This thread explains the relationship between price and deflation brilliantly - it's the first time I've seen it put into words so effectively, so thanks!


That's the "efficient market" theory, isn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis That assumes that the market participants are correct in their prediction. If you think you know better, then you may believe the price is either too low or too high, in which case you may have an opportunity to invest.

However, if you think that the current price is (for example) overvalued from it's "true value", the market price might still move further from the true value due to a change in circumstances, and the "true value" may change before it's ever reached, which makes the term "true value" a bit useless.


I don't think the current price is the predicted future price at all - instead, it's a combination factoring in the potential gain from increases in value and the potential loss due to a collapse (due to technical, legal, or social reasons), combined with the demand from its utility for trade. Surely, the potential gain could be enormous if Bitcoin became mainstream, but most people are obviously cautious enough to not invest too heavily in it so the price is not currently skyrocketing.

No. There's good documentation showing the results of overclocking here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

I think I will investigate underclocking the memory, then overclocking until it reaches a similar running temp, being 74-76 degrees.

After my initial post, I realised I forgot to include the power cost of my ADSL 4-port modem router, which uses about 10 watts (but is used for part of the day for other things too), but it won't affect the economics of mining substantially.

Was your x4 slot open ended? Mine seems to be closed. I don't really want to resort to a soldering iron like this guy: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/249291-12-card. Will probably have to get an extender cable then. Next problem is how to mount the card while still leaving the case closed... (don't want the kids to get electrocuted).

I have an Asus M4A87TD motherboard, with one PCI-e x16 slot, one PCI-e x4 slot, and one PCI-e x1 slot.

I'd like to run a 5770 card from the x1 slot, and a 5850 card from the x16 slot. Is that likely to overheat any connections on the motherboard? (The graphics cards presumably draw most of their power from a connection directly to the PSU, right?)

Thanks!

If using an extender cable, I suppose I need to secure the card in a different part of the box - is there a standard way of achieving this, or should I just make it up as I go?

I have an Asus M4A87TD motherboard with a 5700 gfx card. I'd like to add another graphics card for mining.

I understand my motherboard has one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, (currently the 5770 will be in there), one PCIe 2.0 x4 slot, and one PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. Does this mean I could add 2 more cards if I wanted to?

Thanks

This article is a little dated, but very relevant:
http://forums.cannabisculture.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1209250

When I was in Vancouver in 2010, I read a similar article discussing theft of electricity and it sounded like they were going to have a crackdown... entirely plausible in my opinion, given the location is actually Vancouver...

Assuming you get say 3 Mhash/s through bitcoinplus.com on a really beefy machine (guessing some might get that, but my machine only manages 0.6Mhash/s), you generate around 4 cents per day (according to http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php at current difficulty 1.37m). I would only get 0.8cents per day.

I expect results for power usage on other machines won't be much less than mine (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24278.msg301400#msg301400), which worked out to be 24W (the difference between running idle and running at 100% CPU). 1 day's usage would use around 0.58kWh (which costs me around 10 cents) - your electricity would need to be about 4 cents/kWh to just break even.

It Is Not Economical!

It would admittedly have some value as an introduction for new users to bitcoins if they could get a very low payout like the bitcoin faucet, but when the website owner insists on paying a 0.01 transaction fee it's likely to just put people off. (0.01BTC may have been appropriate a month ago, but it no longer is. For reference, the eligius pool will only process transactions with a minimum transaction fee of about 0.00004096, though I'm not 100% sure I've got the number of decimal places).

Further, I would consider it unethical to have users generate coins through an embedded miner on a 3rd party website without the users understanding that they are going to end up paying extra on their power bill.

I put this challenge to bitcoinplus.com -
1. Provide a clear notice to users indicating the transaction fee required
2. Reduce the transaction fee amount - if this means a delay in users getting payment, I think most would favour it (you could even give the users a choice so that they set their own priority)

Oh, and provided you appreciate British humour, this is fantastic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI ("My blackberry is not working", approx 3mins long)

Charley, a new retiree-greeter at Wal-Mart, just couldn't seem to get to work on time.

Every day he was 5, 10, 15 minutes late. But he was a good worker, really tidy, clean-shaven, sharp-minded and a real credit to the company and obviously demonstrating their "Older Person Friendly" policies.

One day the boss called him into the office for a talk.
"Charley, I have to tell you, I like your work ethic, you do a bang-up job, but your being late so often is quite bothersome."

"Yes, I know boss, and I am working on it."
"Well good, you are a team player. That's what I like to hear.
It's odd though your coming in late. I know you're retired from the Armed Forces. What did they say if you came in late there?"












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"They said, "Good morning, Admiral, can I get you coffee, sir?"

I'm no expert, but I'll answer what I can:

1. Have seen the same criticism from elsewhere! Surely it's coming soon...

5. Can't answer about merging, but fees received from mining a block appear to be gained at the same time as the 50BTC from the block, so you might get 50.04 BTC for example.

6. Smaller fractions will be displayed when you have them.

Ok, I have to do some posts in the newbies forum to get greater access, so I'll try to share something worthwhile.

I've been mining for about a week now and my head is spinning from all the reading I've done on the topic. A key factor in profitability of mining is obviously cost of the power to run the equipment, especially for an amateur user like me who just wants to get some value out of a graphics card. I have a power meter, so measuring my current wattage is as easy as plugging the box into it.

The hardware in my box is bottom-end gaming and is about 15 months old. I bought what I think is good quality brands but economical hardware and it's proved faultless so far. In particular I made an effort to get an efficient (but value for money) PSU, so unbranded equipment at least will probably use a few % more power than mine.

Hardware:
Corsair 400W PSU
ASUS Radeon (ATI) EAH5770
AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2Ghz CPU
Seagate 500GB 7200 16MB SATA
(Running Win 7)

Power consumption (excluding monitor):
Idle: 27W
GPU Mining (Phoenix miner, 1 thread, 92% load on GPU, CPU load about 10%): 69.5 Watts, 161 Mhash/s
GPU Mining (Phoenix miner, 2 threads, 96% load on GPU, CPU load about 10%): 70.5 W, 167 Mhash/s (but with substantially more stale blocks)
GPU & CPU Mining (Phoenix miner for GPU - 1 thread, Bitcoin app for CPU, 1 GPU thread, CPU load 100%): 94.5 W, 165 Mhash/s from GPU, 1.9Mhash/s from CPU

Cost of power = NZ$0.21168/kWh

I'm guessing that CPU mining is so inefficient I won't recoup my power costs, so I won't look into that further.

Consumption of GPU mining (if I'm using the computer anyway) = just the additional cost of the GPU load = 69.5-27 = 42.5W
Consumption of GPU mining (if I'd've otherwise shut down the PC) = 69.5W

The PC often is left on during the day for a number of hrs, let's say 10.5hrs average.
Daily cost = 10.5hrs * (42.5W/1000W) + (24hrs - 10.5hrs) * (69.5W/1000W) * $0.21168/kWh = 1.3845kWh * $0.21168kWH = NZ$0.29307096

It's winter in NZ right now, so the waste heat actually saves on space heating too. Our heat pump (fairly old) is probably 2.5:1 efficiency or worse, so the actual net cost is probably more like NZ$0.20/day.

(If I couldn't make good use of the waste heat and the time the PC was on, the cost would be about NZ$0.353)

NZ$1 = approx US$0.80 I think, so net power costs are about US$0.16/day

My earnings over the approx 5 days I've had the GPU mining set up have averaged about 0.15BTC/day through pooled mining, which if valued at US$15 per BTC would earn me US$2.25/day for my 16 cents.

If I'd done some work in the office instead of writing this, I probably could've earned more than a weeks mining, but I guess it's nice to have an interesting hobby...

ps: My GPU output drops by around 10Mhash/s when leaving Firefox open (with about 20-30 tabs open mind you, due to my crazy browsing habits)

Thanks for the reply. Adding a Pheonix miner my graphics card wasn't listed. Just going offline now, but will probably try to contact you via IRC when I can.

Have tried following the instructions for guiminer to set up GPU mining. Installed the AMD APP SDK software, and running "Geeks3D GPU CAPS Viewer" I see OpenCL(CPU) is now ticked, however under OpenCL it says "No GPU Support". The GL tests in the CAPS Viewer app work swimmingly though.

Can anyone share how can I make use of my GPU? Thanks!

GUIMiner version: v2011-06-14
Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium
Miner backend: Will use whatever will work with my GPU!
Video card: ATI Radeon HD 5770
Server: mineco.in