Why are you still mining?

[super3]

All this talk about electricity usage I'm wondering if anyone has a "green mining rig." All I can imagine is a bunch of ASICs hooked up to some solar panels.

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[Flowz]

A lot of hashing power is coming from botnets (network of infected computers).
Even if the block reward drops, they will keep on mining and making money.

[super3]

A lot of hashing power is coming from botnets (network of infected computers).
Even if the block reward drops, they will keep on mining and making money.

Well most people know about this, but is there any rough stats on how much power is actually coming from botnets?

[Blazr]

A lot of hashing power is coming from botnets

I honestly don't think so, maybe back when CPU mining was the thing, but now they'd have to infect people with certain model's of ATI GPU's or mining FPGA's to amount to any amount of hashing power.

[gyverlb]

A lot of hashing power is coming from botnets

I honestly don't think so, maybe back when CPU mining was the thing, but now they'd have to infect people with certain model's of ATI GPU's or mining FPGA's to amount to any amount of hashing power.

Remember that botnet operators don't pay for electricity. So if a 10000 nodes botnet is idle, better make it generate 10GH/s (assuming 1MH/s for each host with a stealth mining mode not using all the CPU power) than sit doing nothing.

[Flowz]

A very rough estimate would be around ~1TH/s.
I have been keeping an eye on the hashrate of some miners on pool, which I suspect to be botnet miners.
I can tell you that I have seen multiple suspected botnet miners reach 60GH/s.

Remember that botnet operators don't pay for electricity. So if a 10000 nodes botnet is idle, better make it generate 10GH/s (assuming 1MH/s for each host with a stealth mining mode not using all the CPU power) than sit doing nothing.

You can go with the estimate of ~3MH/s.
From my analysis, I concluded that number to be the general hashrate.

I honestly don't think so, maybe back when CPU mining was the thing, but now they'd have to infect people with certain model's of ATI GPU's or mining FPGA's to amount to any amount of hashing power.

The big numbers of infected computers compensate the low hashrate.

[Blazr]

I would think that a botnet owner with a 10,000 node botnet would be making a lot of money from it, so much so that the proceeds from mining on it would be nothing in comparison & not worth the risk of having the owners of the infected machines wonder what is using up all the CPU time. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Anyways, 1TH/s is only 4% of the network, definitely not the reason why the hashrate hasn't dropped if that is the hashrate of botnet miners.

[wdBTCtrader]

I do this because I believe their cannot be a true free market if it is controlled by a central bank.  More importantly my business is just that and should  not be scrutinized by some central authority. 

[lens]

All this talk about electricity usage I'm wondering if anyone has a "green mining rig." All I can imagine is a bunch of ASICs hooked up to some solar panels.

Of course there are green mining rigs To power one 220 MH/s FPGA from ztex you need 10Watts which you may easily harvest with one 50WP solar module even in european wintertime. In summertime its possible to to run this FPGA 24hours with one battery buffered 50WP module, in wintertime the energy harvested by such a module is enough for powering 2-4 hours a day, the rest has to be payed...

[molecular]

I still hope that this will pay off in a view years, when we have advanced technology renewable energy sector due to this plan in the and are able to sell this to other countries.

We're already heavily subsidizing photovoltaics for about 15 years now. Does it pay off? Fuck no! The Chinese make all the panels.

Screw subsidies, let the free market be free already, fucking Merkel and everyone else.

Sorry, had to vent.

[Kinetics]

The problem with solar mining is you have 1/3 of a day of good sun and lose 1/3 of your watt capacity to losses during the charging your batteries.

So if you had 100 watts worth of panels it could only drive about ~20 watts 24/7 assuming no bad weather. (however maybe in the future you could get a few gigahashes with just 20 watts)

I will still be mining on 1 small rig intermittently for fun but I am sure the best place for small timers like me is to forget mining and just purchase them with $.

[EskimoBob]

Who says it is not profitable?  In most cases the rigs running today are paid for.  So every BTC earned is additional profit.  When ASIC's hit, then the GPU or FPGA Rigs might not be profitable unless they get free energy. 

Well if someone has hard to sell stuff, then it's profitable, but people should always think about economic opportunity costs. For example I have a 600mhas rig that I can sell easily for 200€. To mine that 200€ at current difficulty if nothing breaks down would take around 8 months, and if something breaks it's one month for a gpu fan, three months for a psu etc.. And most people have to pay for electricity, so the margin is even worse. Basically I think that people are ruining their hardware for less than nothing.

The other concept to keep in mind is that the your mining rig is generating BTC not USD or EUR or the such.  So, if you mine, in hopes that the BTC will go up, then you could cash out in the future at much higher exchange rates.

You can always buy coins and support economy that way.. I was expecting difficulty to drop in few weeks around 20-30%, so that this would be profitable for even some of us.

You are correct. In most cases, miners make "profit" because the have not added together all the actual costs and risks involved (dead GPU, time spent fine tuning it etc.)
What's even stranger is that most miners refuse to understand that mining is actually buying the coin while paying to power Co and hardware manufacturers and so on. At some price/difficulty level this was profitable but now it looks less and less attractive. If someone call 10 EUR a month as profit, they are better off collecting cans and probably make way more.
   
Lets say you bought a fancy GPU(s) 6 monts ago and spent X. What if you took that X and bought BTC? Not only are you liquid this whole time but your risks are also way lower.

Adding those imaginary ASIC's and FPGAs to the picture and you realize that small-time mining is doomed
Good news is that GPU's are perfect for LTC and looks like some have switched over to litecoin
Regardless, mining is just like building and maintaining the infrastructure - "building the roads". Now we need the vehicles, so the roads can serve it's real purpose. What I mean by that is we need more useful services. If you subscribe to the ideas of modern economical models you realize that everything revolves around spending and not hoarding. BTC economy is not different. Miner do not give value to the BTC - services and goods do.   
Cheers!

[fadetrader]

I think you are absolutely right. Mining in my opinion is a silly and expensive project. sure it is necessary and it is not my place to downplay such a task. resources could be much better used elsewhere. think, if people mined coins and just held them, they would have destroyed the market and liquidity to the point the coin would have scaled harder and faster than 30usd per btc. that being said i think this post I am writing is completely stupid. people, keep mining and keep selling your coins and ringing the register.

[lens]

The problem with solar mining is you have 1/3 of a day of good sun and lose 1/3 of your watt capacity to losses during the charging your batteries.

So if you had 100 watts worth of panels it could only drive about ~20 watts 24/7 assuming no bad weather. (however maybe in the future you could get a few gigahashes with just 20 watts)

Mhh, imagine if you get 100 servings of icecream for free BUT you have to give away 20 servings to others, you still have 80 for you to eat, right?. Eat these 80 and be happy instead of grumbling.

[Kinetics]

The problem with solar mining is you have 1/3 of a day of good sun and lose 1/3 of your watt capacity to losses during the charging your batteries.

So if you had 100 watts worth of panels it could only drive about ~20 watts 24/7 assuming no bad weather. (however maybe in the future you could get a few gigahashes with just 20 watts)

Mhh, imagine if you get 100 servings of icecream for free BUT you have to give away 20 servings to others, you still have 80 for you to eat, right?. Eat these 80 and be happy instead of grumbling.

yeah well if you want a kilowatt farm your going to need more than apple analogy to explain it.

[davidster]

i worked out i make about 2 pence/hour with my gpu, Nvidia 560Ti lol i spend more money on electricity

[Gabi]

Nvidia is not good for mining

[idgafos]

Haven't really caught up on where mining was at until now. Haven't mined since the advent of bitcoins. I remember when it was very profitable to mine on my two Nvidia 460's. Now you wouldn't make a cent!

[SgtSpike]

I calculate that the two video cards I have left (a 5850 and 5870) are currently making about 0.1 BTC/day.  I assume they use around 300w of additional electricity beyond just letting the computer idle (which they would be doing anyway).  At $0.10/kwh, 300w means $21.60 in electric costs.

Revenues: 3 BTC/month = $40.80
Expenses: $21.60/month
Profits: $19.20.

Plus, it keeps my office room warm, and the only other option is electric coil heat, which would be exactly as expensive.  May as well generate some BTC with that electricity then.

I realize there is additional wear & tear on the cards, and I AM starting to hear some noise on the 5850 fan.  So there is an additional expense there.

When ASICs are released, I'll stop mining with GPU's.  $4/month won't be worth it.

[Kluge]

Just a couple little FPGAs going, sipping power. - And the GPU in most-used PC does general purpose while mining and providing heat, so it won't stop mining until difficulty at least quintuples. We otherwise don't use much electricity, keeping most of the electricity used for GPU mining in the reduced price tier of the electric company's billing. Cablepair's offering a decent sum for FPGA chips ($75/spartan6 + FS), but not worth it until ASICs hit.