SETI and Bitcoin

[Gabi]

A thread speaking about Bitcoin in the SETI@home forum

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=68683

let's quote some reply

A pyramid scheme isn't a pyramid scheme until it comes crumbling to the ground... then everyone goes, "Oh! It was a pyramid scheme"

Stay away!

I'm sorry, but I can't see for the life of me (or what's left of it) the point behind Bitcoin Mining.

Cheers.

Yep & a famous old quote comes to mind...

"A fool & his money is soon parted"

Bitcoin mining is a joke of a pyramid scheme, where even the original one or two probably won't ever have any real money to speak of.

If you want to spend your electricity and computers time on something, may I recommend sticking with DC projects that serve a purpose.

And, at NO point in bitcoin history, (not since before the money split the first time), has there been any way to profit. The electric itself costs more money that the money it produces, and once you factor in hardware...
well you get the point.

And not to mention all the cheating that is going on.

It's just one big scam, you can't make money out of nothing...

So long for the "clever people" doing SETI  

[Sukrim]

Ah well, not very helpful answers at least.

It's true that Bitcoins only have 0 value in themselves and are only worth what others would pay you for it (which is ~2-5% less than fiat money like USD or EUR...). The claim that mining has never been profitable however is definitely wrong - even currently there's still (with some good hardware) the chance to profit from mining operations AFTER electricity payments + depreciation.

I find it weird that people who "waste" watt after watt for the search of alien signals in radio telescope data can't see a point in mining for BTC.
Especially they should be used to be seen as the electricity wasting weirdos of the internet that are pursuing big dreams with a tiny chance of huge success.

[farfiman]

As a long term Seti user , they don't represent  the average user. I have been searching for aliens  with SETI  For 10 years.
I kick myself in the butt everytime I think how many cpu cycles could have been used for bitcoin in the early days... I could have been a really EARLY ADOPTER !!     DAMN...

[Raoul Duke]

Don't worry. Even educated persons can be dumb and not see things like they truly are.

I met a dentist the other day(who happens to think he's also a trader) that told me that Bitcoin is a bubble...
Then he started talking about his trading habits and I came to discover he only invests on the stock market and uses his bank. You know, he calls the bank today, they sell his stocks some other day, if he's lucky on the same day, charging a hefty fee

After all that I'm surprised he even knew Bitcoin existed lol

About that SETI thread: Is the OP there saying he wants to start mining with NVIDIA cards, or those GTX 680/690 he talks about are something else? lol

[mccorvic]

Well, bitcoin mining certainly won't net the casual miner a whole lot of profit these days, that's true.

But this thread highlights the biggest image problem for bitcoin today. People are still equating bitcoin with "printing your own money!"  Hell, a good portion of people on these very forums still think in this paradigm (look at all the people whining about ASCI for proof of this).  

There needs to be less and less discussion here and elsewhere about the USD value and mining of bitcoin, and what it can actually DO.

I would post in that thread on SETI, but it says I need more "credit".  I have 365,000 credits, so who the frak knows what you need. Oh well.

[FreeMoney]

If you spend $1000 worth of hardware and electricity inefficiently searching for aliens then you can tell yourself you helped $1000 worth. But if you spend $1000 inefficiently on bitcoin mining and get $900 worth of coins you can only really tell yourself that you lost $100.

[Spekulatius]

they are just envious, because our bitcoin super computer is larger than theirs!

[mccorvic]

they are just envious, because our bitcoin super computer is larger than theirs!

This makes me wish I could post there even more! That statement would cause so much angst!

[phatsphere]

i don't get this, the calculations which are done during mining have a purpose. 

[Raoul Duke]

they are just envious, because our bitcoin super computer is larger than theirs!

This makes me wish I could post there even more! That statement would cause so much angst!

I guess you must find some aliens first lol

Now that I've said that I realised that there is a much bigger chance for Bitcoin to be a huge success than them finding aliens

[Electricbees]

That whole thread was full of incorrect. I had to restrain myself from logging in and calling them all out on their idiocy...

Sometimes, people should just be allowed to be wrong on the internet. 

[Sukrim]

Meh, just let them be. After all, they at least have heard about BTC.

If they think it's a pyramid scam, telling them it's not will just make it "more obvious" that it's indeed a pyramid scam. Letting such threads die instead of preaching is the correct way of treating this stuff imho.

[KajiMaster]

This whole thread makes me want to buy more bit coins

[yxt]

@farfiman
This problem is known to me. For years I had folded proteins.
Stupid, I'm even sometime stumbled over Bitcoin but did not recognized the popential.
skipped the part with the self-adjusting difficulty.... If I could just forget 


It's not only the search for aliens. DC today includes so much more ..... protein folding, etc etc check http://boinc.berkeley.edu

it would actually perfect if we could get our difficulty therefore and not by prefixed zeros

mining and fight cancer at the same time!

[Sukrim]

FAH + bitcoin mining has come up often, especially when GPU mining was new.

Problems:
FAH uses completely different (not very well documented, proven secure and audited) algorithms.
FAH uses floating point math, BTC mining doesn't.
FAH doesn't scale well.
Even folders themselves didn't like the idea of their "ressource donation" work being used to power the difficulty of some funky internet funny money.
It is not clear if FAH can generate work indefinitely and of consistent difficulty.

I'm still all in for a BOINC bitcoin mining project that bundles everything that's needed to mine on P2Pool for example, but that's something different and would just use the BOINC client. The only difference would be that it would be easier to schedule some other projects on your mining farm as well.

[mystery2048]

I wouldnt bother the SETI community, they are actually using their computing resources to do something useful

[AmazonStuff]

I don't think we can call them dumb or similar, they are just not informed about how bitcoin system works. Maybe they would call dumb our headbanging to the wall when we hear 10years of electricity, CPU and GPU for... Of course, we are more flexible and we don't think that way 

[IveBeenBit]

These SETI people are so full of dumbassedness I don't know where to start.

First of all...why be involved in SETI in the first place??? I sure as hell don't want any aliens coming to this world. For all we know, they will be hostile and will enslave us or kill us all the while they would have just left us alone if we hadn't been beaming these constant radio signals at them taunting them and daring them to come to our planet to fuck with us.

So if the aliens ever do come down to enslave humanity, or turn the planet into a giant human meat farm, we can thank these people for inviting the aliens into our life.

And they have the nerve to say that bitcoin miners are "wasting" their computer resources.  Hrmph....


And as for the repeated accusations of bitcoin being a "pyramid scheme," as if that is a bad thing....who do they think built the REAL pyramids???  It was the space aliens ordering around the Egyption slaves, DUHHHHH!!!

Anyways, the aliens are going to return on December 22 (or 23, I never remember exactly) so once that happens, asuming they decide to allow our species to continue to live, maybe some of these SETI people will be willing to turn their computing resources over to the bitcoin network once they have seen these aliens for themselves and realize humanity is doing just fine without having aliens everywhere getting underfoot.

[PatrickHarnett]

Seti is one of the worst boinc projects, that's why I don't run it much.  I have 600M+ in boinc (places me in the top 200), so I posted into the seti thread.  I don't expect it to do anything.  I'd be better to get my boinc team to bring all their ati cards across, but that's not he point.  Ignore the ignorant.

[farfiman]

These SETI people are so full of dumbassedness I don't know where to start.




First of all...why be involved in SETI in the first place??? I sure as hell don't want any aliens coming to this world. For all we know, they will be hostile and will enslave us or kill us all the while they would have just left us alone if we hadn't been beaming these constant radio signals at them taunting them and daring them to come to our planet to fuck with us.

Now you are sounding just like them. Not cool.

So if the aliens ever do come down to enslave humanity, or turn the planet into a giant human meat farm, we can thank these people for inviting the aliens into our life.

They are listening for signals - not inviting aliens  ( although I wouldn't mind...)

And they have the nerve to say that bitcoin miners are "wasting" their computer resources.  Hrmph....

Theoretically, if bitcoin goes to 0 tomorrow it would be a waste of time/energy etc... for some people .
I spent ( as I stated above) tons of cpu cycles looking for aliens and cancer research and other projects and never felt it was a waste of time.

And as for the repeated accusations of bitcoin being a "pyramid scheme," as if that is a bad thing....who do they think built the REAL pyramids???  It was the space aliens ordering around the Egyption slaves, DUHHHHH!!!

Anyways, the aliens are going to return on December 22 (or 23, I never remember exactly) so once that happens, asuming they decide to allow our species to continue to live, maybe some of these SETI people will be willing to turn their computing resources over to the bitcoin network once they have seen these aliens for themselves and realize humanity is doing just fine without having aliens everywhere getting underfoot.

After reading this part, I'm not sure if you you're whole message was serious or you are just being sarcastic.....