freebitco.in "Browser Mining" - is it worth it?

[G.Seed]

I was curious so I tried it with moonbitcoin yesterday and it installed a "bitcoin miner" in the "cache" directory of my browser. It has been identified as a riskware by my anti-virus so I deleted it.

I am a chosen one by freebitco.in but I won't activate mining, I think it is useless for the moment.

[Chris314]

Trying freebitco.in mining, gives me around 25 sat an hour with a PC. Interesting only on a computer/device you don't pay energy for.
No risk of overheating btw, CPU of modern devices slows himself when getting too hot.

[jonsi]

Got a notification in freebitco.in "Use your browser to passively mine bitcoin and receive mining rewards instantly to your FreeBitco.in account, credited every 5 minutes." Anyone has any idea how this works and is it worth it? Is there any chance of laptop/PC being damaged from this sort of "mining"?
...

To put it in a way that's easy to understand: To mine bitcoin with your browser (aka: with your CPU) it's like tring to empty an ocean with a spoon. Now think about how much this is worth and you have your answer if you should do it or not. This is beside the additional risk of instaling some sort of malware.

Nobody can tell you what to do, but comparing the risk (high risk) and the rewards (practically 0) I'm shure you will make the right decision.

[Golftech]

Trying freebitco.in mining, gives me around 25 sat an hour with a PC. Interesting only on a computer/device you don't pay energy for.
No risk of overheating btw, CPU of modern devices slows himself when getting too hot.

That's cool using someone computers and make sure that you are not going to pay the rent I'm thinking that this trial pace will give us updates the rewards are low and the risk that we are taking is not worthy, maybe the owner will give some more rewards so people who play their will also use the mining service for additional earnings.

[dapollonsky]

This isn't anything new, there's other services that provide similar browser mining functionality like Coin-Hive.

[Slark]

This one seems to be their another failed attempt to look different than another faucet out there.

It is certain that freebitco.in is creating other opportunities to earn bitcoin and grab people's attention.
They have to do this because faucets are kinda pointless nowadays. So this new premise 'mine bitcoin in your browser and earn BTC' is a fat big lie.
This is nothing but pushing the concept of a faucet to another level. You are earning faucet level of income while giving them your computing power? No thank you.

[buwaytress]

This one seems to be their another failed attempt to look different than another faucet out there.

It is certain that freebitco.in is creating other opportunities to earn bitcoin and grab people's attention.
They have to do this because faucets are kinda pointless nowadays. So this new premise 'mine bitcoin in your browser and earn BTC' is a fat big lie.
This is nothing but pushing the concept of a faucet to another level. You are earning faucet level of income while giving them your computing power? No thank you.

I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing something like this - if you're open and transparent about it, as the faucets doing this seem to be. It's no different from telling you to unblock ads so you can view them and get part of their ad revenue back as faucet earnings. What I'm very interested in though, is if this is actually a viable way to improve revenue. You know sites like wikipedia that keep asking for donations? How about asking readers to "mine" for them while reading the page? It's a small sacrifice for free content.

[Kprawn]

The moment I clicked on the mining tab at the top, the antivirus software flagged this page as a malicious software. I have

been with them for years and they have brought constant innovation regularly, but I will skip this new feature for now. Yes,

you might get some Satoshi's from this, but the extra load on your CPU/GPU will offset the gain. < extra electricity burned > 

[albertorma]

I'm pretty sure it's mining monero. This browser miner seems very usable and it can be used in multiple devices. However, in my humble opinion, this is not worth. If you want to mine, you should setup a perfectly optimized device, which is far away from a simple browser miner.

Besides Freebitco.in isn't an ONG. They will get some %, which will make mining even less worth.

[squatter]

Trying freebitco.in mining, gives me around 25 sat an hour with a PC. Interesting only on a computer/device you don't pay energy for.
No risk of overheating btw, CPU of modern devices slows himself when getting too hot.

Yeah, this is more of a novelty than anything else. If you run the numbers, you could net ~ 0.00018 BTC per month per PC with this. My electricity is actually paid by the owner, so I guess I could net 0.00018 BTC in profit per month, but I'm not sure it's worth keeping the PC on with browser running 24/7. Clearly, though, this could be very profitable if one were running a botnet. The Pirate Bay might have been onto something!

[TryNinja]

If you are really going to invest some time in this - which I wouldn't recommend -, it's better if you just go mine directly from the provider, which is CoinHive (the same used by ThePirateBay and FreeBitcoin) instead of using FreeBitcoin, which will take a part of your profits for themselves.

Btw, they are mining Monero. If you want to read the details, check the CoinHive website[1].

[1] https://coin-hive.com/

[jtipt]

Trying freebitco.in mining, gives me around 25 sat an hour with a PC. Interesting only on a computer/device you don't pay energy for.
No risk of overheating btw, CPU of modern devices slows himself when getting too hot.

Yeah, this is more of a novelty than anything else. If you run the numbers, you could net ~ 0.00018 BTC per month per PC with this. My electricity is actually paid by the owner, so I guess I could net 0.00018 BTC in profit per month, but I'm not sure it's worth keeping the PC on with browser running 24/7. Clearly, though, this could be very profitable if one were running a botnet. The Pirate Bay might have been onto something!

Yeah it's actually waste of time and not at all profitable, in comparison to this even the faucet would get you more profit. And yes the CPU won't overheat a lot but extended usage of cpu at 100% will damage it considerably, you won't notice it damage now but it would surely reduce its lifetime.

[Rahar02]

Tried it out for about 3 hours yesterday.

Received 11 satoshi...

worth it  

That would be a big NO from me 

Indeed, the idea of mining using laptop/PC is not worth for sure.
Mining require super computer and powerful gpu to build mining rig.
I'm not sure what intention they have to offer browser mining which will generate nothing or damage your computer.
3 hours and 11 satoshi isn't worth at all, even you have to pay more for electricity
Anyway, this is a good information for everyone.

[cafucafucafu]

If you are really going to invest some time in this - which I wouldn't recommend -, it's better if you just go mine directly from the provider, which is CoinHive (the same used by ThePirateBay and FreeBitcoin) instead of using FreeBitcoin, which will take a part of your profits for themselves.

Btw, they are mining Monero. If you want to read the details, check the CoinHive website[1].

[1] https://coin-hive.com/

The link is actually not working at the moment. Here's their GitHub repository if anyone needs it: https://github.com/cazala/coin-hive

Basically freebitco.in is taking an existing product anyone can access and taking a share from the profits you generate. Not only is it not worth it to mine if you have no special setup in the first place, why would you give freebitco.in a cut for doing nothing?

You could literally either use the coinhive miner or download the monero GUI and start mining. Else, join a pool.

[wetsuit]

Just to clarify some points that have been made here:

1). Your browser is mining monero and we are auto-converting it into bitcoin at the current prices
2). We are giving 100% of what we make back to users, we are taking a 0% cut.
3). The mining is completely optional, we are not running the miner automatically or forcing anyone to use it. If you feel it is profitable for you, then use it. If not, then don't.

If there is enough interest, I might try to reverse-engineer the miner so that we can keep 100% of the revenue and share all of it with the users. We do not expect to make any profit for this, it's only an additional revenue stream for faucet users.

[TryNinja]

2). We are giving 100% of what we make back to users, we are taking a 0% cut.

If that's the case, props on you for making that choice and not trying to profit more at the expense of your users.

And in this case, I would recommend the "low-end user" to use Freebitcoin instead of Coin-hive, since their minimum for withdraws is 0.0003 BTC or ~0.012 XMR, while Coin-hive requires you to mine at least 0.5 XMR or ~0.012 BTC - which may take forever if you are running the miner with a bad PC.

[moopser]

Just tried it out.
~3 hours +73 satoshi.
Used it on a working laptop (i5 4x2.3Ghz). Settings were: 2 threads and 50% and 4 threads 100% (1.5h per each).

While was on 50% I had on youtube, Hearthstone game and Bitstamp trading view window, not considering 3 xls working windows, outlook and ie with some working pages.
Imo, this "mining" can be easily used in background if:
1. you are freebitcoin faucet user
2. you are not overloading your pc/lap with it

Free satoshi for just keeping one browser window on (even on minimum "mining" settings) are still free satoshi. So why not?

[richardsNY]

Just tried it out.
~3 hours +73 satoshi.
Used it on a working laptop (i5 4x2.3Ghz). Settings were: 2 threads and 50% and 4 threads 100% (1.5h per each).

While was on 50% I had on youtube, Hearthstone game and Bitstamp trading view window, not considering 3 xls working windows, outlook and ie with some working pages.
Imo, this "mining" can be easily used in background if:
1. you are freebitcoin faucet user
2. you are not overloading your pc/lap with it

Free satoshi for just keeping one browser window on (even on minimum "mining" settings) are still free satoshi. So why not?

If you look at your 73 satoshi reward for around 3 hours worth of mining, then it can be seen as a pure waste of time and resources. If anyone is that desperate to make a few dust particles, then just farm your way through any faucet you can find -- there are several apps that you can install that will allow you to earn like 1000 satoshi per hour in total. It's still peanuts and not worth the time you put into it, but at least its far more 'profitable' than what you are doing with your browser. It's just a lame way for people to earn something while they feel it is completely effortlessly....

[pinoyden]

Got a notification in freebitco.in "Use your browser to passively mine bitcoin and receive mining rewards instantly to your FreeBitco.in account, credited every 5 minutes." Anyone has any idea how this works and is it worth it? Is there any chance of laptop/PC being damaged from this sort of "mining"?

i think its worth it, only if your running it on a pc with higher specs because its mining and mining usually works depending on your cpu/gpu and mining on browser is not really profitable unless your running it on multiple pc's with multiple tabs open and leave it on for quite some time. id also tried this new feauture of freebitco on my phone which has quadcore procesor and i can see it that its actually mining and hashes are moving but it takes a long time to earn  some btc even if im leaving my phone idle for hours.

[magneto]

Just to clarify some points that have been made here:

1). Your browser is mining monero and we are auto-converting it into bitcoin at the current prices
2). We are giving 100% of what we make back to users, we are taking a 0% cut.
3). The mining is completely optional, we are not running the miner automatically or forcing anyone to use it. If you feel it is profitable for you, then use it. If not, then don't.

If there is enough interest, I might try to reverse-engineer the miner so that we can keep 100% of the revenue and share all of it with the users. We do not expect to make any profit for this, it's only an additional revenue stream for faucet users.

Nice of you to give back 100% of the revenue to the actual users. This makes more sense to use you guys for the convenience, rather than downloading the actual monero GUI or coinhive yourself.

However, have you considered the fact that it is likely not going to get much hash rate in total to even pay for the monero transaction fees considering most people don't have special rigs(unless you pay with low fees)?

I'd be interested to see a similar web miner except for dogecoin, which has a very low tx fee.