mining

[pfunk]

can i use my new asus a53e to mine bitcoins?  I dont know what graphics card it has, it does have 6g memory with 750 hdd.  i know a little about coins but not much about mining

[colindean]

According to NewEgg, the ASUS laptop you have has an Intel integrated graphics chipset. Even if you could mine on it, you're not likely to see a return on your time and electricity investment. You're better off buying coin than mining it.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[pfunk]

thanks for your response.  I got into BTC probably like some others just for the whole "mistiqueness" of it all.  now im interested in mining,  what would be my best bet?  raspberry pi seems pretty cheap, is this efficient?  if i know nothing about it, is it possible for "me" to be efficient compared to all of the competition?  what would be my best bet (besides educating myself)?

[colindean]

Actually, again, I'm bearing bad news.

Unless you're willing to make a potentially substantial investment in ASIC mining hardware, you're unlikely to see a significant return on anything that you'd purchase for the intention of mining BTC. The block reward is halving tomorrow, meaning that miners will generate half of the number of bitcoins per unit of time that they did previously.

I think your best bet mining-wise is to go in with a few people on an ASIC miner.

Better yet, I think your time and money would be better off spent buying BTC at the market rate and playing the market (buy low, sell high) or arbitrage (buy low at one exchange, sell for a tiny percentage more at another) or establishing a business that accepts BTC or pays in BTC.

[Litecoin Gold Trust]

Mining is a complex and expensive business to get into. Newbies should try mining, but they shouldn't try to make money doing it.

Consider how you might get some gold:

1. Buy it. Not much fun, but fast and convenient (compared to the alternatives).
2. Pan for it. Fun to try as a learning experience, and you end up with a little bit of gold. Not really worth the time and expense, though.
3. Mine it. Expensive, but it's the best path to success (if you know what you are doing).

Obtaining bitcoins is the same:

1. Buy it.
2. Mine it with your computer.
3. Buy some hardware and mine it.

[moneylauncher]

Mining is a complex and expensive business to get into. Newbies should try mining, but they shouldn't try to make money doing it.

Consider how you might get some gold:

1. Buy it. Not much fun, but fast and convenient (compared to the alternatives).
2. Pan for it. Fun to try as a learning experience, and you end up with a little bit of gold. Not really worth the time and expense, though.
3. Mine it. Expensive, but it's the best path to success (if you know what you are doing).

Obtaining bitcoins is the same:

1. Buy it.
2. Mine it with your computer.
3. Buy some hardware and mine it.

How much does mining actually brings up?

[colindean]

How much does mining actually brings up?

It depends on how powerful the mining device is. A CPU? You won't see more than 1 BTC every couple of months. A GPU? Before The Halving, I was mining approximately 4 BTC per month on my Radeon HD 6850 at 191 Mhash/sec.

[HDSolar]

Talk about a bad day to bring this topic up on.  Yesterday maybe but today, oh no 

[colindean]

Day of days, that's for sure. Not many bad days to ask like yesterday's Halving Day.

[Roxyoursox]

This is the first I am hearing of this could someone please explain to me how and why this "halving" is occuring? Isnt this going to make the value of btc rise more then which would average out?

[DannyHamilton]

This is the first I am hearing of this could someone please explain to me how and why this "halving" is occuring?

Because that is the way the bitcoin protocol was designed to work.  Every 210000 blocks, the block reward of freshly minted currency that the miner receives is reduced to half the value of what the previous block reward was.  This is the reason that there will never be more than 21,000,000 bitcoin in existence.

Isnt this going to make the value of btc rise more then which would average out?

The total supply of bitcoin will continue to increase, it will just increase slower than before. This will only result in an increase in value if an increase in demand outpaces the increase in supply.  It is possible that the value will increase in the future, but it is also possible that the value has already increased in expectation of the reduction in block reward and that a slower increase in demand causes the value to drop.  The future can be difficult to predict reliably.

[Roxyoursox]

Oh I see cool. Well thanks for clearing that up.

[slardar]

The total supply of bitcoin will continue to increase, it will just increase slower than before. This will only result in an increase in value if an increase in demand outpaces the increase in supply.  It is possible that the value will increase in the future, but it is also possible that the value has already increased in expectation of the reduction in block reward and that a slower increase in demand causes the value to drop.  The future can be difficult to predict reliably.

Wouldn't the halving of the money supply cause doubling of value of each coin though?

[Roxyoursox]

I think if I am understanding correctly that it would not halve the supply only halve the pace of generation and if more and more people are mining that may not even happen either. Although I am just learning too =D

[DannyHamilton]

Wouldn't the halving of the money supply cause doubling of value of each coin though?

Yes.  If the total supply of all available bitcoins were to be cut in half (and the demand were to stay the same as it is right now), then you could expect the value to increase.  Fortunately, the supply of available bitcoins is not being cut in half, only the rate at which new coins are minted.

Right now there are a total of 10,505,425 BTC in existence.  Prior to yesterday, approximately 7,200 new coins were added to the supply each day.  That is an increase in supply of 0.068536% per day. Now there are 3,600 new coins added to the supply each day.  The supply is still growing only now it is growing by 0.034268% per day.

I think if I am understanding correctly that it would not halve the supply only halve the pace of generation and if more and more people are mining that may not even happen either. . .

No. The protocol is designed to ensure that a new block is created approximately every 10 minutes.  If more and more people are mining, then the difficulty of the block is increased so that we still only get one approximately every 10 minutes.  If people stop mining, then the difficulty is decreased.  The pace of generation is half of what is was 2 days ago.  It will remain at this rate for 210000 blocks (which works out to be a bit less than 4 years) at which time the pace of generation will be cut in half again.  (and so on and so on until the block reward reaches 0.00000001 BTC).