# Bitcoin Mining



## justinhcase (Oct 10, 2015)

Has any one tried Bitcoin Mining with your old servers?
It could take you a year or more using an average computer to earn just 50 Bitcoins according to a number of report's I have looked at.
But the large processing power a stack of old server's would bring to the table would be immense.
I am in the process of installing a Linux operating system on a stack to run Bitcoin desktop client..I will run it for six month's with an independent power monitor to help calculate cost's.
Haven only knows what will come out it is a bit of a gamble.1 Bitcoin is between four or five pound's.
As long as the electricity is covered it should keep the house nice and warm over winter. :lol: 
And I can always process the unit's any way once they are well and truly shagged.


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## Anonymous (Oct 10, 2015)

Bitcoin mining is a very skilled process. Unless you really know what you're doing the returns are diabolical.


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## justinhcase (Oct 10, 2015)

spaceships said:


> Bitcoin mining is a very skilled process. Unless you really know what you're doing the returns are diabolical.


Would not have time my self to put to much time in running them,but Exeter has a large population of highly educated university student's that work for pee nut's (There Material's lab is spectacular)and a computer retail firm I work with to fall back on.Part of what I do is recruiting the correct person for a job.Find the right component and the system run's well use a faulty one or a component with different tolerances to thous expected and the entire system will be out of wack even if it kind of works.
No matter how big a task it can be divided down into small part's and given to the correct people to over see.Happy people are productive people and I treat my irregulars with love and respect as with out them I would be quite lost.
Unfortunately I am quite dumb so have to run a small test sample to know for sure if some thing is worth while or a wast of time.
I have the dedicated fiber optic line and I already have a small server room for my production system so a higher stack is not a problem.
My understanding was that "full node" is a program that fully validates transactions and blocks. Almost all full nodes also help the network by accepting transactions and blocks from other full nodes, validating those transactions and blocks, and then relaying them to further full nodes which was a completely automatic process which pay's you for bandwidth and processor time.The point's of concern in the articles I read where the stability of the system you run ,was this incorrect? 
Nine time's out of ten I fall flat on my face but that one in ten keep's me feed as I just replicate and repeat continual from then on:roll:


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## Anonymous (Oct 10, 2015)

All you need is electricity and some seriously energy efficient processing power. That's the bit that gets expensive because without that you're making buttons.


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## g_axelsson (Oct 10, 2015)

I hardly doubt your numbers for bitcoins. Check the dates on your reports.
Bitcoin mining is getting harder as more coins are found and two years ago specially developed IC:s that just mined bitcoins were the latest. It hardly covered power to run GPU:s and CPU:s were too slow to do anything worthwhile.

Currently bitcoins are traded at $245 per bitcoin : http://www.coindesk.com/price/

Here is a power/price calculator for mining : http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator
And another one with AMD GPU mining data : http://startbitcoin.com/bitcoin-profitability-calculator/

Göran


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## justinhcase (Oct 10, 2015)

g_axelsson said:


> I hardly doubt your numbers for bitcoins. Check the dates on your reports.
> Bitcoin mining is getting harder as more coins are found and two years ago specially developed IC:s that just mined bitcoins were the latest. It hardly covered power to run GPU:s and CPU:s were too slow to do anything worthwhile.
> 
> Currently bitcoins are traded at $245 per bitcoin : http://www.coindesk.com/price/
> ...


Thank' you g!
Some time's I forget to take into account that google list's thing's by how often it has been accessed and other strange algorithm's I have no understanding of.
Most of my reading seems to be unaffected by the date of publishing unlike this subject evidently.
Your link's do say they found a £400 (Or there about)profit for there standard unit over a year.
Not a great profit but if it is scalable .


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## g_axelsson (Oct 10, 2015)

What standard unit? One of the ASIC rigs? They are quite expensive.

This question and answer is one and a half year old but it is even more true today.
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20041/can-i-do-mining-with-a-normal-pc

Basically for mining with standard CPU based hardware forget it, it won't cover the power bill by far, probably won't cover any exchange fees even if you would run on free power. If joining a team mining bitcoins you would get such a small share it won't be worth your time and if mining solo the chance of finding a coin is so small that there is a greater risk of your computer catching fire and burning down your house instead.

Göran


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## justinhcase (Oct 10, 2015)

g_axelsson said:


> What standard unit? One of the ASIC rigs? They are quite expensive.
> 
> This question and answer is one and a half year old but it is even more true today.
> http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20041/can-i-do-mining-with-a-normal-pc
> ...


O well.
So far the best use I have found for the power edge server's has been to run my Ableton on.
Not that I have had any time to get in the studio for quite some time.


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## jason_recliner (Oct 10, 2015)

Don't waste your time and money on mining with old CPUs.

I ran a handful of USB miners a couple of years ago. These tiny devices with dedicated processing cores ran 1000 times more productively than an old CPU/GPU, and at just miniscule USB power!

With the bitcoin community constantly gaining members and more powerful devices, and since any individual's return is proportional to that, I found they lost performance by about 10% per week. My minimum possible BTC payouts came (incrementally) after something like 5, then 7, then 10 days, then about 2 weeks a fortnight, a month, then 3 months. I've not heard from them in about a year, though they're still running.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 12, 2015)

You can forget bitcoin mining unless you do have couple of 10k to sink in dedicated mining machines and then in few months double of that again and again.. Even with them you will not likely get your investment back as difficulty of mining is doubling every few days and your machines are becoming obsolete within months. I learned about this hard way and I am happy to lost only couple of thousands, well with current bitcoin price anyway. If it will ever go back to its high price then I will be exactly at 0. What I mined I split in half and bought gold for half and other half is sitting in my bitcoin wallet hoping to sell it if price get back to where it was at its highest.
My bitcoin adventure started with PC with 2 AMD cards 7950, one of them sitting currently on table as both of them I no longer need in computer, my son is using other one it is a good gaming card. 
As soon as I bought them I mined some litecoin which I managed to sell at highest price but that still did not covered purchase and electricity. I then bought 60GH mining machine from now defunct company at a price of 700 euro, I mined some bitcoin then managed to sell it for 100 euro. That was like 4-5 months. I went for 200GH Avalon 3 gen miner which is in garage gathering dust for well over year now. Simply no point of running it due to electricity cost and difficulty increase. That one cost me 3000 euro. It is worth nothing now. My electricity cost during about 1 year of peek mining was about 1500 euro. It was a fun time, stressful at a times but I did some trades also and mined some other altcoins which gave me nice return but all in all I am losing with current price of gold and bitcoin.
Whoever mined from start and went for latest mining computers (always preorder paid before they were constructed, many times existing on paper only and most of them never delivered - here you got to be lucky and pick company which actually delivered and in reasonable time) then they are still in game. But that require to invest significant portion of your earning to new hardware perpetually. It is too late to get to that train, some people do well trading bitcoin and other altcoins but that is a science of itself.

Here is bitcoin mining difficulty all time graph, note 2014 when asic computers become available it shoot up and going sky-high since.
https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=


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## platedscrap (Oct 12, 2015)

If your really interested in mining you should try mining alt coins that can be traded for bitcoin ... they take a lot less processing power and there are also cpu only algorithm coins... pretty much like trading penny stocks ... you just wait for the pump and dump to sell to bitcoin ... I have been doing it for 3 years ... energy efficient is the key


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## justinhcase (Oct 12, 2015)

Thank you for all your input.
If my small test run's are any thing to go by there is a surplus of what i would consider good quality server's.
The good P.C. and laptop's can go straight onto the high street so are not a problem once you find the right retailer.
But the working power that seems to be going to waste is considerable with surplus servers.
How I wish I could send them back to my self in the 90's... the day's I waited for paralleled Amiga's to render samples wasted so much of my early years.well not wasted in that sense.
The other thought I had was using them as dedicated game server's.In my day it was half life but it has moved on since I had time to waste.That option would depend on finding Game addicted individual's to manage each arena again it would take input form an obsessed person to succeed .
It is a pity there is not some thing like Seti's BOINC or IBM World Community Grid that made it financially viable to run.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 6, 2017)

Altcoins are a way to go. Like monero for example, that can be mined with CPU. Quite easy to install miner and have it running while you do other stuff on a computer. You can set a number of cores you do want miner to utilise, I usually go for half of my CPU capacity so mining does not disrupt whatever else I am doing. It is a slow trickle but these coins appreciate in value so whatever you mine actually increase in value at no extra cost compared to GPU mining which is kinda heavy on electricity cost. 
Here is a link to minergate website where you can create an account and download small miner to run in the background. 
https://minergate.com/a/2ee2dc750c8e9d0ce23d04c7


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## anachronism (Oct 6, 2017)

Apparently we're mining Monero as a proof of concept. Actually this is really funny but I didn't know about it until I was in my warehouse last week and discovered a server rack running with 24 x HP G8 blades and asked someone what it was. 

It transpires that each blade has 2 x Intel E5-2660V2 ten core processors burning 24/7 generating Monero. The guys say they can increase the efficiency and lower the costs for the same return but the idea is to get a base line production/profit figure over the first full month. If it works out to the numbers they have already said then it's worth scaling up. 

Pat was with me and tell you that my face was an absolute picture when I discovered what was going on.  I went from "what the heck" to "ooo really?" in about 30 seconds.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 6, 2017)

yes.... You asked what's burning.... And the guy said its processors firing up monero.... :lol:


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## kjavanb123 (Jan 31, 2018)

Hi

Comletely dumb when it comes to bitcoins, I have an idea, just want to ask few questions, to see if my idea is even do able or not;

1- how much bitcoin can be bought on a daily transaction? Can one buy lets say 140 million US dollar worth of bitcoins a day?

2- Same question but selling bitcoins and redeem US dollar or Euro, is there any ceiling?

3- Any buying or selling bitcoins and conversion to currency where do they take place?

Thanks and regards
Kj


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## jimdoc (Feb 2, 2018)

I am curious, Today the DOW was down 666 points, gold down 1.6%, silver down 3.6%, and most base metals down as well.

What happened with Bitcoin today?


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## etack (Feb 2, 2018)

its down 5.229% today.

Eric


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## Palladium (Feb 5, 2018)

They are calling it Crypto Winter now!
$7,500 and dropping!


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## anachronism (Feb 5, 2018)

Palladium said:


> They are calling it Crypto Winter now!
> $7,500 and dropping!



It was due, and the wheels of the banking industry are doing their damnedest to take it as low as it will go. "The man" doesn't like having control of your pockets wrested away from him.


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## Palladium (Feb 5, 2018)

$6500 now! :shock:


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## anachronism (Feb 5, 2018)

Palladium said:


> $6500 now! :shock:



Give it four months Ralph. Then work out how much it's gone back up in relation to other investments. 8) 8)


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## patnor1011 (Feb 6, 2018)

Well, if it go down to like 2-3k I would most certainly buy some more. :mrgreen:


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## jimdoc (Feb 6, 2018)

I just noticed that Kitco has Live Cryptocurrency Quotes on the bottom of their page.


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## Goldmanv (Jul 23, 2018)

Hello,would you entertain a discussion on the process of earning a massive amount of 0.3 bitcoin upward with the help of mining?


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## patnor1011 (Jul 26, 2018)

To get (not so massive) 0.3 btc you need latest hardware and about 1.5 months of time, probably close to 2 months. 
Strictly bitcoin mining. 
You can get to it sooner mining some altcoins and if you are lucky trading. 
If you plan to discuss some scheme like some investment in some cloud mining or similar schemes, do not bother. They are mostly an outright scam.


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