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

[Adrian-x]

Hi all, I have some basic noob questions.

I have installed and synced the Windows 64-bit binaries. I have simplewallet.exe running.

my intention is to mine, and maybe buy a few MRO,

Mining First
1) address command> returns a long alpha numeric string starting with "4" is this a public address, in Bitcoin language?

2) is this the address I mine to?

3) is there only 1 address per wallet? can I add addresses, or do i create new wallets?

4) for code storage, is there such a thing as a private key, or how do I create cold storage?

5) what is a View Key?

your help welcome,
thanks.

1) Yes this long string is your address
2) Yes, you can mine without opening the wallet by typing on daemon     start_mining  yourwalletaddress numberofthreads. Thats for solo mining...
3) Yes there is only one address but you can make more wallets and i personally run at least two on the same daemon. I think there arent problems with that but i am not sure.

better others asnwer for 4 and 5

thanks, that a great start, next to figure out how to transfer, how does one send coins?

[LimLims]

I agree that a GPU miner would stabilize the economy better. But these two factors aren't correct. It's not a botnet: there are definitely multiple miners with a large number of EC2 instances mining away at MRO and they dump to cover their costs, which can be thousands per day. (I can even name who some of them are from IRC chatter.) This is an inevitable part of CPU mining. The same is true with GPU/ASIC mining because of farms, but probably worse in CPU mining because no prior investment in hardware is needed. You can whip up butt mining instances at will if the coin is profitable (which MRO is).

I don't really follow the logic here. Yes, you can expect butt mining to be a large chunk of hashrate for any cpu coin (if it's profitable). But you can also expect a large chunk to be botnets. Unless you had some specific evidence or reason to believe botnets are not in operation? I'm skeptical -- botnets are generally the most profitable way to cpu mine.

The emissions rate isn't an issue, as I covered in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg6986004#msg6986004

I don't buy the logic here either. Emission rate is an issue if it's contributing to sell pressure that's kicking the ass of buy pressure. Coins can be abandoned & forgotten in weeks/months if they underperform, whereas the timescale for the emission rate to taper down is in the order of years.

[nakaone]

So I've been buying up some MRO at the current low, and I've been watching it closely from its beginnings. The market is doing some unusual things, and I have a tentative analysis. I believe the buy pressure is not being adequately represented in its price movements. I suspect this is because of a combination of two factors:

1. A large proportions of the hash being from botnets (where the operators immediately dump), and
2. The relatively high emission rate.

I agree that a GPU miner would stabilize the economy better. But these two factors aren't correct. It's not a botnet: there are definitely multiple miners with a large number of EC2 instances mining away at MRO and they dump to cover their costs, which can be thousands per day. (I can even name who some of them are from IRC chatter.) This is an inevitable part of CPU mining. The same is true with GPU/ASIC mining because of farms, but probably worse in CPU mining because no prior investment in hardware is needed. You can whip up cloud mining instances at will if the coin is profitable (which MRO is).

The emissions rate isn't an issue, as I covered in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg6986004#msg6986004

We're more inflationary than a coin that deliberately cuts reward as difficulty goes up (like DRK), but much less inflationary than a PoW coin with constant rewards like BTC or LTC (at the same age). And actually somewhat less inflationary than a slower CryptoNote emission curve like QCN. The latter point may seem paradoxical, but you can plot circulation or inflation v. time to confirm this. It's because the most inflationary part of CryptoNote emission is right at the start and slower emission curves actually spend more time in this regime.

the point limlim is correctly making is that the price can never reach an equilibrium, or at best a very low one - this even gets more relevant when the price would go up massively.  

the problem is that money needs to have a store of value function - it would be sad if this really promising project fails due to that flaw.

[LimLims]

Are GPU's not as easily bot net'd?

It's more about the numbers. Everyone has a CPU; only a fraction of people have a decently performing GPU. So for coins where high-end GPU rigs make up the majority of hashrate, the effect of botnets is reduced.

[eizh]

I don't really follow the logic here. Yes, you can expect butt mining to be a large chunk of hashrate for any cpu coin (if it's profitable). But you can also expect a large chunk to be botnets. Unless you had some specific evidence or reason to believe botnets are not in operation? I'm skeptical -- botnets are generally the most profitable to cpu mine.

There may be a botnet. But I know the rough hashrates of some of these cloud miners and know that they constitute a large part of their network on their own. The botnet can only be the remainder after accounting for regular miners.

I don't buy the logic here either. Emission rate is an issue if it's contributing to sell pressure that's kicking the ass of buy pressure. Coins can be abandoned & forgotten in weeks/months if they underperform, and the timescale for the emission rate to taper down is in the order of years.

It's meaningless to talk of some unstated standard and declare emission is a problem. I specifically compared to the main two alternatives: (1) BTC/LTC-like and (2) other CryptoNote emission curves that are slower. Both are worse, if you do the math. Bitcoin is simple arithmetic, CryptoNote requires a loop calculation. Please specifically show your math if you disagree with the numbers, and post the code.

It seems altcoins have gotten cozy with instamines, post hoc supply changes, and other tricks. If you think a well-defined PoW that sticks to its word like BTC and LTC is no longer viable, that's a bit ironic. The point of cryptocurrencies was that there was no central entity playing with the supply.

the point limlim is correctly making is that the price can never reach an equilibrium, or at best a very low one - this even gets more relevant when the price would go up massively.  

The equilibrium is set by spot instance pricing.

In any case, you guys can be pretty sure a GPU miner will come out sooner or later. It's never not happened to date.

[GreekBitcoin]

Hi all, I have some basic noob questions.

I have installed and synced the Windows 64-bit binaries. I have simplewallet.exe running.

my intention is to mine, and maybe buy a few MRO,

Mining First
1) address command> returns a long alpha numeric string starting with "4" is this a public address, in Bitcoin language?

2) is this the address I mine to?

3) is there only 1 address per wallet? can I add addresses, or do i create new wallets?

4) for code storage, is there such a thing as a private key, or how do I create cold storage?

5) what is a View Key?

your help welcome,
thanks.

1) Yes this long string is your address
2) Yes, you can mine without opening the wallet by typing on daemon     start_mining  yourwalletaddress numberofthreads. Thats for solo mining...
3) Yes there is only one address but you can make more wallets and i personally run at least two on the same daemon. I think there arent problems with that but i am not sure.

better others asnwer for 4 and 5

thanks, that a great start, next to figure out how to transfer, how does one send coins?

You type this on the wallet: transfer 0 address amount  id

0 is the number of mixing you want to have. 0 is actually least anonymous. Bigger number is better but has more transaction fees.
id is optional. If you want to send to an exchange for now you have to add the id that is given at the exchange.

[Adrian-x]

Hi all, I have some basic noob questions.

I have installed and synced the Windows 64-bit binaries. I have simplewallet.exe running.

my intention is to mine, and maybe buy a few MRO,

Mining First
1) address command> returns a long alpha numeric string starting with "4" is this a public address, in Bitcoin language?

2) is this the address I mine to?

3) is there only 1 address per wallet? can I add addresses, or do i create new wallets?

4) for code storage, is there such a thing as a private key, or how do I create cold storage?

5) what is a View Key?

your help welcome,
thanks.

1) Yes this long string is your address
2) Yes, you can mine without opening the wallet by typing on daemon     start_mining  yourwalletaddress numberofthreads. Thats for solo mining...
3) Yes there is only one address but you can make more wallets and i personally run at least two on the same daemon. I think there arent problems with that but i am not sure.

better others asnwer for 4 and 5

thanks, that a great start, next to figure out how to transfer, how does one send coins?

You type this on the wallet: transfer 0 address amount  id

0 is the number of mixing you want to have. 0 is actually least anonymous. Bigger number is better but has more transaction fees.
id is optional. If you want to send to an exchange for now you have to add the id that is given at the exchange.

thanks again, will need to look into this more but for now I'll hash away.

quick question do exchanges or pools offer a mixing number? and is ones IP address associated with blocks found when mining solo or in a registration free pool?

[LimLims]

There may be a botnet. But I know the rough hashrates of some of these butt miners and know that they constitute a large part of their network on their own. The botnet can only be the remainder after accounting for regular miners.

What kind of numbers are we talking?

To me, botnets are an inevitability for any popular cpu coin, so my skepticism would need a lot more than rough estimations of top users' hashrates based on what people claim in IRC chats. By that I mean, I'd be skeptical if I were you and that's all I had to go by.

It's meaningless to talk of some unstated standard and declare emission is a problem.
 I specifically compared to the main two alternatives: (1) BTC-like and (2) other CryptoNote emission curves that are slower. Both are worse, if you do the math. Bitcoin is simple arithmetic, CryptoNote requires a loop calculation. Please specifically show your math if you disagree with the numbers, and post the code.

I agree that it's meaningless to refer to an unstated standard -- but I wasn't doing that. Any given reward structure is fine if buy pressure can at least keep up with sell pressure to maintain the price. It doesn't make sense to only consider the math of the block reward in isolation, ignoring other variables. For e.g., bitcoin could get away with a higher emission rate because of its market penetration / network effect. The point I was making was simply that the two factors together (dumping and emission rate) contribute to downward pressure on price. I could have phrased it both ways to say the same thing:

"dumping from botnets may mean the current price is unsustainable going forward"
"dumping from botnets, given the current emission rate, may outstrip demand"

So never mind the math of the emission curve, it's beside the point.

It seems altcoins have gotten cozy with instamines, post hoc supply changes, and other tricks. If you think a well-defined PoW that sticks to its word like BTC and LTC is no longer viable, that's a bit ironic. The point of cryptocurrencies was that there was no central entity playing with the supply.

It seems you're conflating issues. For that matter, someone writing a GPU miner is not the same as playing with supply.

[followtheboss]

how u calculate your coin by day pls with hasrate difficulty ?

cheers

coins per day = blocks per day * block reward = (hashes per day / difficulty) * block reward =

(hashes per second * 86400 * block reward) / difficulty

or with current parameters

estimated MRO per day = hashes per second * 0.00779949346

Thank you my friend.

Thumb up 4 you 

cheers

[GreekBitcoin]

[/quote]

thanks again, will need to look into this more but for now I'll hash away.

quick question do exchanges or pools offer a mixing number? and is ones IP address associated with blocks found when mining solo or in a registration free pool?
[/quote]

I dont think they do at least for now. And i also think that right now your IP can be associated easily if you dont use a proxy. But there is a partnership with i2p network that should deal with it soon.

[fluffypony]

Are GPU's not as easily bot net'd?

It's more about the numbers. Everyone has a CPU; only a fraction of people have a decently performing GPU. So for coins where high-end GPU rigs make up the majority of hashrate, the effect of botnets is reduced.

It won't make as much of a difference as you'd imagine - the whole point of the CryptoNight algorithm is to reduce the gap between GPUs and CPUs. You may find that even with a decent GPU miner, it is still more cost-effective to CPU mine at scale.

Either way, I think we've still got a very microcosmic view - we're looking at 5 weeks of history, and we're particularly interested in they last, what, 10 days? All the downward pressure in the world isn't going to affect our ability to innovate and continue to improve Monero by adding utility instead of adding hype. If you're interested in Monero on a long-term basis, it's probably best to ignore the market for 3-6 months whilst some sort of equilibrium is sought and whilst innovation continues to come from us. We aren't trying to drive things hard for a bit and then disappear, so sweating the small stuff that happens in the market on a daily basis isn't going to have any long-term benefit for us as the core team:)

[eizh]

What kind of numbers are we talking?

Network hashrate has wobbled by about a megahash in the past few days - that gives a rough idea. They're certainly the majority of the network.

I agree that it's meaningless to refer to an unstated standard -- but I wasn't doing that. Any given reward structure is fine if buy pressure can at least keep up with sell pressure to maintain the price. It doesn't make sense to only consider the math of the block reward in isolation, ignoring other variables. For e.g., bitcoin could get away with a higher emission rate because of its market penetration / network effect. The point I was making was simply that the two factors together (dumping and emission rate) contribute to downward pressure on price. I could have phrased it both ways to say the same thing:

The emission's contribution is independent of the dumping, though. Any curve will tend toward equilibrium. So the real issue is that there was too much hype and MRO reached a non-equilibrium price. It went up from by a factor of ~8x over just 24 hours, and only declined to ~3.5x of the initial price. But this would've happened regardless of what the emission curve was. This is why I'm confused by your partial focus on the emission.

It seems you're conflating issues. For that matter, someone writing a GPU miner is not the same as playing with supply.

Possibly, sorry. Much of the complaining about the emission curve stems from a demand to change it discontinuously, without a retroactive correction (read: instamine). I'm pro-GPU mining.

[RentaMouse]

Hi, is there a problem with mining on monero.crypto-pool.fr ?
I startet with mining there some hours ago, now with 500 - 700 H/s (reportet under "Your Stats" with my wallet address), but I'm getting nothing, nada, zero...
Any idea?

BitWalker

It depends on when they last found a block mainly (5hrs ago at the time of writing), the pool code assigns each miner a share of the reward according to hashpower contributed and then when the coins have matured it sends them out to the miners. On the bigger pools which find blocks every few minutes they may run a regular hourly payout job instead so miners arent receiving lots of small payments, but the smaller pools dont have to worry about that. Doesnt make any difference to what you get paid in the long run, on a smaller pool luck is more of a factor for the first few days (if the pool gets lucky and finds a couple of quick blocks you will receive more coins) but it averages out over time.

[LimLims]

Are GPU's not as easily bot net'd?

It's more about the numbers. Everyone has a CPU; only a fraction of people have a decently performing GPU. So for coins where high-end GPU rigs make up the majority of hashrate, the effect of botnets is reduced.

It won't make as much of a difference as you'd imagine - the whole point of the CryptoNight algorithm is to reduce the gap between GPUs and CPUs. You may find that even with a decent GPU miner, it is still more cost-effective to CPU mine at scale.

Sure, that's possible, but it's speculation either way. Previously, so-called "gpu unfriendly" algos have generally shown order of magnitude increase in hashrate/watt when a GPU miner comes out. Even if the GPU miner is as low as, let's say, 1.5x the efficiency compared to a CPU miner, you've still got your influx of the GPU miner community who are less eager to dump at whatever the going price, meaning the effect of botnets is diminished, even with conservative assumptions.

Either way, I think we've still got a very microcosmic view - we're looking at 5 weeks of history, and we're particularly interested in they last, what, 10 days? All the downward pressure in the world isn't going to affect our ability to innovate and continue to improve Monero by adding utility instead of adding hype.

I agree in part -- yes, the history so far is short, and an over-valuation doesn't affect fundamentals. But on the other hand:

If you're interested in Monero on a long-term basis, it's probably best to ignore the market for 3-6 months whilst some sort of equilibrium is sought and whilst innovation continues to come from us. We aren't trying to drive things hard for a bit and then disappear, so sweating the small stuff that happens in the market on a daily basis isn't going to have any long-term benefit for us as the core team:)

My interest is long term, and that is the only reason why I give a damn about day to day price. That might sound contradictory, but consider that the success or failure of any coin depends on adoption, and for better or worse, most of the money is crypto, particularly in the early stages of a fledgling altcoin's life, is in the hands of speculators who only care about day to day price. Most people who put money in crypto have little to no idea how to analyse fundamentals. So, sure, put the work into the fundamentals, but don't ignore market dynamics to the point where speculators lose all faith in the coin. If it turns out that MRO is currently overvalued by (let's say) 5x from recent hype and eventually finds equilibrium around .0007, that may be beyond breaking point for investors & miners to abandon it. Meaning the need for a solution (like a GPU miner, as I'm suggesting) is urgent. On the other hand, if it turns out not to be so overvalued, the urgency is less. But afaik there's no reliable to estimate this. The way I see it, there's nothing to lose by kicking off a bounty for a GPU miner right now, hence the suggestion.

[Zer0Sum]

I agree that a GPU miner would stabilize the economy better. But these two factors aren't correct. It's not a botnet: there are definitely multiple miners with a large number of EC2 instances mining away at MRO and they dump to cover their costs, which can be thousands per day. (I can even name who some of them are from IRC chatter.) This is an inevitable part of CPU mining. The same is true with GPU/ASIC mining because of farms, but probably worse in CPU mining because no prior investment in hardware is needed. You can whip up butt mining instances at will if the coin is profitable (which MRO is).

I don't really follow the logic here. Yes, you can expect butt mining to be a large chunk of hashrate for any cpu coin (if it's profitable). But you can also expect a large chunk to be botnets. Unless you had some specific evidence or reason to believe botnets are not in operation? I'm skeptical -- botnets are generally the most profitable way to cpu mine.

The emissions rate isn't an issue, as I covered in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg6986004#msg6986004

I don't buy the logic here either. Emission rate is an issue if it's contributing to sell pressure that's kicking the ass of buy pressure. Coins can be abandoned & forgotten in weeks/months if they underperform, whereas the timescale for the emission rate to taper down is in the order of years.

This coin (and technology) is either gonna be a Big Hit or a Big Bust...
Not the kind of marginal alt where your short term logic might apply.

[LimLims]

The equilibrium is set by spot instance pricing.

I just wanted to address this too: mining costs are a factor underlying price, but ultimately price dynamics are determined by buying & selling, which are in turn determined by humans & emotions. Mining can be unprofitable for weeks/months without nethash suffering (DRK demonstrated this). Or mining profitability can be huge for long periods of time, sustained by strong buy pressure. Or the price can crash and burn, causing miners to leave to the point where nobody bothers anymore. Equilibriums might work on paper, but in practice it's never that neat.

Bottom line is: you can't trust that the price will equilibrate to butt mining costs after a period of hype & speculative adoption. It really could go in any direction depending on competition, media attention, tech problems, all kinds of things really. And the market can be fickle. So it's better to cover your bases where you can.

[billotronic]

The equilibrium is set by spot instance pricing.

I just wanted to address this too: mining costs are a factor underlying price, but ultimately price dynamics are determined by buying & selling, which are in turn determined by humans & emotions. Mining can be unprofitable for weeks/months without nethash suffering (DRK demonstrated this). Or mining profitability can be huge for long periods of time, sustained by strong buy pressure. Or the price can crash and burn, causing miners to leave to the point where nobody bothers anymore. Equilibriums might work on paper, but in practice it's never that neat.

Bottom line is: you can't trust that the price will equilibrate to butt mining costs after a period of hype & speculative adoption. It really could go in any direction depending on competition, media attention, tech problems, all kinds of things really. And the market can be fickle. So it's better to cover your bases where you can.

and one has to wonder those going the Amazon route how long they will keep hashing for a loss... With the price dropping daily one would have to think its getting close to being break even/unprofitable.

[GreekBitcoin]

The equilibrium is set by spot instance pricing.

I just wanted to address this too: mining costs are a factor underlying price, but ultimately price dynamics are determined by buying & selling, which are in turn determined by humans & emotions. Mining can be unprofitable for weeks/months without nethash suffering (DRK demonstrated this). Or mining profitability can be huge for long periods of time, sustained by strong buy pressure. Or the price can crash and burn, causing miners to leave to the point where nobody bothers anymore. Equilibriums might work on paper, but in practice it's never that neat.

Bottom line is: you can't trust that the price will equilibrate to butt mining costs after a period of hype & speculative adoption. It really could go in any direction depending on competition, media attention, tech problems, all kinds of things really. And the market can be fickle. So it's better to cover your bases where you can.

DRK had pretty good marketing and media attention. Monero hasnt even started yet...

[LimLims]

This coin (and technology) is either gonna be a Big Hit or a Big Bust...
Not the kind of marginal alt where your short term logic might apply.

My assumption is that people here are invested in Monero specifically, and not necessarily in the cryptonote / bytecoin codebase, which could spawn any number of highly competitive clones. In which case, cryptonote being a big hit doesn't guarantee Monero anything. If MRO is consistently underperforming on the market, another cryptonote clone will beat it and fill the niche, making MRO redundant.

[smooth]

All professional miners dump. It doesn't matter if they are GPU farmers, botnets, cloud miners or something else. They're in business to mine and then get their cash out to recycle it into something else.

Speculators can drive prices up but they can also drive them down, when they jump off to the new hot coin. They bring volatility, not sustained increases.

If you want less dumping, get more of the mining into the hands of smaller scale non-professionals. This coin is poised to do just that with the CPU miner. The missing pieces are: 1) a more user-friendly wallet, and 2) something to actually do with the damn thing. A GPU miner would actually be somewhat counterproductive, because they tend to be harder to set up for small scale non-professionals, and favor those with the most optimized GPU models and configurations.

If it is is just large scale miners and speculators, you will see a lot of volatility but no major sustained price increase.