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

[sweetdesirez]

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"?

[mocacinno]

If it's really BTC mining, i wouldn't bother.... Chance of your pc overheating would be a lot bigger than chance of making enough BTC to withdraw, ever.

I found this old thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9042.msg130903#msg130903

I can't quote the post, since the thread is locked, but SoreGums gave following hashrates:

Chrome13-canary: ~15.2k/s
FF4: ~6.4k/s
Safari5: ~6.2k/s
IE9: ~1.6k/s

plugging those numbers into coinwarz:
coinwarz link

0 sat/year...

So, they're either not really mining in the background, and just use this miner as an excuse to make you stay on their page and watch their ads, or they're doing something completely different using your computer and pay you in BTC (like mining monero, or they're doing something useless that will break your pc without any profit.

[TheQuin]

There's no danger of doing any damage to your computer. Also, you can set the % low so that you don't stress out the CPU and you can continue to use the PC at the same time. As to whether it's worth it financially, we don't really know yet as Wetsuit hasn't finalised the mining reward. This will happen after testing is complete and it has been rolled out to the whole userbase. Then we can work out if the rewards cover the cost of electricity.

I really don't think it is mining BTC directly, I assume it's mining XMR and that's being traded for BTC.

[BigBadBitBaron]

Tried it out for about 3 hours yesterday.

Received 11 satoshi...

worth it  

That would be a big NO from me 

[TheQuin]

Tried it out for about 3 hours yesterday.

Received 11 satoshi...

worth it  

That would be a big NO from me 

What hardware were you mining on?
I just did the maths on my old i5-3750K.

Set at 20% in the background for the last 4 hours averaged 20.85 sat/hr based on 10c KW/hr electricity and $4000 BTC.
I measured an 8.5w increase in CPU power so that's $0.00085 to make $0.000834 of BTC. So just about break-even at the moment, could be worth it if BTC goes up or they increase the rewards like they say.

[buwaytress]

I was just asking this question, seeing moonbitcoin and piratebay have offered this option. I wonder if it's any coincidence two of the oldest faucet sites started offering it today? And thanks to mocacinno for his usual helpful links. I was looking into these options myself. It definitely doesn't seem worth it for BTC. CPU mining hasn't been profitable for a very long time. But Monero even gets some amount on my old laptop, so I believe you're right. It's probably Monero mining.

[BrewMaster]

did they already stop doing this? or is it special for certain users only?
i just checked the website and there is no "mining" option on top:

...
What hardware were you mining on?
I just did the maths on my old i5-3750K.

Set at 20% in the background for the last 4 hours averaged 20.85 sat/hr based on 10c KW/hr electricity and $4000 BTC.
I measured an 8.5w increase in CPU power so that's $0.00085 to make $0.000834 of BTC. So just about break-even at the moment, could be worth it if BTC goes up or they increase the rewards like they say.

it still doesn't seem to be worth it to be honest!
and i feel like they are getting shady a little. first with all the lotteries and rewards and then with the profit on your deposit then calling themselves a "wallet" and now this!

[TheQuin]

did they already stop doing this? or is it special for certain users only?
i just checked the website and there is no "mining" option on top:

...
What hardware were you mining on?
I just did the maths on my old i5-3750K.

Set at 20% in the background for the last 4 hours averaged 20.85 sat/hr based on 10c KW/hr electricity and $4000 BTC.
I measured an 8.5w increase in CPU power so that's $0.00085 to make $0.000834 of BTC. So just about break-even at the moment, could be worth it if BTC goes up or they increase the rewards like they say.

it still doesn't seem to be worth it to be honest!
and i feel like they are getting shady a little. first with all the lotteries and rewards and then with the profit on your deposit then calling themselves a "wallet" and now this!

Yeah all that profit and rewards, well shady obvs.

If you have something a bit more modern and efficient than my old i5 it probably is profitable. My PC is on all day anyway why not leave a browser tab digging a few more satoshis to a site I use anyway?

[maeusi]

Awesome. Freebitco.in seems always good for a nice surprise. Will try that out with my mobile device. Maybe I will get a few shares confirmed. Many thanks to OP for sharing.

[lite]

It's not worth it to mine using cpu(even if one's mining monero).  if you however have gpu(s) and cheap electricity then making good amount of money is possible.
it's nice to see freebitcoin making new ways for the users to earn btc, but this browser mining isn't useful.

[illusioNiZt]

Just checked this feature out the moment I clicked start mining CPU usage was 100% when I set it on 80% on website, I closed it right away my processor is potato and I am sure it won't be worth it for me even if I keep it on for hours looks interesting though, will this feature work on mobile phone browser as well?

[panjul07]

Awesome. Freebitco.in seems always good for a nice surprise. Will try that out with my mobile device. Maybe I will get a few shares confirmed. Many thanks to OP for sharing.

Do you really want to try this? Someone has shared his experience already, didn't you notice it? It will not worth to try, you may break your mobile phone because of overheat. I'm sure if you know the calculation then you will not try to risk your device for nothing.

[swogerino]

If it's really BTC mining, i wouldn't bother.... Chance of your pc overheating would be a lot bigger than chance of making enough BTC to withdraw, ever.

I found this old thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9042.msg130903#msg130903

I can't quote the post, since the thread is locked, but SoreGums gave following hashrates:

Chrome13-canary: ~15.2k/s
FF4: ~6.4k/s
Safari5: ~6.2k/s
IE9: ~1.6k/s

plugging those numbers into coinwarz:
coinwarz link

0 sat/year...

So, they're either not really mining in the background, and just use this miner as an excuse to make you stay on their page and watch their ads, or they're doing something completely different using your computer and pay you in BTC (like mining monero, or they're doing something useless that will break your pc without any profit.

I think they are mining Monero with our CPU power, this has been done without telling users , abusively from Thepiratabay which shut down a few weeks ago. Many users reported a certain website miner and activity of CPU at 100% and after some time were found that they were using users PC-s to mine Monero.

[maeusi]

Awesome. Freebitco.in seems always good for a nice surprise. Will try that out with my mobile device. Maybe I will get a few shares confirmed. Many thanks to OP for sharing.

Do you really want to try this? Someone has shared his experience already, didn't you notice it? It will not worth to try, you may break your mobile phone because of overheat. I'm sure if you know the calculation then you will not try to risk your device for nothing.

No, didn't notice that Thanks for warning. Thaught, it would work like the minergate app. Just wanted to try out for fun, not expecting profit results.

[amacar2]

Mining option seems no more accessible on the site because it might have created lots of negative reviews for freebitco.in they might be trying to do something different but people might actually burn their laptop/pc when trying to get few satoshi from this type of bitcoin mining.

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

[sylance]

I think this is a cool idea but not for Bitcoin.  It's a great way to remove adds from sites; have CPU/GPU power plug away at a crypto instead of watching annoying ads.  The only problem will be the sleazy sites that abuse it and pull processing power without notification, or even worse figure out a way to do it even when not on their site.

[mrcash02]

Mining option seems no more accessible on the site because it might have created lots of negative reviews for freebitco.in they might be trying to do something different but people might actually burn their laptop/pc when trying to get few satoshi from this type of bitcoin mining.

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

It's accessible yet, not for everyone as it's an experiment yet for few or some users.

I don't know yet if it worth, maybe for who has powerful machines it can be interesting, but for who has cheap laptops it won't be profitable, it won't pay even the electricity you are spending. Anyway if you want to check when the time comes for all, just set low CPU usage to prevent damage to your laptop.

[bapparabi]

but not sure if you get accurate amount of hash and profit form cpu mining as may be they use same to mine somewhere else and make more profit .. if someone have done any income can share there sceenshot

[abhinav_thakur01]

My hashrate is showing around 1-2 H/s . Hashes solved increasing but is the total mining income updated per hour ?

[TheQuin]

Mining option seems no more accessible on the site because it might have created lots of negative reviews for freebitco.in they might be trying to do something different but people might actually burn their laptop/pc when trying to get few satoshi from this type of bitcoin mining.

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

It's accessible yet, not for everyone as it's an experiment yet for few or some users.

I don't know yet if it worth, maybe for who has powerful machines it can be interesting, but for who has cheap laptops it won't be profitable, it won't pay even the electricity you are spending. Anyway if you want to check when the time comes for all, just set low CPU usage to prevent damage to your laptop.

You're correct that this is just in beta testing and still being rolled out to more users, most certainly not a failed experiment. There is a lot of nonsense being posted about this. You can turn the % CPU used up and down in increments of 10% so there is no reason to overheat anything.
I think you're right about cheap laptops, but with a modern desktop, it looks quite promising. I'm using an old i5 processor at 20% in the background and I've calculated that it's running at about breakeven so if you have something newer and more efficient than that it should be worth doing.