Profitability of mining?

[whitenight639]

Newbie questions...

So how much can I make with a normal single PC in a day or 2? say a dual core 3.0Ghz machine, Is it more feasible to collect bitcoins through free bitcoin advertising sites or to mine them yourself?

Also where can I buy bitcoins in stupidly small amounts like £1 (GBP), £5 etc? Does a service for this exist yet?


Also when you print bitcoin money it has the private key on it right? does the printing of that private key compromise the whole wallet or just that payment address? and what effect does it have on the blockchain, will people printing bitcoins and taking them out of digital circulation ultimately ruin bitcoin?

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[Gabi]

Hello, please read some guides, mining is not a get rich quick scheme. And if you are considering mining with your processor, lol. You need at least a good ATI graphic card. And even with one, today you would make one bitcoin in like two weeks or so. But it is already too late, ASIC mining finally started, farewell GPU mining.
If you want bitcoins you have to buy them, and, indeed, that is what you are asking. And i don't know, sorry, but probably yes

[SlickTheNick]

Dont think about using your PC, it will just waste your time. If you want to make any sort of money, you are going to have to drop probably a couple grand on equipment and have access to cheap electricity.

[Gabi]

You must buy ASICs. GPU mining died the instant the first person received his ASIC 

[tobandan]

Step 1: Acquire currency
Step 2: Buy time machine with said currency
Step 3: Travel 2 years back in time
Step 4: Buy bitcoins at stupidly low prices
Step 5: ?
Step 6: Profit!
Step 7: Travel back to the future and give yourself money that you've earned through bitcoins to buy a time machine

...

[Foxpup]

So how much can I make with a normal single PC in a day or 2? say a dual core 3.0Ghz machine,

Depending on your graphics card (the CPU is useless for mining), you might make a penny or two per day, minus the increased electricity cost of constantly running your computer at full load. Unless you have very cheap electricity, you'll be making a net loss.

Is it more feasible to collect bitcoins through free bitcoin advertising sites or to mine them yourself?

Probably, unless you're willing to spend some money on more specialised mining equipment (FPGAs or ASICs).

Also where can I buy bitcoins in stupidly small amounts like £1 (GBP), £5 etc? Does a service for this exist yet?

Don't know, sorry.

Also when you print bitcoin money it has the private key on it right? does the printing of that private key compromise the whole wallet or just that payment address?

If you're talking about a paper backup of your wallet, allowing anyone else to see it compromises the whole wallet. If you're talking about PrintCoins or Casascius coins and other such things intended to be circulated as cash, then only the address is "compromised", but you want it to be compromised: the idea is that people who receive such bills and coins can use the private key to transfer the bitcoins to their (digital) wallet, after which the bill/coin is worthless and is taken out of circulation.

and what effect does it have on the blockchain, will people printing bitcoins and taking them out of digital circulation ultimately ruin bitcoin?

The blockchain will have fewer transactions, as people conduct some transactions offline, but the bitcoins won't stay offline forever (see above). You might as well ask, "Will people withdrawing cash from their bank accounts ultimately ruin banks?", to which the answer is no, because the cash almost always gets deposited again at some point. Note also that lost or destroyed bitcoins are not a problem, as this simply has the result of increasing the value of all remaining bitcoins (slightly decreased supply + same demand), and bitcoins can be divided to 8 decimal places. Even if so many bitcoins were lost that only a tiny fraction of a bitcoin remained, the economy would still function just fine on that fraction of a bitcoin.

[Walter Rothbard]

Also where can I buy bitcoins in stupidly small amounts like £1 (GBP), £5 etc? Does a service for this exist yet?

You might try coinbase.com or bitinstant.com.  For coinbase, you will need a US bank account.  From the GBP symbol, I'm betting that's probably out for you.

[sublime5447]

I would say that mining is a waste of time and money. I think that mining ltc coins could be profitable. But the miners do a great service for btc so I am glad they are there and hope it stays worth it to them. Still not sure if it will change the rate of coin brought to market with the asics, but it would be great if they speed up the confirmation times

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I would say that mining is a waste of time and money. I think that mining ltc coins could be profitable. But the miners do a great service for btc so I am glad they are there and hope it stays worth it to them. Still not sure if it will change the rate of coin brought to market with the asics, but it would be great if they speed up the confirmation times

ASICs will NOT increase the coins. It will NOT speed confirm times.

6 blocks per hour target
6 * 25 = 125 bitcoins per hour

It can vary as it is only recalculated every ~2000 blocks, but it will not increase the amount of BTC.

[UKMark]

I started mining approx 2 weeks ago (simply just trying to break even eg mh/s to running costs to BTC) but I think I have already seen the effects on Slush's pool once the ASIC's joined in - What seems to happening is that on a short round I can make more bitcoin (well Satoshi's ) But on a grueler of a round it now seems to be considerably less or is this standard for Slush's pool/ any pool?
TIA

[whitenight639]

Thank you guys, 


Is it because of the elliptic curve cryptography that makes GPU mining favourable then?

[itai3856]

you cant really make from normal pc,  to profit from mining you need really good gpu that support this the best
ASIC is the best way you can try to profit from mining

[Timer]

Mining isn't profitable anymore unless you have free power or power at a very low cost. There's some instances where it is, but the profit margin is very low.

[Gabi]

Thank you guys, 


Is it because of the elliptic curve cryptography that makes GPU mining favourable then?

Sha256 hashing. It is heavily parallelable, you can have a GPU hash thousands of different numbers together, each hash is indipendent from the other one. And it happens that GPU excel at parallelable tasks (and sucks at problems where you can do the next operation only after you know the result of the current one)

[MattM]

How easy was it to mine when Bitcoin just came out? I just arrived at this scene. Heard about it years ago and feel really bad I didn't jump in sooner. Oh well, it's still young. It should be a good investment for the next couple of years.

[doctorgig]

You really should consider litecoin mining, but with out a good GPU you will only make pennies a day!

[Walter Rothbard]

How easy was it to mine when Bitcoin just came out? I just arrived at this scene. Heard about it years ago and feel really bad I didn't jump in sooner. Oh well, it's still young. It should be a good investment for the next couple of years.

Unless you have an advantage for mining or already have an investment in mining, I think the most profitable thing you can do for bitcoin and for yourself is to run a business in the bitcoin economy and make it profitable.  What good or service can you sell to bitcoiners?  Start thinking about that, and you'll probably be able to do better than you would mining.

[RodeoX]

The phases of mining started with CPU mining. In the beginning the client could also mine. You just start it up and hope. Next came GPU mining on video cards. This is a much more powerful way to mine. As more people got into mining using a GPU pool helped to be more profitable. Now with ASIC miners, one must buy special equipment made just for BTC mining if you want to be profitable.

[rpgman1]

So it looks like the only way to profit from BTC mining is to buy an ASIC device? What about LTC or NMC mining and what tools do I need to get started on those two?

[mjc]

Get a copy of my book Bitcoin Step by Step its free today Feb, 2013.  It goes over most of what you are asking.  As for mining, don;t use CPU or GPU use ASIC.  If you are unsure what that is visit www.butterflylabs.com and read up.  Good luck.