIMiner should work... That shutdown is worrying. What is the GPU model?

try guiminer

First problem with blockchain corruption : delete blkindex.dat and blk0001.dat and re-download.
Second problem with GUIMiner shutdown : Disable Microsoft Security Essentials Behavior Detection. (found on another thread in this forum).

Having the wallet as a file on your computer? I agree it's P2P so there can't be a master server keeping track or user accounts, but I though it was stored on the "cloud" somewhere. There will be thousand of people loosing all their money during HD crashes and stuff. How does that not unbalance the market? Very bad idea.

With my rig (Core i5-2500K @ 4.4ghz and Nvidia GTX 560 Ti), I get about 50Mhash/s. Looking at my pool result, I barely got 0.001BTC, so about half a cent in one night. Let's say I make 1-2cent per day, it won't get interesting any time soon. I'm not paying for electricity here, but hardware usage might become a long-term problem, and it cost a lot more than this bitcoin mining will gives back.

Yes, you should have around those values. NVIDIA is not good for mining. You can use these websites to calculate profits:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
http://bitcoin.web-share.nl/