You don't need to mine to use Bitcoin, but a 5770 is good enough for you to at least try it. 1. Sign up to a mining pool like mining.bitcoin.cz. 2. Install AMD APP (formerly ATI stream SDK). 3. Download and run Kiv's GUI miner. Search the forums or ask if you encounter any difficulty with the above. Don't try to mine with your CPU, and don't activate the "Generate coins" option in the client. there are some encryption keys now stored in a file called "wallet.dat".
You should call them "cryptographic keys". It rings just as well, and it doesn't create the false impression that there's anything encrypted in the Bitcoin protocol ("Cryptography" is more general and includes digital signatures). |
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Consider getting a 80+ Gold PSU, maybe a 650W one.
Consider getting an older, cheaper MB+CPU.
You can cheap out on the case, but make sure the cards have sufficient cooling, and that the cards actually fit. I don't know if generic junk will do.
And if you can get some 5970, consider getting one 2x5970 rather than two 2x5870. That might be slightly more expensive, but more power efficient and require less work. For this you should use a 850W 80+ Gold PSU.
To prevent possible confusion - you want the MB to "support CF" in having two PCI-e x16 slots (even that isn't strictly necessary), but you don't want to enable crossfire.
The jury is out on whether this is expected to be profitable. If you consider it a fun project and want to strengthen the network then go ahead.
What OS do you intend to use? Linux has some advantages in this regard, but being a Linux newbie and having built a Linux mining rig, it seems to me it is very difficult to use without 3 years of intensive training.
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The missing ingredient might be Yeah, you rock like hell :-D Thank you very much. Find 5 Bitcoins in your wallet! Thank you! |
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The missing ingredient might be |
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hello guys,
I am new to this and i have read the guide on mining on windows on mining.bitcoin.cz, but i cant find a guide to mining on ubuntu.
What are the dependencies for making ubuntu run mining software? I have a 5870 graphics card and want to mine on ubuntu 11.04/10.10.
Could anybody point me into the right direction?
Welcome to Bitcoin. See Ubuntu ATI mining guide. |
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I'm not sure why I'm taking the bait and continuing to respond, but in my world it's hard to let wrong comments slide by, particularly when they're so hostile.
http://xkcd.com/386/ |
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Hi Robert,
You have misunderstood some things about how Bitcoin works (not your fault, the current explanations are terrible).
Hi Holy-fire. Thank you for clarifying the topic for me. Yes, I can see the benefit of being able to transfer money without using banks. I'm pretty annoyed with bank fees myself. Unfortunately the current lack of shops where bitcoin is accepted is a large stubbling block. However I'll keep an open mind about it and we'll see what develops in the future. Regards Robert Accardi Priority 1 Design Glad to help. I agree, there aren't currently enough shops that accept Bitcoin but we're getting there. |
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I come bearing terrible news. CoinCard, the anchor that tied Bitcoin to reality for normal people, has shut down (the PayPal part anyway). See here.  You'll have to rethink your pitch if you considered making CoinCard a part of it. |
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This is absolutely dreadful! Especially wrt CoinCard. How are we supposed to convince mainstream shops and organizations to accept bitcoins now?
mndrix, thank you for making available this wonderful service while it lasted.
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But you don't seem to appreciate the huge variance solo mining will have in a post-Bitcoin world.
"Post-bitcoin" world seems to mean "after bitcoin"? Is that what you meant? Edit that bit and I will delete this bit. Yeah, I meant "a world after the Bitcoin revolution has completed, in which Bitcoin is ubiquitous." I edited to "a Bitcoin world", though that sounds to me like "a world where Bitcoin exists", which is now. Are you confident that this will happen if we don't find a solution, or that we won't find a solution?
Good question. I can expound (on request) in more detail what I see are the necessary preconditions to hostile mining by cartels and what might happen incidentally in future to preclude it. The recent sharp increase in the national currency value of Bitcoins is a powerful new force behind cartel formation and attendant misbehaviour and that makes me concerned. I'd like to answer your question the following way which is more general. A solution is unlikely to be found until it has already become a problem and caused some damage. The solution found, although it solves the problem, is not the best solution and causes further problems in future and so on ad infinitum. To digress: I would argue that various Bitcoin design decisions which I have noted in many of my previous posts have caused, are causing and will cause many problems because they are successful attempts to solve other problems but they solved them in the wrong way. Sometimes the best way to improve things is to undo certain bad or suboptimal decisions and redo it the right way rather than patching holes indefinitely. I'm concerned that the community seems to have an irrationally negative reaction to talking about beneficial incompatible changes. I can only hope that as time passes and issues relating to the present reality of Bitcoin are solved, the community will be more receptive to preventing possible future attacks. |
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The problem is that whatever the mining substrate used, a single at-home miner can't hope to generate a block solo ... The long term returns from mining solo with a GPU are equal to and often better than those of joining a pool. A pool gives a more constant payout; that is all. You're preaching to the choir. You might be interested in my thoughts about this here. But you don't seem to appreciate the huge variance solo mining will have in a Bitcoin world. The standard deviation of the monthly payout can easily be 1000 times the expectation. The "long term" you speak of could be hundreds of years. For all intents and purposes at-home solo mining will be futile. I don't think mining pools are a problem, they're not very prone to forming a cartel.
Mining pools concentrate the administration of a lot of mining power in a few hands - those of the people running the pool. If everyone were mining individually, to form a cartel, they would have to all unite and arrange a way of communicating which blocks they would accept and which they would shun. They would also have to distribute the profits of their collusion among the participants who did not win blocks. With a mining pool, both these problems are solved. I can't imagine a plausible mining arrangement more prone to cartel formation. Mining pools can be required to be transparent about the blocks they build on, so they can only do hostile mining if their participants condone it. If the participants are mining corporations then sure, they can use a pool as an administrative tool to organize the cartel. But if the participants are individual miners, they will for the most part not condone hostility. I'm confident that when the reward for block generation becomes small in comparison to the fees in some blocks that we will see cartels being formed and evidence of hostile mining activity.
Are you confident that this will happen if we don't find a solution, or that we won't find a solution? |
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I think the most stable configuration is when the vast majority of mining capacity is in the hands of many (~100) pools, which are used by at-home miners and small mining businesses. Big mining corporations are ok too as long as they total <30% capacity.
There is indeed a problem that the desire to minimize variance will lead those small miners to seek the largest pool, thus forming few big pools.
I think a possible solution is meta-pools. I haven't yet ironed out the details, but basically they would match miners to pools while absorbing most of the variance. There will be a few big meta-pools, but they don't decide themselves which blocks to build on so they can't easily be corrupted.
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Those things clearly go against your morals, but there's nothing inherently wrong with any of them.
Do I also get to use the "it only goes against your morals" card when people talk about how government is evil, or for that matter, how stealing, enslaving, kidnapping, raping and murdering are (or are these ok too)? Absolutely you can play that card. Those things are okay to some people. Interesting. |
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The continuation of the sentence "The easiest way to get started with Bitcoin is..." has just changed. Congratulations!
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I did a lot of simulation and I didn't post the results because they were complex and required a lot of explanation. The basic result is that a miner or group of miners with >40% of the hashing power can mine more than their fair share of blocks under very reasonable expectations.
Someone with 46% of the hashing power can win 51% of the blocks.
Interesting. But the fact that 46%->51% is not nearly as disastrous as the fact that 51%->100%. I'm unhappy with the current effectively GPU-only mining scheme and the popularity of mining pools as I believe that they provide a suitable environment for "hostile mining" to start.
Lots of people have GPUs, that's not the problem. The problem is that whatever the mining substrate used, a single at-home miner can't hope to generate a block solo when there are so many other miners in the world (where mining companies are counted by multiplicity). I don't think mining pools are a problem, they're not very prone to forming a cartel. |
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I just sent a contact email to Gog.com, hopefully they'll start accepting bitcoins!
Then it may be useful to know that I had already contacted them. After three weeks of no response, they sent the following two messsages: Hello,
I apologize for the late reply. We have no immediate plans for including additional payment options, but please stay tuned - we're always full of surprises. Hopefully we'll be able to add others in the foreseeable future.
Regards,
Firek
Hello,
I apologize for the late reply. I can't promise anything at the moment, since we don't have any immediate plans to add more payment methods due to other priorities, but we do know how useful and worthwhile it would be, both for us and the users.
Regards,
Firek
I also had the crazy idea to start a service to sell GOG games for bitcoins, but they said that's not allowed. |
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Depreciation is the declining value of your hardware over time. If you buy a $700 video card and the going price on eBay or craigslist or gaming forums is $500, then you have a 'cost' of $200 that you need to account for. This cost goes up over time.
Unless you're already buying the hardware for other purposes (e.g. gaming) then these costs are very real and can't be ignored.
If you count depreciation, you can't also count the original cost of purchasing the hardware. |
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Neat idea, but the main problem I see is that the bettercoin protocol needs to specify what the exchange rate between bitcoin and bettercoin is (whether it's 1:1, or a function of time, or whatever). But their individual values should vary independently based on the popularity of each. I think it will be better to simply set up an exchange between bitcoins and bettercoins.
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See bitcoin-otc WoT. Also, if you want yoo can demand from the seller a digitally signed certificate that says that if X bitcoins arrive at address Y they will send you product Z, which is a little better then just sending money and hoping for the best. This works especially well with bitcoin loans where it can be easily checked if the loan was eventually repaid. |
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I'm working on getting http://projectzomboid.com/blog/ setup with bitcoin for their game! You can check out the conversation on twitter @gburgwardt and @lemmy101 Granted I didn't pique their interest, but I'm helping with integration and explanation I suppose? Anyone that wants to tip can either tip me or check out their game, it looks good! Again, this has a pagerank of 0. Please check before posting next time. You should explain in the OP what PageRank is and how to find it. |
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