[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[dga]

The biggest thing Monero would benefit from right now, is a GPU miner.  CPU-only is a guaranteed way to put the majority of the coins in the hands of criminals/botnet owners.

Will Monero ever have a GPU miner?

CryptoNote is about more than just privacy. It's about freedom. That's the point of egalitarian mining. Live in an oppressive state? Fuck you, government! Anyone with an internet connection can download the miner and receive a fair share of money. What's the point of anonymous transactions if only priviledged individuals can get the coins? What's the point of a fair launch and fair distribution if the rich get disproportionately richer via priviledged mining?

I'm sorry if you have a snazzy GPU farm that you're dieing to take advantage of, but Monero doesn't play favorites. It goes against the entire philosophy of this currency. I'm fairly certain that the developers and other contributing parties agree with me (speak up if you don't). Even if they are unanimously brainwashed into thinking GPU mining is a good idea, I will fight tooth and nail to make sure it never gets implemented. I swear to God, I will haunt this thread for as long as it exists and scare the bejesus out of anyone who dares to come up with some half-brained argument to enable privileged mining.

Absolutely absurd.  CPU mined coins are not "fair" in any measurable way.  CPU-only mining results in botnet owners/criminals manipulating the network.  Period.  Your cheap i3 will never get a reasonable portion of the network, because there will be millions of drone computers mining for their masters.  GPU mining levels the field.

Actually I don't think a GPU can be faster one-on-one, as the PoW depends heavily on the characteristics of the CPU. If CryptoNight ASICS do become a reality, I believe the GPU mining phase will be skipped entirely.

Highly unlikely.  This was said about scrypt (which became rapidly GPU mined) - in fact many things ring very similar. The main 'protections' against GPUs and ASICs that are claimed of CryptoNight are related to L3 cache speed and scratchpad size requirements.  Guess what?  The same was said about scrypt...

I was waiting to discuss this in more detail until the AES-NI optimizations were released.

So let's jump in:

CryptoNight makes three decisions differently than scrypt does:
  - Its central bit-mixing function is one round of AES, which is a single instruction on modern Intel CPUs, but requires quite a bit more computation on GPUs.
  - It mixes in 128-bit quantities instead of the 512-bit quantities that scrypt does.  This favors CPUs a bit because the wider memory bus of the GPU won't provide an advantage.
   - It writes back to the mixing scratchpad to prevent LOOKUP_GAP style optimizations.

I said it earlier:  I think CN is GPU-able.  But these design differences *will* shrink the CPU-to-GPU gap compared to scrypt.  My *hunch* is that GPUs will still have a slight advantage in cost-per-hash-per-second, but I'm honestly not sure.  The designers of this PoW clearly learned from scrypt and made progress.  I look forward to seeing what happens on this one - whomever designed the PoW was clever.

[aminorex]

you will see malware detectors (false positive) flagging the miners

This happened to me today, for the first time.

[phzi]

You're wrong about this. I have a screen shot that was PMed to me by someone who paid a lot of money for a lot of servers to mine this coin. He won't be outed by me ever but he does in fact exist. Truth.

There is little to no evidence of any massive botnet involvement with this coin. If and when it does happen, you will see malware detectors (false positive) flagging the miners, because the miners get incorporated into malware. If you knew as much as you claim to know about botnet mining, you would know this.

FUD bombing or trolling, which is it?

Hah... sounds more like FUD to me then anything else posted here.  "I have a screen shot that was PMed to me by someone".... WHOA NELLY! STOP THE PRESSES!

And there is at least one version of the miner that is definitely detected (falsely) by AV now.

I'd say your FUD bombing AND trolling... I was trying to extend a conversation about why GPU mining would be a positive step.

[smooth]

you will see malware detectors (false positive) flagging the miners

This happened to me today, for the first time.

Okay, well that being the case there probably is malware mining the coin, but if you know where to look you can still tell its not happening on a large scale. At least not yet.

What miner got flagged? If it was cpuminer, that could be a flag left over from the old (pre-CryptoNight) cpuminer. If simpleminer got flagged, that's pretty likely a real hit.

[smooth]

You're wrong about this. I have a screen shot that was PMed to me by someone who paid a lot of money for a lot of servers to mine this coin. He won't be outed by me ever but he does in fact exist. Truth.

There is little to no evidence of any massive botnet involvement with this coin. If and when it does happen, you will see malware detectors (false positive) flagging the miners, because the miners get incorporated into malware. If you knew as much as you claim to know about botnet mining, you would know this.

FUD bombing or trolling, which is it?

Hah... sounds more like FUD to me then anything else posted here.  "I have a screen shot that was PMed to me by someone".... WHOA NELLY! STOP THE PRESSES!

You don't have to believe it if you don't want. Perhaps the sender will come forward, or send the same screen shot to others who can confirm. Or perhaps he doesn't care enough to do that. I have no idea, and I respect his privacy.

[phzi]

You don't have to believe it if you don't want. Perhaps the sender will come forward, or send the same screen shot to others who can confirm. Or perhaps he doesn't care enough to do that. I have no idea, and I respect his privacy.

You evidently missed part of my sarcasm - a screenshot doesn't prove anything either...

[aminorex]

What miner got flagged?

monero.win.x64.0520.zip was flagged on download.  

[ErrorId]

Focus on the coin, the market will sort everything else out. That said I still believe that the coin distribution is terrible right now but getting better every day.

Disclaimer: I hold both DRK and MRO.

[blaaaaacksuit]

You don't have to believe it if you don't want. Perhaps the sender will come forward, or send the same screen shot to others who can confirm. Or perhaps he doesn't care enough to do that. I have no idea, and I respect his privacy.

You evidently missed part of my sarcasm - a screenshot doesn't prove anything either...

It proves it enough.  Seriously dude, do you think if you complain enough that the devs are going to say "well, since phzi seems really upset about not being able to mine MRO with his gaming cards, we're going to rewrite the hashing aglo and hard fork MRO so that he feels hes not being cheated out of coins that he doesn't have in the first place"?

[sorryforthat]

You don't have to believe it if you don't want. Perhaps the sender will come forward, or send the same screen shot to others who can confirm. Or perhaps he doesn't care enough to do that. I have no idea, and I respect his privacy.

You evidently missed part of my sarcasm - a screenshot doesn't prove anything either...

It proves it enough.  Seriously dude, do you think if you complain enough that the devs are going to say "well, since phzi seems really upset about not being able to mine MRO with his gaming cards, we're going to rewrite the hashing aglo and hard fork MRO so that he feels hes not being cheated out of coins that he doesn't have in the first place." 

Miners have gotten all to comfortable with the GPU way of doing things.

[othe]

What miner got flagged?

monero.win.x64.0520.zip was flagged on download.  

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/8d0567994062954334723137ef2a463516cc0e69f51a0292dd181d0963f8ecde/analysis/1400722832/


Looks absolutely fine.


PS: Botnets need coins with a high liquidity to cashout everything they have...and thats just litecoin or maybe doge at the moment. They also have no problem using cgminer instead of minerd...If you want to get rid of Botnets, you need ASICs - if thats better in the End is very questionable.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

The Easy Miner link is broken in the OP and on the web site.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If you want to get rid of Botnets, you need ASICs - if thats better in the End is very questionable.

We don't want to get rid of botnets. We love botnets. Monero <3 botnets.

[username here]

Well if not Botnets then who is making money mining?  I have had 4 computers mining 24/7 for several days for a grand total of 0.16  MRO.  So clearly this isn't profitable for anyone who isn't running a massive botnet.

[smooth]

Well if not Botnets then who is making money mining?  I have had 4 computers mining 24/7 for several days for a grand total of 0.16  MRO.  So clearly this isn't profitable for anyone who isn't running a massive botnet.

Those were either very low end computers or you got screwed by polls not working very well (I tried to warn everyone), using an unoptimized miner, or just getting unlucky. A single 4770 class machine (very roughly 100 h/s IIRC) should make about a coin and a half per day at 100M difficulty (and it wasn't that high until the past few days). That's roughly 100 times what you got. Not right.

[smooth]

If you want to get rid of Botnets, you need ASICs - if thats better in the End is very questionable.

We don't want to get rid of botnets. We love botnets.

Thank you. I may put that on my sig. Let me try it out for fun:

---
Monero <3 botnets.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If you want to get rid of Botnets, you need ASICs - if thats better in the End is very questionable.

We don't want to get rid of botnets. We love botnets.

Thank you. I may put that on my sig. Let me try it out for fun:

---
Monero <3 botnets.

Looks good on you 

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

Finally got my fx-8320 and am getting around 200H/s. Way better than the 40 I was getting with my phenom x4 840. Hopefully it helps me pay off the new processor now haha!

Please educate me.  What is the power consumption of this 200H/s rig?

Thanks.

[AngusCanine]

Whats with the big slide down on polinex are there other exchanges with MRO. Would this be a good chance to buy in now?

This is the normal course of events.  I predicted this, and profited by it.  MRO traded off-exchange rose 10x in two weeks, and when it hit the exchange, the initial inflow of fiat pushed it up 4x from there.  By 0.008 the top was obvious, and I sold half of my MRO.  I predicted a bottom at .004 but I was delayed in checking my computer, so I didn't start buying until 0.0027.  I think 0.0026 was the bottom, the end of a slide after one dead-cat bounce.  Now it is reboot time.  The weak hands have shaken out.  The miners who needed liquidity and/or have low long-term confidence in the coin (probably most of them, as miner's have other qualifications) have sold.  I am almost fully loaded again (and in fact have converted some BTC again, since I perceive 0.0026 to be a very very good opportunity).  Thus my actions attest that I think the bottom is in, at the 0.382 fibonnaci retracement level.  If I am wrong however, I will definitely add more (although probably I will recharge BTC from fiat as well, if I spend some on MRO, as I am uncomfortably low on BTC right now) around 0.00128.  I don't expect the next topping level to be lower than 0.0129, and I do not plan to sell any below that unless there is a transient spike, as any low liquidity environment is prone to admit, and I happen to be present for it.  I intend to add to my postion gradually until it meets my long-term goals.

(My conceit is that by smoothing out the volatility spikes, I add a valuable service, which aids in price discovery, and creates the humane reassurances of relative price stability.  Folks don't mind a gradual rise, but large sharp swings creates a kind of justifiable skepticism, and a degree of fear regarding where the price will be when liquidity is required.   "Gradual" is relative to the exchange history, of course.  I definitely find it enjoyable and personally lucrative to provide this service.  Probably I should spend more time writing code, and less time trading and talking.  I am not an MRO code contributor so far.  I am extremely well qualified to be one, however, at least technically.)

I would advise anyone (who is a friend, not an enemy) with discretionary investment funds to allocate a portion to MRO, because the chances are not bad that MRO will become the dominant privacy-enhanced liquidity vehicle of the coming decade, and in my estimation such a vehicle should command a market cap in the range of trillions of USD, once it reaches maximum penetration.  Even a small chance of such an outcome is worthy of attention in any rational portfolio.  On a time-scale of decades, the present price is largely irrelevant to the decision.  If you don't need to spend the money before 2020, then don't think twice about the price, just think about how much you want to lock up over that time (and the costs likely to arise if MRO proved to be the wrong vehicle, and you needed to switch horses) and then enter by dollar cost averaging.  It is truly hard to muck it up if you diligently apply dollar cost averaging.  If that is beneath you, you are a trader and have no need of my advice.

I personally currently aim to hold a long-term position of 8 BTC to 1 MRO, as MRO grows, as well as a short term trading position which is 10% of my crypto and fluctuates between MRO and BTC, in addition to my non-crypto investments (mostly swaps and spreads).  My risk tolerance is higher than most.

wow I hope someday I could write something like that, but in the mean time I will continue to weld metal together and invest in alt coins. I thank you for the insight kind Sir

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Well if not Botnets then who is making money mining?  I have had 4 computers mining 24/7 for several days for a grand total of 0.16  MRO.  So clearly this isn't profitable for anyone who isn't running a massive botnet.

Those were either very low end computers or you got screwed by polls not working very well (I tried to warn everyone), using an unoptimized miner, or just getting unlucky. A single 4770 class machine (very roughly 100 h/s IIRC) should make about a coin and a half per day at 100M difficulty (and it wasn't that high until the past few days). That's roughly 100 times what you got. Not right.

if I solo mine by typing "start_mining 8" from my wallet I get about 63 H/s. I'm using win7 on an i7 930 CPU.