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

[Otis11]

I think I'm gonna give this a try for a bit... anyone want to tell me which the best card from here would be?

If I can get this set up today, I'll swing by and grab one tonight... Wanted another cruncher.

Edit: here's what it's giving me... anyone know what's wrong?
(Wrong log in or password - but I'm sure they are both correct...)



The 260 is just a proof of concept before I get the other card tonight.

[artemm]

Otis, make sure to go into your account at deepbit and set the same password on the worker. Just click your email and type your password. What annoys me about that is it doesn't block out the characters, so people can look over your shoulder, so don't use your normal password.

EDIT: you're in the DFW area right? There's one Diamond 5870 for only $220 at the Irving location. GO GO GO!

[artemm]

I repeat my question: what to do if i have bitocins in "bitcoin" wallet (software, not webpage)? I had 1 bitcoin on my deepbit account and then I transferred it to my wallet using my wallet's address.

What now? If i log in into bitmarket my balance is zero.

You have to fund your trading account, trade for currency, then withdraw from that account. I exchanged my first bitcoin this morning @ 17 USD. Pretty wild considering this only took one night for my mainrig to pull off.

[Otis11]

Otis, make sure to go into your account at deepbit and set the same password on the worker. Just click your email and type your password. What annoys me about that is it doesn't block out the characters, so people can look over your shoulder, so don't use your normal password.

EDIT: you're in the DFW area right? There's one Diamond 5870 for only $220 at that location. GO GO GO!

During the summer I live in LA... so it's the location out here.

And I think I didn't set up the worker correctly on deepbit... what's "Worker login's tail (up to 5 characters)"

Also I'm guessing proportional is recommended setting?

What about failure detection threshold?

Sorry... my brain's not working this morning.

Edit: also, which brand of GFX is recommended for ATI? Aka has good heat dissipation and warranty? I know nothing about them...

[artemm]

During the summer I live in LA... so it's the location out here.

And I think I didn't set up the worker correctly on deepbit... what's "Worker login's tail (up to 5 characters)"

Also I'm guessing proportional is recommended setting?

What about failure detection threshold?

Sorry... my brain's not working this morning.

Edit: also, which brand of GFX is recommended for ATI? Aka has good heat dissipation and warranty? I know nothing about them...

Password is all I needed to configure. As for brand, I think for the 5-series cards, you should just grab whatever you can get. The price of 5970s has literally doubled on eBay (I've been watching.) All of the brands are good, although some have better warranties and quicker RMA. XFX apparently is one of the best while HIS has had problems. Asus deviates from reference design, but their RMA is good. I've had good luck with Gigabyte too.

Look for new 5870 or 5850 and used 5970 (if you get lucky.) At $220, though, I'd grab that Diamond card in a flash.

[Otis11]

So I just set the password on my worker to the same as i enter on guiMinner?

Edit: that doesn't appear to be working either...

[[XC] gomeler]

Just bought a pair of watercooled HD5850s. I guess I'll set them up in a 2600K and get the CPU crunching WCG. I've been dillydallying about bitcoin for a while but I might as well play with it now

[Fhqwhgads6680]

I don't understand what is encouraging buyers to buy these? Its not like they are backed by gold or anything like that so the only thing that makes them valuable is relative rarity which, like collectables for example, doesn't mean anything.... once people loose interest and stop buying they become useless right? And as others have said it is a little worry-some what they are doing with the computational power... but I'd probably try it if I had an ati video card, switched to nvidia purely for gpugrid... I also couldn't sell this to my wife thats for sure...

[Otis11]

Tried BTCGuild but no luck still... Any ideas?

[mreuter80]

I found this interesting episode about bitcoin on youtube. Although a lot is still unclear, it might help answer a couple of questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwNfBgwbqng

I keep thinking about all the miners during the California Gold Rush time. Maybe generating the coins is not the way to go ...

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Trying this on my GTX285's acutally... thats $120 per month or so... if it works then I can sell the wife on it

[Deux]

Been at this for about two months, not sure how I feel about its long term stability.

Currently doing 2.9 Ghash/sec with 2x5970 and 2x 5870 mining at BTCmine

[Reflex1]

I've got my 2x 480GTX's on it, nVidia really sucks with this. They produce 200Mhash/s together! its been on BTCGuild all day and no coins yet ...any ideas?

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Hey guys, quick question to those who have done this. How does the trading work? how do you get paid for the bitcoin? Paypal or something? I am just curious how the process works once you have bitcoins

Reflex, I feel your pain... I Just set up my 2 GTX 285's and they get about 60mhash/s a piece....

[Deux]

So basically once you have bitcoins in the wallet on your pc you can sell them on an exchange such as mtgox. After that you can withdraw your money several ways, the easiest way for US users being dwolla.

[zalbard]

Been at this for about two months, not sure how I feel about its long term stability.

Currently doing 2.9 Ghash/sec with 2x5970 and 2x 5870 mining at BTCmine

Did your income ($) per Mhash/sec go down during this time? And if so, by how much? Any idea?

[ggdh]

First transaction: 14.2 euro = 20$

Started looking for 5850...

[Otis11]

how long did it take to connect to the pool?
mines been connecting for 5 minutes...


edit:

figured it out. running between 345 and 350

How did you fix your connection issues? Mine still just says connecting...

[p2501]

Did your income ($) per Mhash/sec go down during this time? And if so, by how much? Any idea?

I'd be very interested in this too.

Edit: Also, did you have kind of a more or less constant income? Meaning, did you manage to sell all bitcoins you wanted to?

[Otis11]

How did you fix your connection issues? Mine still just says connecting...

Got it... now to wait for results. Not quite sure I did it right, and not sure what I did, but the GPUs are showing load.

Edit: Every time I start it on my GTX260 my computer freezes... Time to go pick up a 58xx and see if that does any better.
(anyone else notice their computer freeze?)

[stangracin3]

Got it... now to wait for results. Not quite sure I did it right, and not sure what I did, but the GPUs are showing load.

Edit: Every time I start it on my GTX260 my computer freezes... Time to go pick up a 58xx and see if that does any better.
(anyone else notice their computer freeze?)

same here lol


and yes the freezing is annoying

[SMTB1963]

A totally different question(s): What about taxes?
I would assume it's different for each country, and maybe not relevant as long as you only mine the virtual money. But what happens when you change it to real money? Who needs/must take care of it? Is it the miner? Does the pool takes care of it? What type of taxes can we expect and what is the percentage? Can we offset the involved costs (energy/hardware)?
Any thoughts?

A very astute question indeed. While the mere act of mining bitcoins probably has no tax effect for the miner, purchasing anything with them (or "exchanging" them for hard currency) most certainly creates a tax liability - at least as far as the US IRS is concerned.

Virtual currencies do have some advantages over "real" currencies, but bitcoin has some built-in weaknesses that IMO make it's economic utility questionable. In particular, the arbitrary 21M cap automatically makes the entire system deflationary over the long run (unless I'm missing something).

As far as the here & now, I've looked at a few of the exchange sites and what you see is a huge run-up in bitcoin value over the past couple of months in terms of virtually all currencies bitcoins can convert to. As someone else has pointed out in this thread, the "market" for bitcoins looks to be in a classic speculative bubble.

Mine all you want, but be prepared for tax consequences if you actually trade with these things. And I sure as hell wouldn't be going long in bitcoins at their current prices, given that I see no market fundamentals supporting the current pricing levels.

Not trying to rain on the parade, I just think everybody should have their eyes wide open before diving into bitcoin.

[jcool]

Updated Post #1 with a few of the most common questions & problems.
But people, really - I am trying here. Many of the questions posed on the last few pages can easily be answered by carefully reading through the 1st post and/or some quick web research.

Edit: No freezing issues here, not even a GUI slowdown like I got with virtually any GPU crunching project. ATIs are definitely the way to go on this.

SMTB1963, I understand your concerns. I'm not quite sold this will work for very long either. All I know is that RIGHT NOW, it does generate some instant money if you already have the right hardware.
It's (probably) also gonna earn you something if you have to go out and buy just the card. I never advised anyone to go all-out and build entirely new rigs for this. That is entirely up to the individual cruncher and his/her policy on risks vs. chances.

[Otis11]

Sorry for all the questions Jcool...Thanks for putting this all together!

[jcool]

Sorry for all the questions Jcool...Thanks for putting this all together!

No problem mate - just saying, I can't respond to everyone individually at the rate questions are coming up.
Looking at your bitcoin screenshot, it needs to connect to all blocks before it works correctly. It took about 10 minutes for me after the first start-up until all blocks were connected.
As for the login problem, I have no idea - "auth token rejected by server" is something I havent seen yet. Try another pool, the BCT guild pool is better anyway 'cause it's free