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

[Rias]

Well, if I were to build my own botnet (hypothetically), I could do it with almost zero costs. I could also expand it for free - free as in it doesn't cost money, but it does cost time. Wait for a new remote code exec vuln with a PoC to come out, then make a little program to randomly scan IPs and try the PoC against the service. If successful, I can have it do several things at the point: If I wish to put in a lot of time writing it, and spend less responding to alerts, I can code in some common methods of privilege escalation if I need it. Otherwise, I can have it alert me on a successful exploitation for manual processing. If my remote control software doesn't require root, then I do neither, adding the machine to my botnet and moving on. I can also do the usual shit they do, spread fake torrents that morons download and run, etc. All of these things grow my botnet, which brings in revenue, and they don't cost me a dime.

If I have money to spend, that opens up further options: want to be lazy, I can hire someone to do it for me, or if I want to rapidly grow, I could drop a good amount of money on a zero-day. The former is rather pointless if I have the skill, unless I am very time constrained, but the latter is a one-time investment that is a lot smarter than buying bots. I can also deploy more techniques, free or otherwise, to expand my botnet whenever I have the time and/or money.

So, you're saying that botnet owners aren't making money - pray tell, where is the mined XMR going? Because if I can set up a small botnet and grow it with pretty much zero expenses, then ANY XMR I mine is profit - monetarily, anyway - I suppose I'd still be looking for an ROI on my time.

Now, while I don't know the details of the operations run by the two people I know, I know that this is possible. Therefore, anyone with a brain is going to be looking at options with the least expenses.

Note that I say "almost no expenses." Unless you make everything from scratch, which isn't usually feasible, you will need to pay for SOME things. Not exploits, you can use public ones - plenty of people are too slow or lazy to update - if you're fast, you should get plenty. No, what you'll probably have to buy is the use of a crypter for your software, otherwise it will soon get flagged and you'll end up losing bots.

Thank you for the great answer. I agree, it's not universally applicable to speak about botnets in terms of ROI, unless you probably rent a botnet, not own one.

Anyway, since there are opportunity costs for botnet owners, there is still a parity between the profit and the potential profit from alternative usage. This implies that my general considerations should hold. If it is more profitable to mine XMR over doing some other nice things with your botnet, you are going to mine. The situation may still change in case exchange rate decreases significantly, or block reward gets smaller.

And what's more, if the costs are virtually zero, it is profitable to sell XMR at any price (which is exactly what you've said). This only reinforces my idea that the selling side is fundamentally huge for XMR since botnet operators don't even have to earn a margin. Your example only moves the break-even point down to zero (while I assumed to be somewhere higher). Therefore, you only prove that it is unlikely that the coin is going to grow until the problem is resolved.

Hello Mr. Bytecoin,

your guess is plain wrong, you might want to talk to some poolops to know that the most mining is still from normal miners and cloudminers.
On a second note it makes no difference for a botnet to mine a GPU mineable coin or Monero, you can easily deploy cudaminer and cgminer there without issues.

Take a look at this Litecoin Botnet: http://www.coindesk.com/facebook-breaks-cryptocurrency-mining-botnet-lecpetex/

Using a Botnet for that kinda stuff, well their are far better way to monetize them...

Hello Mr. Monero,

I've been talking to some. EC2 and botnets are easy to identify. I know of at least 2 confirmed botnets: 4 MH/s (mentioned in your IRC channel by one of the poolops), and 700 KH/s (hopped on about a week ago and also discussed on the IRC). I do think that 4MH/s is the largest one, but in any case there should be way more of them. I've even stumbled upon a silent miner being sold on one of the related forums. So the issue should be large.

By the way, in case of EC2 my assumptions regarding costs and profit (non-applicable to botnets in general) may actually hold. What is going to happen to XMR when the EC2 operators switch to a fresher CPU-mined currency when they see no further economic rationale to stay with XMR?

[othe]

By the way, in case of EC2 my assumptions regarding costs and profit (non-applicable to botnets in general) may actually hold. What is going to happen to XMR when the EC2 operators switch to a fresher CPU-mined currency when they see no further economic rationale to stay with XMR?

Its already unprofitable to EC2 mine, they go away simply, whats the problem? For profit miners always go to the most profitable coin.

[surfer43]

By the way, in case of EC2 my assumptions regarding costs and profit (non-applicable to botnets in general) may actually hold. What is going to happen to XMR when the EC2 operators switch to a fresher CPU-mined currency when they see no further economic rationale to stay with XMR?

Its already unprofitable to EC2 mine, they go away simply, whats the problem? For profit miners always go to the most profitable coin.

It's not unprofitable to EC2 mine if you know the right people. Believe that.

Can you explain?

[othe]

By the way, in case of EC2 my assumptions regarding costs and profit (non-applicable to botnets in general) may actually hold. What is going to happen to XMR when the EC2 operators switch to a fresher CPU-mined currency when they see no further economic rationale to stay with XMR?

Its already unprofitable to EC2 mine, they go away simply, whats the problem? For profit miners always go to the most profitable coin.

It's not unprofitable to EC2 mine if you know the right people. Believe that.

Can you explain?

With Yam miner an ec2 32 core gets around 1-3 Mro per day, spotprice of 27 cents * 24 = 6,5 USD per day.

No idea how that is soooo profitable even with a faster miner.

[surfer43]

We all know cbuchner1 and probably others are mining on ec2 with gpu+cpu.. I thought you were referring to only CPU mining.

[thelibertycap]

And what's more, if the costs are virtually zero, it is profitable to sell XMR at any price (which is exactly what you've said). This only reinforces my idea that the selling side is fundamentally huge for XMR since botnet operators don't even have to earn a margin. Your example only moves the break-even point down to zero (while I assumed to be somewhere higher). Therefore, you only prove that it is unlikely that the coin is going to grow until the problem is resolved.

There are other CPU coins - all doomed or is XMR somehow special? And if XMR is still one of the most profitable coins, isn't this a bullish sign?
Who cares about botnet profits when they sell for cheap and there is enough interest and willing buyers to invest.
I would say most of the investors buy with bitcoin. Those with deep pockets who like the coin are certainly not going to be investing in the mining business but happily buy from those willing to dump  

[equipoise]

^Goodbye and have a nice day.

[HardwarePal]

BLA BLA BLA

Prime example of how not to promote another coin
Move on thanks

[statdude]

And what's more, if the costs are virtually zero, it is profitable to sell XMR at any price (which is exactly what you've said). This only reinforces my idea that the selling side is fundamentally huge for XMR since botnet operators don't even have to earn a margin. Your example only moves the break-even point down to zero (while I assumed to be somewhere higher). Therefore, you only prove that it is unlikely that the coin is going to grow until the problem is resolved.

There are other CPU coins - all doomed or is XMR somehow special? And if XMR is still one of the most profitable coins, isn't this a bullish sign?
Who cares about botnet profits when they sell for cheap and there is enough interest and willing buyers to invest.
I would say most of the investors buy with bitcoin. Those with deep pockets who like the coin are certainly not going to be investing in the mining business but happily buy from those willing to dump  

+1.

Block reward dropping several % a month.
In 3 months it will be down to like 14 XMR. Doesn't seem like much but the effect will be noticable to miners.
As long as there are still buyers above 0.0025+ for 3 months coins will be largely dried up by then (and buyers there will be, despite this FUD, Monero is unique with an incredibly talented, professional, and consistent dev team).
I think we are all realizing this is a waiting game. Not a pump.

[bublik750]

this coin is full shit and dead now
i lost every fucking coin in my wallet!!
somebody else spent those, cant use them anymore.

move on, dont lose your time and money


i moved to freshcoin

hands out of your ass grow! (Russian proverb)

[fluffypony]

BLA BLA BLA

Prime example of how not to promote another coin
Move on thanks

i wlii give my wallet to devs
they can keep the coins if that will help to solve this bug.

Feel free to PM me the details, or send it directly to dev@monero.cc, or hop on to IRC (#monero-dev on Freenode), or PM the Monero Bitcointalk account, or send the details to the moderators of the /r/monero sub-reddit. It's practically impossible that you have lost coins unless you have forgotten your wallet password and don't have your mnemonic seed.

[Vizierx]

Dear users,

We are happy to inform you that we implemented payment ID, which means that now you can transfer funds directly to exchanges!

Enjoy!

Regards,
Minergate

This is great improvement among other pools - and will allow many users to simplify monero use .

Also just try to withdraw directly to mintpal - all is ok.

[monero]

To the pool ops:
We want to add a little pool description from the owners to our pool list.
This description should be a comma-seperated feature list. We will check if your allegations are true
Here are some examples:
"Weighing older shares lower to disincentivize pool hopping (slush's mining apporach), Multiple servers" -cryptograben.com
"stable pool, desktop notifications, instant online support" -hashinvest

Just write a PM or message a member of the team

[fluffypony]

ok, no trust in this coin anymore
my message deleted:
A reply of yours, quoted below, was deleted by a Bitcoin Forum moderator. Posts are most frequently deleted because they are off-topic, though they can also be deleted for other reasons. In the future, please avoid posting things that need to be deleted.

this coin is full shit and dead now
i lost every fucking coin in my wallet!!
somebody else spent those, cant use them anymore.

move on, dont lose your time and money


i moved to freshcoin

We don't control what the mods do. Promoting another coin in someone else's thread a big no-no, though.

I grabbed your wallet, you have a metric ton of small inputs. I understand it's hard not being able to withdraw your 1.656924551683 XMR, so if you can pm me your address I will send you 1.656924551683 XMR from my wallet and I'll keep your wallet to withdraw the dust at a later stage when the tx fee has reduced.

[illodin]

i lost every fucking coin in my wallet!!

Just keep your coins on an exchange, it's much safer for you.

[smooth]

Thank you for the great answer. I agree, it's not universally applicable to speak about botnets in terms of ROI, unless you probably rent a botnet, not own one.

Anyway, since there are opportunity costs for botnet owners, there is still a parity between the profit and the potential profit from alternative usage. This implies that my general considerations should hold. If it is more profitable to mine XMR over doing some other nice things with your botnet, you are going to mine. The situation may still change in case exchange rate decreases significantly, or block reward gets smaller.

And what's more, if the costs are virtually zero, it is profitable to sell XMR at any price (which is exactly what you've said). This only reinforces my idea that the selling side is fundamentally huge for XMR since botnet operators don't even have to earn a margin. Your example only moves the break-even point down to zero (while I assumed to be somewhere higher). Therefore, you only prove that it is unlikely that the coin is going to grow until the problem is resolved.

Your paragraphs entirely contradict each other. If there are actual costs (for renting) or opportunity costs (for alternative use, or even renting out) then costs are not virtually zero. Furthermore anyone who "doesn't earn a margin" has no incentive to engage in the activity, since that margin would be the profit derived from doing so.

Botnets may or may not be the lowest costs method of mining, I have no idea of the actual numbers, and that's the only way to answer the question. Either way there is little to no difference in the economics of botnets (maybe) mining XMR and botnets (maybe) mining any other coin, especially other cryptonote coins such as BCN.

[Rias]

Thank you for the great answer. I agree, it's not universally applicable to speak about botnets in terms of ROI, unless you probably rent a botnet, not own one.

Anyway, since there are opportunity costs for botnet owners, there is still a parity between the profit and the potential profit from alternative usage. This implies that my general considerations should hold. If it is more profitable to mine XMR over doing some other nice things with your botnet, you are going to mine. The situation may still change in case exchange rate decreases significantly, or block reward gets smaller.

And what's more, if the costs are virtually zero, it is profitable to sell XMR at any price (which is exactly what you've said). This only reinforces my idea that the selling side is fundamentally huge for XMR since botnet operators don't even have to earn a margin. Your example only moves the break-even point down to zero (while I assumed to be somewhere higher). Therefore, you only prove that it is unlikely that the coin is going to grow until the problem is resolved.

Your paragraphs entirely contradict each other. If there are actual costs (for renting) or opportunity costs (for alternative use, or even renting out) then costs are not virtually zero. Furthermore anyone who "doesn't earn a margin" has no incentive to engage in the activity, since that margin would be the profit derived from doing so.

Botnets may or may not be the lowest costs method of mining, I have no idea of the actual numbers, and that's the only way to answer the question. Either way there is little to no difference in the economics of botnets (maybe) mining XMR and botnets (maybe) mining any other coin, especially other cryptonote coins such as BCN.

I've probably mis-formulated those paragraphs as they're consistent with one another. What I've meant under "botnet operators don't have to earn a margin" is that in case of virtually zero monetary costs (leaving out opportunity costs) they don't have to cover those to still profit. Opportunity costs only move the decision point for the botnets to exit XMR somewhere earlier. In any case, your argumentation only proves my initial idea again that until it is unprofitable to botmine, XMR is likely to stay on the same price level.

And speaking about BCN, it's not a botnet target due to the flatter part of the emission curve. XMR is simply more profitable for mining due to the much later launch and the presence of the team around. You've been promoting your coin really well, so Monero should be the choice for botnet owners among all CryptoNote currencies. Anyway, as far as I can say from difficulty charts, other coins also have botnets coming in and out (e.g. duckNote).

And I wasn't trying to say that you are personally supposed to know the botnet hash rate, I've just given my estimates

[cAPSLOCK]

i lost every fucking coin in my wallet!!

Just keep your coins on an exchange, it's much safer for you.

Eek.  No no no no no.

But to each their own.  Using monero is simple.  I'm flying coins all between the exchanges and my wallet...  I'd never leave anything on an exchange unless I mean to trade it.

I mean...  haven't we seen what can happen??

[smooth]

I've probably mis-formulated those paragraphs as they're consistent with one another. What I've meant under "botnet operators don't have to earn a margin" is that in case of virtually zero monetary costs (leaving out opportunity costs) they don't have to cover those to still profit. Opportunity costs only move the decision point for the botnets to exit XMR somewhere earlier.

In terms of economic decision making,  opportunity costs are usually equivalent to monetary costs. If you can rent your botnet out for $X per day (or do something else with it to earn $X), then it makes no economic sense to mine <$X per day of anything, you are better off renting it out. This has exactly the same effect on decision making as monetary costs of $X/day. More than $X of mining, you mine, less, you don't.

Logically the argument of not having to earn a margin just doesn't make sense, as described above. There is revenue level below which it makes no sense to mine, above which it does make sense to mine. This applies to every botnet and every other type of mining equipment.

This also applies to BCN or any other coin (at least the ones with mining, but especially CPU+GPU coins with limited captive investment). Yes BCN has lower rewards (proportionate to coin supply at least) but it also has much lower difficulty, so you can mine proportionately more of it with the same equipment (botnet or anything else).

Honestly I don't really see much difference between XMR's price action any just about every other coin. It goes down when nothing is going on (and coins which have nothing going on for a long period of time eventually go down to near zero). When there is some sort of development that sparks speculative interest, it goes up. Look across the spectrum of hundreds of coins and you see almost exactly the same pattern. Who mines or whether they are a botnet or not doesn't really seem to matter much.

[smooth]

Thank you for the great answer. I agree, it's not universally applicable to speak about botnets in terms of ROI, unless you probably rent a botnet, not own one.

Anyway, since there are opportunity costs for botnet owners, there is still a parity between the profit and the potential profit from alternative usage. This implies that my general considerations should hold. If it is more profitable to mine XMR over doing some other nice things with your botnet, you are going to mine. The situation may still change in case exchange rate decreases significantly, or block reward gets smaller.

And what's more, if the costs are virtually zero, it is profitable to sell XMR at any price (which is exactly what you've said). This only reinforces my idea that the selling side is fundamentally huge for XMR since botnet operators don't even have to earn a margin. Your example only moves the break-even point down to zero (while I assumed to be somewhere higher). Therefore, you only prove that it is unlikely that the coin is going to grow until the problem is resolved.

Your paragraphs entirely contradict each other. If there are actual costs (for renting) or opportunity costs (for alternative use, or even renting out) then costs are not virtually zero. Furthermore anyone who "doesn't earn a margin" has no incentive to engage in the activity, since that margin would be the profit derived from doing so.

Botnets may or may not be the lowest costs method of mining, I have no idea of the actual numbers, and that's the only way to answer the question. Either way there is little to no difference in the economics of botnets (maybe) mining XMR and botnets (maybe) mining any other coin, especially other cryptonote coins such as BCN.

I've probably mis-formulated those paragraphs as they're consistent with one another. What I've meant under "botnet operators don't have to earn a margin" is that in case of virtually zero monetary costs (leaving out opportunity costs) they don't have to cover those to still profit. Opportunity costs only move the decision point for the botnets to exit XMR somewhere earlier. In any case, your argumentation only proves my initial idea again that until it is unprofitable to botmine, XMR is likely to stay on the same price level.

And speaking about BCN, it's not a botnet target due to the flatter part of the emission curve. XMR is simply more profitable for mining due to the much later launch and the presence of the team around. You've been promoting your coin really well, so Monero should be the choice for botnet owners among all CryptoNote currencies. Anyway, as far as I can say from difficulty charts, other coins also have botnets coming in and out (e.g. duckNote).

And I wasn't trying to say that you are personally supposed to know the botnet hash rate, I've just given my estimates

Regardless of our having fun with theory, I have first hand knowledge that two botnet operators are mining XMR as we speak. So whether or not you or I think it is profitable is a moot point.

If so, they are apparently losing money over not mining BCN or something else, since XMR is hardly the most profitable coin to mine right now (and rarely is, outside of a few periods during price spikes). Why they would do that I have no idea. I guess running a botnet does not require an economics or accounting degree. Shrug.