[How to] fund your cruncher's utility bill OR how to make money using bitcoin

[[XC] Oj101]

So is thinking of investing in this to get my company off the ground to afford to work for myself and get a few SR-2s acceptable?

[zalbard]

Lets say $150 per month (electricity doesn't matter) - that's still $1500 for 10 per month for doing nothing?

Yep, pretty much. I'd jump on this while it's available.
Technically, it also requires an investment in hardware, and potentially upgrades (since you will be earning less once you get slower compared to others), but I think it's still pretty damn good.

[shoota]

Will this all work on linux?

I can get two 5770's for $130, is that worth it?

[dairyFarmer]

So if you follow the $$ how does this work?

Someone is sending us distributed computing packets?? for an unknown project?? and then paying the cruncher in virtual currency?

[skeyo]

This sounds to me like selling snow to Eskimos.

[Petra]

Okay, you guys got me interested so I started doing some research.... this 44 page document on the legality of Bitcoin was a rather interesting read and I suggest that some of you take a look at it (just hit the one-click download link near the upper portion of the page and, if you aren't comfortable with that, I have the PDF): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1817857

After reading that, as well as a bunch of other stuff this afternoon, I've decided that the Bitcoin mining thing isn't for me (mostly due to legal grey areas and how that could possibly have a negative impact given our household profession).

Perhaps they should ditch RSA for AES... I'd be a little more comfortable with that.

[p2501]

Is there any extrapolation possible on how far into the future mining will be possible?!

If you buy two complete 4x5870 miners that cost maybe thousand € each then at the current rates (1600mhashes/s x2 equals 1693€) and my current energy cost (.19cent, 2kw load equals 1440kwh/month or 274€ in utilities/month) you'd need at least two months to offset initial costs.

[mav2000]

Just started on bitcoin, lets see how it goes.

[Gamekiller]

I don't even own a single ATI card. Would be nice to do nothing and generate cash..

[don_xvi]

After reading that, as well as a bunch of other stuff this afternoon, I've decided that the Bitcoin mining thing isn't for me (mostly due to legal grey areas and how that could possibly have a negative impact given our household profession).

Perhaps they should ditch RSA for AES... I'd be a little more comfortable with that.

Could you elaborate?

[[XC] flat-four]

I don't think I'd worry too much about legal ramifications as of yet. The author himself is seeking/allowing donations in his introduction. I would think as the author is just finishing up his law degree at Yale, I doubt he would jeopardize his becoming a lawyer if he thought there could be problems.

[jcool]

I just ordered 9 5870's and 2 5850's - German market is pretty much empty now except for a few overpriced old cards
Prices are going up every day BTW. I just sold 5 BCT today for 11€ each, whereas yesterday I only got 8€ per BCT.

Join while it's still going, and put the money to good use (cruncher hardware/utility bill etc)

[Bobsama]

So if you follow the $$ how does this work?

Someone is sending us distributed computing packets?? for an unknown project?? and then paying the cruncher in virtual currency?

If you follow the money, you will find that someone created a limited number of tokens for use in virtual trades. Since there's a limited number, there's now a limited supply. The real money in this is in the bitcoin currency brokers; they keep the spread (which can be a few centers per bitcoin) when people buy bitcoins with more established currency.

The thing to realize is that these currency traders will ALWAYS make money; traditional currency will inflate while this currency never will. That means that the bitcoins they bought yesterday and sold today will have appreciated in value.

Can anyone help me get a connection? I'm stuck at that point. Maybe it's a firewall somewhere blocking it; it's not my network.

[Alpha]

hmmm.... i have some horsepower here at work. i may give this a try. nothing like banking off free electricity eh?

maybe i can get my wife to let me buy some stuff at home if it pays for itself in a month or two...

will post up my endeavors eventually.

[jcool]

Can anyone help me get a connection? I'm stuck at that point. Maybe it's a firewall somewhere blocking it; it's not my network.

Can you post a screenshot?
Also, are you mining solo? That didn't work for me, try joining a pool.

[Musho]

Trying to get my two 5870s to work, but when I run the miner program it complains that it didn't detect any openCL devices. So I tried another version (2.2), which seems to work. How much extra performance will I get by using 2.1 instead of 2.2? And why isn't 2.1 working for me? Thanks!

[jcool]

TBH I had the same problem with most rigs. I'm running on 2.1 only on my main machine with dual 5870's, here's what I did (may or may not help you):
- I had Cat. 11.3 with APP already installed when I found out about bitcoin, so I went to control panel --> software and fired up the ati uninstaller. Selected manual, and only unchecked the APP SDK version 2.45xxx, rebooted
- then I installed the 2.1 SDK and it worked
Simply installing the catalyst w/o APP and the 2.1 SDK caused the same error for me on a freshly installed rig, for whatever reason.

[artemm]

my 5970 is getting 1Mhash/s per core. I installed 11.4 with 2.1 SDK. Kinda had a feeling it wouldn't just fire up

[jcool]

Yes, the 2.1 SDK isn't for everyone. In fact I now believe it rarely works correctly... you lose about 5% on the 2.4 so I recommend staying with that if you have problems or don't want to mess with things.
Just download the latest 11.5 cat, install, and run. Easy

1st post updated with some performance tipps and a new, completely free mining pool

[zalbard]

Just use the latest SDK, it's really not THAT much of a difference...

By the way, I am trying btcguild.com. No fees is nice, but I am getting "Connection problems" every few seconds on both of my miners, so I think that will reduce the mining performance.

Also, I'm not sure, but do I need one worker per one device? What are they for?

[Bobsama]

Can you post a screenshot?
Also, are you mining solo? That didn't work for me, try joining a pool.

HD5850 on the Q8300 @ 3.0 system. I'll overclock this rig a bit higher later.

[Tom128]

I just ordered 9 5870's and 2 5850's

Wow! I don't have the guts to do that.

I am very tempted to buy a handful of 58XX cards as well, I have the PCIe slots to run 10 total. I am just worried that as soon as I do that, the bitcoin bubble will then burst.

At the very least I am going to put my 5850 back on water cooling and OC it up.

[jcool]

Yeah well... no risk, no fun
Bobsama, I have no idea what could be causing this other than your router or software firewall.

Maybe try a different pool? The BTC guild is better anyway cause it's completely free, I just edited my 1st post.

[ggdh]

Bobsama, I had the same problem. Gui miner was trying to connect and after 10 minutes of waiting i figured out there's something wrong
I uninstalled 11.5 drivers, replaced with 10.5 and manually installed SDK 2.1 from jcool's link

[ggdh]

And btw, i'm getting 410Mhash/s with 5870@940. Is it about right? Power usage is ~235W with 2600K with power saving on (1600MHz).
In 24 hours it did ~0.8 coin...