Mining feels pointless these days? Try this...

[wormbog]

After the last difficult increase, my 8x block erupters are mining between .004 and .005 bitcoin every 24 hrs. It hardly seems worth the effort.

Yesterday I was thinking that small miners like myself would start shutting down and getting out of the game entirely over the next few months. That's unfortunate, because as more and more mining power concentrates with big mining operations, there's more opportunity for a corrupt few to collude to abuse or damage the network. Large numbers of small miners are important to keeping bitcoin widely distributed and resistant to attack.

So, to keep the miners running despite diminishing returns, I propose the following:

Forget about mining to earn back your initial hardware investment. Those days are long gone. Instead, use your miners to support your favorite bitcoin charity or organization. Update the payout address at your favorite pool to pay directly to Sean's Outpost, or Let's Talk Bitcoin. Whatever group you like most, send them the fruits of your hashes. Whenever you pay out, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting the bitcoin community.

Here are a couple options to get you started.

Sean's Outpost - feeding the homeless in Pensacola, Florida

Payout to:

1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd

See how donations are going:

https://blockchain.info/address/1M72Sfpbz1BPpXFHz9m3CdqATR44Jvaydd

Confirm that you're donating to the right place:

http://seansoutpost.com/donate/

Let's Talk Bitcoin - high-quality news and analysis

Payout to: 1LTBShowv5nZ2fgZ4hWU7ieeDRNKSAxtov

See how donations are going:

https://blockchain.info/address/1LTBShowv5nZ2fgZ4hWU7ieeDRNKSAxtov

Confirm that you're donating to the right place:

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/e50-georgia-in-october/#.UmBHMWSgkUA (see general support address)

Post more charities/organizations in the comments if you have suggestions.

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[Xian01]

Personally, I think everyone should just aim their payouts to 1LUpr2gJfk4yHNWFAYw9hcFFDsFcMZeULt

[os2sam]

You're definitely right, those things should be supported!

Personally, I think everyone should just aim their payouts to 1LUpr2gJfk4yHNWFAYw9hcFFDsFcMZeULt

Is that your own address..?

No that looks like mine.

[os2sam]

Yesterday I was thinking that small miners like myself would start shutting down and getting out of the game entirely over the next few months.

Why would you think that?

[ladyfox]

normal rig is not doing good nowadays

[pand70]

Forget about mining to earn back your initial hardware investment. Those days are long gone. Instead, use your miners to support your favorite bitcoin charity or organization.]

I wonder if friedcat will use something like that the next time he will try to lure people into buying his overpriced miners.
Till now he was talking crap like usb miners on different colors and protecting the network...

[pengcqu]

Here is a Cloud Miner!

[crudpuppy]

If you do shutdown just send me your hardware and I'll mine with it :-)

[demonmaestro]

If you do shutdown just send me your hardware and I'll mine with it :-)

I second that notion and i will take any hardware that you are not mining with also.

[DobZombie]

Forget about mining to earn back your initial hardware investment. Those days are long gone. Instead, use your miners to support your favorite bitcoin charity or organization. Update the payout address at your favorite pool to pay directly to Sean's Outpost, or Let's Talk Bitcoin. Whatever group you like most, send them the fruits of your hashes. Whenever you pay out, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting the bitcoin community.

Despite all the smartarses in here, I happen to think thats a great idea.

I'll do that with my block erupters when the diff hits 1,000,000,000 <---(this number makes me very sad indeed)

[Icon]

Or.. find an alt coin sha256 mining pool that will transfer your alt coins to btc for you

This is happening on old gpu mining cards..

[crudpuppy]

GPU cards just move em to scrypt where they are still competitive.  Think its more about ASIC owners then anything else since they have 1 purpose only SHA based mining.

[fattypig]

GPU cards just move em to scrypt where they are still competitive.  Think its more about ASIC owners then anything else since they have 1 purpose only SHA based mining.

GPU cards was good with scrypt, but the recent crash of scrypt alt-coin let many people lose their hope and selling their GPU off..