Mining altcoins for "profitability" is stupid.

[ianbakewell]

i don't think bitcoin will ever fade away. I think it has solidified itself as THE cryptocurrency. All of the altcoins wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't exchange for bitcoin.

So this comment in another thread got me thinking... why go through the hassle of the conversion from alt->bit to extract value vs just using bitcoin?
What would make an altcoin more valuable to a miner than just working the hashes on the bitcoin blockchain?

Outside of idealism and wanting to support a new idea/implementation in one of the alt's, why would someone bother?

Not trying to talk smack - genuinely trying to figure out if switching my hashpower to something new would be worthwhile.... and if so, why.

[tacotime]

Troll harder

[GenTarkin]

Thats kinda how I feel. The way I see it, all alt coins are worthless based on the fact they have no real economy beyond mining speculation. Until that changes, BTC will remain king and alt coins have no hope of a future.

But at the same time, if ur good playin the trading game you can make a killing off other miners speculation through dabbling in alt coins.
I just dont find the trouble worth it most of the time. =P

[notme]

i don't think bitcoin will ever fade away. I think it has solidified itself as THE cryptocurrency. All of the altcoins wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't exchange for bitcoin.

So this comment in another thread got me thinking... why go through the hassle of the conversion from alt->bit to extract value vs just using bitcoin?
What would make an altcoin more valuable to a miner than just working the hashes on the bitcoin blockchain?

Outside of idealism and wanting to support a new idea/implementation in one of the alt's, why would someone bother?

Not trying to talk smack - genuinely trying to figure out if switching my hashpower to something new would be worthwhile.... and if so, why.

Mining altcoins extracts money from people who speculate in altcoins.  If too many people switch to an altcoin and they only care about btc, it will drive the price down and then you may as well switch back to btc.

[markm]

Too many people who only care about fiat mine bitcoin, that seems to be a lot of why its price in terms of fiat is so insanely low still.

Maybe now its mining reward has halved fiat-based opportunists will rape bitcoin a little less and it can start to climb again like it did back before the mybitcoin fiasco; though the massive amounts of fraud hacking and theft doubtless also has a lot to do with its insanely low value.

-MarkM-

[SebastianJu]

i don't think bitcoin will ever fade away. I think it has solidified itself as THE cryptocurrency. All of the altcoins wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't exchange for bitcoin.

So this comment in another thread got me thinking... why go through the hassle of the conversion from alt->bit to extract value vs just using bitcoin?
What would make an altcoin more valuable to a miner than just working the hashes on the bitcoin blockchain?

Outside of idealism and wanting to support a new idea/implementation in one of the alt's, why would someone bother?

Not trying to talk smack - genuinely trying to figure out if switching my hashpower to something new would be worthwhile.... and if so, why.

For example litecoins cant be mined with fpga or asics which means gpus are the last best thing to mine. So now many miner will switch to litecoin because they still can make profit there. Plus, the last months it was the case that gpu-mining litecoins was more profitable than mining bitcoins with the same gpu.

On top of it litecoins have a genuine feature. One block is created every 2.5minutes instead 10minutes like with bitcoins. Which brings faster transactions.

And yes, you cant buy much with litecoins yet. You are mostly bound to direct trades with other humans. For example selling a service. But bitcoin wasnt another thing for many months after it started. No one knew about bitcoins and the userbase and shopping places had to grow first.

[Icoin]

litecoins cant be mined with fpga or asics

thats incorrect, of course they can be mined with FPGA, we dnt know about ASIC yet, but as long you dont use BFL you can mine Litecoin with FPGA. And indeed there is economy around the alts, i rather take devcoins then Bitcoins everything ECA related for example. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110884.msg1332267#msg1332267

So this comment in another thread got me thinking... why go through the hassle of the conversion from alt->bit to extract value vs just using bitcoin?
What would make an altcoin more valuable to a miner than just working the hashes on the bitcoin blockchain?

Its not about having one chain that solves everything, this is the crap fiat goes actualy trough and in your thinkin you do the same mistake again. The Bitcoin blockchain builds the basis for tousends of ofspring chains, that will be used for 1000 of purposes To simply consider a chain worth something only cause if its market value is to short tought.
Trough merged mining all of this ofspringchains can be feeded with hashrate simultanously, the only limit is the capacity of your system.
This allows to multiply your hashpower for many chains in the same time. Merged mining is essential for the birth of new chains, all non merged mining capable chains will suffer a lack of hashpower without it.
Ahh yes when you use non sha256 based (like LTC or SC or PPC) chains thats inpossible to do MM by now.

[SebastianJu]

litecoins cant be mined with fpga or asics

thats incorrect, of course they can be mined with FPGA, we dnt know about ASIC yet, but as long you dont use BFL you can mine Litecoin with FPGA.

Asics cant definitely be used for mining litecoins because asics are hardware created to solve a certain algorithm. You would need to create a special asic for litecoins to mine litecoins and no one bothered to do this yet.

And fpga work too? And its done too already? I always have read that gpu are the last thing that can be used for mining litecoins because they use a different algorithm especially created for making cpu-mining profitable.

[Icoin]

And fpga work too? And its done too already? I always have read that gpu are the last thing that can be used for mining litecoins because they use a different algorithm especially created for making cpu-mining profitable.

Yes, it works and its done with FPGA https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79835.0 the best way is to setup a p2pool mining node https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62842.0

[tacotime]

Everyone is mining btc with those boards

There's been a million threads with why fpgas suck balls for litecoin mining (because the memory interface and the memory itself is way too slow)

[Icoin]

Everyone is mining btc with those boards

Well you are right i prefer sha256 based aswell, thats why miners can do merged mining and multiply profit this way.

[notme]

i don't think bitcoin will ever fade away. I think it has solidified itself as THE cryptocurrency. All of the altcoins wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't exchange for bitcoin.

So this comment in another thread got me thinking... why go through the hassle of the conversion from alt->bit to extract value vs just using bitcoin?
What would make an altcoin more valuable to a miner than just working the hashes on the bitcoin blockchain?

Outside of idealism and wanting to support a new idea/implementation in one of the alt's, why would someone bother?

Not trying to talk smack - genuinely trying to figure out if switching my hashpower to something new would be worthwhile.... and if so, why.

For example litecoins cant be mined with fpga or asics which means gpus are the last best thing to mine. So now many miner will switch to litecoin because they still can make profit there. Plus, the last months it was the case that gpu-mining litecoins was more profitable than mining bitcoins with the same gpu.

On top of it litecoins have a genuine feature. One block is created every 2.5minutes instead 10minutes like with bitcoins. Which brings faster transactions.

And yes, you cant buy much with litecoins yet. You are mostly bound to direct trades with other humans. For example selling a service. But bitcoin wasnt another thing for many months after it started. No one knew about bitcoins and the userbase and shopping places had to grow first.

That is not a significant feature.  With litecoin it takes 24 blocks to get the same security on your transaction as bitcoin does in 6 blocks.  There is no way to speed up time.

[Akka]

That is not a significant feature.  With litecoin it takes 24 blocks to get the same security on your transaction as bitcoin does in 6 blocks.  There is no way to speed up time.

Exactly, it makes no different if you need one hour with 51% to get ahead 1 Block or 15 Minutes with 51% to get ahead 1 Block, oh wait. Does this mean Litecoin is actually less secure? (Note: No actually calculation did, number are definitely wrong).

Also, to the Topic:

If everyone did just get into Alternate coins right now due to the profitability, meaning immediately exchanging them for BTC. That would drive down their value near to zero pretty fast. Some currently have value due to miners not exchanging all of them.

So I agree, mining altcoins solely for "profitability" is stupid.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

With litecoin it takes 24 blocks to get the same security on your transaction as bitcoin does in 6 blocks.  There is no way to speed up time.

That's not how it works. 6 confirmations is considered secure because someone with 10% of the hashrate has a tiny chance of catching up from 6 blocks behind. It doesn't matter how much time each block takes because the relevant process is non-temporal. Assuming sustained 10% attacker hashrate, 6 confirmations in Litecoin is as secure as 6 confirmations in Bitcoin. This is clearly explained in Satoshi's paper.

But yeah, it's not a significant feature, for other reasons.

[smoothie]

IMO there is great profit potential in Alt coins. Call it leverage.

1000% of your investment is not out of the ordinary. I've done it and also doubled my investment in a matter of 3 weeks at times.

[SebastianJu]

With litecoin it takes 24 blocks to get the same security on your transaction as bitcoin does in 6 blocks.  There is no way to speed up time.

That's not how it works. 6 confirmations is considered secure because someone with 10% of the hashrate has a tiny chance of catching up from 6 blocks behind. It doesn't matter how much time each block takes because the relevant process is non-temporal. Assuming sustained 10% attacker hashrate, 6 confirmations in Litecoin is as secure as 6 confirmations in Bitcoin. This is clearly explained in Satoshi's paper.

But yeah, it's not a significant feature, for other reasons.

10%? How does this work? I thought you need 51% to overwhelm the network with your view of the blockchain.
And isnt it so that 6 confirmations give nearly no higher security than 1 or 2 confirmations? I thought so till now. Thats why smpake can exist i thought.

IMO there is great profit potential in Alt coins. Call it leverage.

1000% of your investment is not out of the ordinary. I've done it and also doubled my investment in a matter of 3 weeks at times.

Care to explain how this works? Only buy low, sell high or is there a trick involved?

[Meni Rosenfeld]

With litecoin it takes 24 blocks to get the same security on your transaction as bitcoin does in 6 blocks.  There is no way to speed up time.

That's not how it works. 6 confirmations is considered secure because someone with 10% of the hashrate has a tiny chance of catching up from 6 blocks behind. It doesn't matter how much time each block takes because the relevant process is non-temporal. Assuming sustained 10% attacker hashrate, 6 confirmations in Litecoin is as secure as 6 confirmations in Bitcoin. This is clearly explained in Satoshi's paper.

But yeah, it's not a significant feature, for other reasons.

10%? How does this work? I thought you need 51% to overwhelm the network with your view of the blockchain.
And isnt it so that 6 confirmations give nearly no higher security than 1 or 2 confirmations? I thought so till now. Thats why smpake can exist i thought.

You can always attempt to double spend, and your chance to succeed depends on your hashrate and the number of confirmations the receiver waits for. With >50% you always succeed (given enough time) no matter how many confirmations are used. With <50% you can fail. With 10% you have some chance if the merchant waits for 1-2 confirms, but with 6 confirms you'll almost certainly fail.

1-confirm txs are practically safe because there aren't many people with 10% hashrate. But if you receive a 10K BTC transaction you'll want to wait for more confirms, depending on how much hashrate an attacker is likely to have (and again, if he has >50% all bets are off).

[SebastianJu]

Thanks for explaination!

[bitcon]

IMO there is great profit potential in Alt coins. Call it leverage.

1000% of your investment is not out of the ordinary. I've done it and also doubled my investment in a matter of 3 weeks at times.

Care to explain how this works? Only buy low, sell high or is there a trick involved?
[/quote]

he probly means by just mining and selling. i've already paid for the cost of my GPUs from mining litecoins for a few weeks.  from here out is pure profit. i will probably hold however once gox announces they will exchange ltc, they will be worth wven more.

[digitalindustry]

Troll harder

what he said.