I left GPU mining a long time ago, because I thought it was no longer profitable for me. I sold all the GPUs I had and I left 1 to make into a gaming PC.
And I'm still curious because I haven't heard news about GPU mining for a long time, does it still exist now? If so, what do they use now?
The altcoin/mining area is where to find information & discussions about it. |
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what would you do if a big bitcoin mining farm opened up right next to your house and thick black smoke was billowing up and enveloping your entire property 24/7? you wouldn't like bitcoin very much in that case i can guarantee you.
I, the community around me and the state etc would sue the crap out of them regardless of that the facility is doing/producing... In short, for decades *that* kind of pollution is no longer tolerated in most countries. These days pollution tends to be not-so-visible gaseous emissions because particulates and smells are removed. As long as they follow the rules and regulations - no problem. |
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Bitcoin miners in Texas (Riot Blockchain, Argo Blockchain and Core Scientific) have suspended operations and answered the call to conserve energy and spare the Lone Star State’s fragile power grid as demand has soared during an intense heat wave. “There are over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining load that responded to ERCOTs conservation request by turning off their machines to conserve energy for the grid.” Lee Bratcher, president of Texas Blockchain Council told Bloomberg. more details: https://nypost.com/2022/07/13/texas-bitcoin-miners-halt-operations-to-save-energy-amid-heat-wave/My own question is, are there laws available for miner to generate their own electricity just so that they could power the mining farms? Because given the amount of energy been consumed by mining firms, it is best advised they generate their electricity so the Texas government could conserve energy for the rest of the people. Laws are not created for folks/companies to do things - laws are to prevent things. That said, as long as one follows applicable regulations anyone can generate as much power as they want (at least in the US). Read my reply right above yours for the reason ERCOT and the mega farms have usage agreements in place. In more than 1 way the farms *are* paying for the power capacity needed. More important, with a known and well paying market (mining) that will take all they power they can get they give ERCOT a huge incentive to add more solar/wind generation to not only feed said market when conditions are right (good weather) but also have the miners shed a large part of their load when needed so the power can be used elsewhere in the state. There very few major power consuming industries that can do that. Win-win for all involved. |
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Thankfully for Riot, there is a way to offset these losses: energy credits. It received $24.2 million from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in power curtailment credits for reducing its energy consumption in August, along with $7.4 million from ERCOT's demand response program.
The more than $31 million Riot received for its actions was over three times what it earned from Bitcoin mining during the same month; the 333 coins the company mined were worth around $8.9 million. Of course it is more than RIOT earned from mining in August - most of their miners were shut off so power could be used elsewhere.... The 'normal' consumers of power in Texas are *not* spending/losing money on this. When farms are at full power they pay ERCOT far more than what ERCOT credits them when usage needs to cut back. It is a win-win for all parties involved: ERCOT is able to finance building more wind/solar farms because they have a few non-critical but still massive users of the power that justify building more capacity but they also do not have to be too concerned when the wind dies down and the sun sets during scorching hot weather. Riot and the other mega farms simply throttle down so the remaining power can be used where it is really needed. Because the Texas grid cannot send excess power to other states they would be hard pressed to justify building more solar/wind farms just to satisfy peak loads and have 'excess' power capacity wasted during good weather. |
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Mining is 24hrs,so the best way to use solar is to use it with grid but only solar wouldn't work. Mining with Solar is very expensive because the batteries don't last due to the power these mining equipment consumes.
The solar power needed for mining bitcoins depends on a few things, like how big the mining setup is, how good the mining tools are, and how sunny the place is. But here is something for you, just one machine for mining bitcoins might use anywhere from 500 watts to 1.5 kilowatts of power.
1st thing to make clear: Other than USB stickminers or small pods like those from Sidehack, BTC miners draw a LOT of power - not just "500w to 1.5kw". For the past few years bump that high end to an average of around 3.2kw with some of the largest (over 200THs) pulling over 5kw. About batteries: This is an excellent guide to the different types and how to take proper care of them: https://deepcyclebatterystore.com/how-to-maintain-batteries/ Key take away from that guide is that you MUST charge them properly and you should NEVER discharge the storage batteries below 50% of their capacity on a regular basis... |
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Will be interesting see how the power company handles adding a 2nd xmfr. I can't see them just strapping 2 together in parallel and running a single set of much heavier lines coming out of the pair. Parallel feeds to them from the utility HV lines sure, bonded together as a single output - no. No matter what the incoming service panel would of course have to be upgraded and it would/will probably be cheaper and certainly easier to just have a 2nd service panel to distribute incoming power from the 2nd xmfr. Of course you will need to monitor the 2 service loads to they stay within their power limits. As I recall you have some decent 3-phase power monitors in place for that  With the incoming lines from the transformers to service panels being independent of each other, balancing the load between them is not really an issue. Just 80% max out your existing transformer and add future loads to the new xmfr distribution panel or shift some loads around if desired. |
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On a side but related note, what firmware do you actually block? I have tested one which you are most likely blocking and it mined just fine on your pool, Braiins is allowed because as Kano has said it is a clean(ish) re-write that used cgminer as a reference but is nonetheless not just hacked cgminer code. Everything else is more than anything just patched Bitmain's (illict) cgminer code to add features (and charge for it) and then adding insult to injury refused to make their recompiled code public eg firmware such as Vanish and its ilk is verbotten. |
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@Flexystar I mean instead of this you should have one big storage tank where you should process the water and store then use. That would make no difference - the amount of water that goes through the filters is the same... Processing the required amount of water as-needed or periodically in large to-be-stored gulps will on average still run the same amount of water through the filters. |
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@safar1980
Please delete that link - it is a known scam site that Sidehack has been trying to get shutdown for well over a month.
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@OP re: my asking where you came up with rewards being 0.0003 BTC/day. Ah. You are confusing Rewards - which is what Block each pays (+ all fees and currently 6.25+ BTC ) with what any specific piece of hardware can earn per-day. Two vastly different things. Ja the 1/2ving will cut earnings (for that hardware) in half but that is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the ever-rising increase in difficulty impacts earnings per-machine. In short, nothing new here... This has been the case ever since the 1st BTC was mined and Satoshi et al got other folks to join in on the fun  Case in point - sshot of my setup back in Aug 2014 6.42Ths brought in 0.15 BTC or $90/day... |
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“Getting revenues from shipment can be defined as ‘commercialization’, but ASIC is a relatively simple kind of chip to produce, in terms of architecture,” Chen remarked. Analyst John Wang from Digitimes emphasized that the yield from Samsung’s 3nm GAA process remains low. Consequently, Wang believes the tech giant aims to attract a broad customer base to refine its procedures and enhance yield. The report from Techinsights concludes by noting the uncertainty surrounding the use of Samsung’s 3nm chips in any additional hardware devices in the market today. Does not surprise me. As I've often said in the past, mining ASIC's are excellent for refining bleeding-edge chip production processes: being dirt simple circuits and highly tolerant of process variability translates into them being the perfect high-volume test bed for advanced node sizes. Despite initial low yields it still provides the Foundries with revenue from any usable chips and gives them process data needed so more complex chips can be produced as the production processes become more refined giving higher yield of usable chips. The folks that paid TSMC, Samsung & Global Foundries for research into making smaller node sizes even possible were Apple, Boradcom, Cisco, Micron, NVIDIA et al. Thing is, research leading to actually being able to build & implement everything required is one thing, fine tuning everything to be able to produce the billions of gates & their interconnections present on each chip with 0-errors and repeat it thousands of times per-wafer is a whole `nother story. Ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count for insight into the phenomenal number of gates in them these days... From that article: The highest transistor count in a consumer microprocessor is 134 billion transistors, in Apple's ARM-based dual-die M2 Ultra system on a chip, which is fabricated using TSMC's 5 nm semiconductor manufacturing process. Only actually producing hundreds of thousands of lower complexity test chips in the brand sparkly-new production environment lets you do that. The main users of the chips are not going to directly pay for those massively expensive runs of test chips: enter mining chips to let the Foundries figure it out before risking far more complex and valuable chips. TSMC did the exact same thing for that same reason using Bitmain and Canaan chips as the guinea pigs for their development of the 28/27nm (S1) thru 5nm (S19) production nodes. Samsung previously did this with Canaan's ill fated A941 which was the 1st miner to use the 10nm node. |
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Electricity bill is the no1 enemy of crypto mining, do not forget this.
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Can you tell how much electricity consumption will be in an hour? Same kind of question: Can you tell me how many miles-per-gallon a car gets? Just as with a car, you need to specify what miner you are asking about. There are many many different miners and they pull anywhere from 15w/hr for a small USB stick miner to over 5kw/hr for a large over-clocked miner. These days a typical large miner will be pulling anywhere from ~2.5kWh to around 3.5kWh. |
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Your CPU also has Intel ME though. If people really want to avoid Intel ME and AMD PSP, they need to use Intel CPU before 2008 or AMD CPU before 2013. So it's at least 16 years old PC for Intel and at least 11 years old PC for AMD.
Oh, didn't know about Intel ME and AMD PSP, sorry, a little bit young for that  To be completely honest, my main concern is that there can be a spy microphone on modern complex equipment. Otherwise, if we air-gap old 2011's CPU, I think we can feel safe. Or in the worst case, build a special room and block radio waves in that area. It worth to mention that air-gapping of your device is absolutely more than necessary if you don't hold thousands of bitcoins and aren't someone special. The Intel & AMD CPU's don't have ME or PSP 'in them' per se but they *do* have the IO microcode used by the ME/PSP System Management Engines hard wired into the chips. ME/PSP are part of the main motherboard IO controller chip with their own embedded CPU's (ME uses 1 Pentium and 3 486's) running their own micro-OS and as pointed out already since around 2011 the Intel & AMD CPU's require the core functionality of that chip to operate at all. Now, it's nice that apparently the 'extra bits' outside of CPU/system initialization can be switched off but - it is a lot simpler to use a system with a different CPU. Like um, a RasPi 3B or higher that does NOT contain a System Management Engine like ME/PSP. Hell you can even hack their bootloader code or at least look at it if desired. When I'm at the RasPi 3B system I use to run my Sidehack USB miner sticks I find browsing and other 'desktop' functions speed to be more than acceptable. It is really amazing how downright snappy an OS can be even on low performance (compared to a modern desktop/laptop) hardware like a RasPi when the OS is not doing a gazillion other things in the background... |
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You are mis-reading the specs - that HUB is powered by a 12v 5a (60w) power supply which has nothing to do with what each port can supply. That 12v is stepped down to 5v for each port but each port is still limited to 2.4a. Very few hubs support putting out 3a per port continuously.
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aiming to boost mining profitability and efficiency by allowing a 40% overclock. Over clocking does NOT increase efficiency! Running miners faster actually decreases the THs/J figure. The only way to improve THs/J is to decrease speed and lower the Vcore applied to the chips. That is just the nature of these beasts. That said, the vastly improved cooling certainly does allow for running them faster but at the cost of efficiency. |
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I am somewhat cynical and believe the debt-laden countries and central bankers simply will not allow retail schmucks independence via crypto blockchains. Without interference, I believe BTC will climb to $ 150K in 2024 and $ 400-500K by 2028. If mining reward drops down to .00015 next halving. it appears I can mine around .25 BTC in 5 years with a 141TH XP. Still profitable factoring in .075/KHW based on the projected BTC price.
If they fork to POS, does this negate the 21 Million BTC max supply or will they contribute to the 21 million max supply?
Similar to ETH becoming a government-run POS disaster, I see Blackrock forking to a POS and commanding their lackeys in government to regulate miners into capitulation or bankruptcy. Thus gaining control over the purest form of cryptocurrency. It's really a crime the dregs of humanity who have debauched our currencies for centuries are now trying to usurp a truly functional financial system that affords us independence from the perpetual crooks.
Does this sound far-fetched?
Can a POS BTC and POW BTC truly co-exist?
Again we must ask - where are you coming up with mining reward drops down to .00015 next halving ? current rewards are 6.25 BTC + fees collected and will not be down to 0.00015 until literally over 100 years. You're asking about BTC forks aka altcoins. BTC is BTC. ANY fork is an altcoin. Period. At best that puts this topic belonging in Bitcoin Discussion board Not here which is exclusively for Bitcoin. |
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May I suggest that perhaps you should spend a little time actually scanning through the Forum topics... Your answers are there No -ck has not retired per-se, he is a medical doctor and still runs the solo.cksolo pool but yes for a long t*he* ime no longer supports any cgminer code and closed its thread here in the Forum. For him coding was always more of a hobby. That said - Kano who was the 2nd primary developer of cgminer DOES still fully support it and is the only one continuing active development. Kano IS and always has been a professional coder so his code is well tested and solid. No dev fee crap or any other nefarious crap in it. ONLY download from that link because yes there are MANY hacked versions out there with who knows what code in them. Kano's latest version currently provides support up to the Bitmain s17 chips with s19 in the works (both for Sidehacks miners). |
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But my main question is if it’s possible to create your own bitcoin miner and I’ve seen raspberry pi’s and usb sticks turned into miners but could a proper miner be made, obviously not to compete against modern consumer based miners but just enough to make a buck or two.
... They are not 'turned into miners' The Pi's are running cgminer and act as controllers for the ASIC-based miners. The usb sticks are custom built to provide power and coms to ASIC's mounted on them. That said, yes you can build a DIY miner - that is using existing ASIC mining chips and runs cgminer. There are at least 2 current threads on that in the Hardware area. They both use an onboard micro to run cgminer to directly talk to the chips vs using a Pi, Beaglebone, whatever to talk via a usb connection. |
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So why not send Sidehack a PM to ask him directly?.....  No one else here has any say in his production schedules so its rather pointless to ask as an open question to all... |
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