Is Bitcoin the Next Big Thing?

[Sam]

@dee and @ian and @boxerdog, seems the consensus is not to bother with mining, that's a shame, because I read an article about a week ago that suggested that it's possible to mine Ethereum on a normal laptop.

@Systreg on a normal laptop lol maybe back when it all started yes you could... a 6 GPU Mining rig for Ethereum

Return Per Day is only $ 8.80 and that would set you back a few grand to build.

I am looking at buying some 16/ths rigs for bitcoin but they are not on the market yet everyone is using bitmain s9 which are the best to mine bitcoins but issue is now everyone is doing it and the electric is not cheap also it 80db so not something you can keep in your house lol

 

[websaway]

i think its well overbought at the moment. Has been for a while now. I suspect it will correct quite heavily sometime soon when theres a bigger panic sale than the little one last time, then carry on.

It can't be over bought I don't think. It can be under bought, so no new money or reinvestment. I am yet to read how it carries on when there is a continuous outflow of money.

 

[Systreg]

@wizard, I looked at some mining specific rigs but didn't understand much about them, and can't for the life of me think why they cost thousands of dollars, how

If I was paying for something like that, I'd want a quiet one, how are they producing 80db of noise, it ain't little people in there with pickaxes and shovels is it haha

I'm tempted to have a go on the laptop purely to see how much/little can be made mining Ethereum, take note of the numbers on the electric meter and running for 24x7 days. I can't see it would be a great amount of electric as it's only a laptop, and see how much can be mined compared to electricity used.

You mention 6 CPU, but I don't know what CPU numbers mean. I opened CCleaner, because at the top of the cleaner screen it shows this:

That's just a load of numbers, what is my CPU?

 

[Sam]

@wizard, I looked at some mining specific rigs but didn't understand much about them, and can't for the life of me think why they cost thousands of dollars, how

If I was paying for something like that, I'd want a quiet one, how are they producing 80db of noise, it ain't little people in there with pickaxes and shovels is it haha

I'm tempted to have a go on the laptop purely to see how much/little can be made mining Ethereum, take note of the numbers on the electric meter and running for 24x7 days. I can't see it would be a great amount of electric as it's only a laptop, and see how much can be mined compared to electricity used.

You mention 6 CPU, but I don't know what CPU numbers mean. I opened CCleaner, because at the top of the cleaner screen it shows this:

View attachment 1770

That's just a load of numbers, what is my CPU?

You need to read in to it more its a complete waste of time on a laptop you need big graphics cards which are a few hundred each to even start.

 

[Edwin]

Your CPU is an i3-4005U which, from a mining perspective, will probably get you nowhere at all.

Here’s the benchmark for your CPU
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-4005U+@+1.70GHz

It’s pretty low. Here’s a recent 2017 laptop processor for comparison
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-8550U+@+1.80GHz&id=3064

And a top AMD desktop processor
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+Threadripper+1950X&id=3058

 

[Edwin]

But here’s why CPU mining is irrelevant (using Etherium as an example)
https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2325/is-cpu-mining-even-worth-the-ether

Like trying to win a Formula 1 race on a bicycle...

 

[ian]

@wizard, I looked at some mining specific rigs but didn't understand much about them, and can't for the life of me think why they cost thousands of dollars, how

If I was paying for something like that, I'd want a quiet one, how are they producing 80db of noise, it ain't little people in there with pickaxes and shovels is it haha

I'm tempted to have a go on the laptop purely to see how much/little can be made mining Ethereum, take note of the numbers on the electric meter and running for 24x7 days. I can't see it would be a great amount of electric as it's only a laptop, and see how much can be mined compared to electricity used.

You mention 6 CPU, but I don't know what CPU numbers mean. I opened CCleaner, because at the top of the cleaner screen it shows this:

View attachment 1770

That's just a load of numbers, what is my CPU?

I have a seriously powerful 'gaming' PC, and given many mined coins are GPU intensive, you'd think mine would maximise potential returns, but it won't, because you need banks of GPU's, loads of low-cost/free power. Yes it would make a bit, and recover the cost of the hardware within 12 months or so, but even then it isn't worth it, not in a home environment anyway. Your laptop will make cents, before you factor in electricity consumption; you'd be wasting your money (though if you want to do it purely for intrigue, I get that).

 

[dee]

It can't be over bought I don't think. It can be under bought, so no new money or reinvestment. I am yet to read how it carries on when there is a continuous outflow of money.

It can be overbought I think. Its the same as any commodity. My opinion is theres a misconception with all trading I think. You are fundamentally trading against people, not the asset. Price is driven by demand, which is driven by people and emotion. Anything is only worth what someone is prepared to pay. Agreed bitcoin so far has not played ball with most usual patterns etc , but I still think at some point (soon) this will correct towards a mean. It's well overextended. Especially since a large proportion of the ride up is lots of small, new investors riding a press release. They'll panic sell as soon as it starts to tank.

 

[Edwin]

Interesting to read exactly why Valve have stopped taking Bitcoin payments after 18 months of accepting them.
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...coin-experiment-will-no-longer-accept-payment

 

[Edwin]

For the hardcore GPU miners, you may want to keep an eye on Nvidia’s new $3,000 “Titan V” graphics card.

From initial reading, it seems to be about 3x the price of their previous flagship while offering (on paper) 6-9x the performance (in general, I’m not talking about crypto mining)

And what may be even more crucial is that it does that with a TDP of just 250W so it appears be be super power efficient.

You might also find this thread worth monitoring, since it looks like some crypto-specific benchmarks may be forthcoming...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2545848.0

If it’s anywhere near its stated performance improvement, I’m guessing it will very quickly go up to well over the MSRP, like many other graphics cards have.

 

[ausername]

Mining for all of the established coins is controlled by huge players who have in invested tens of millions into infrastructure, e.g. https://i0.wp.com/www.altcointoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/OXBTC-mining-farm-2.jpg?resize=828,552

And the UK has high energy prices, so clearly if you were going to be building a mining farm you'd be doing it somewhere where energy is cheap or subsidised.... our energy prices are amongst the highest in the world, so trying to set up a mining operation here would be like trying to grow bananas in Kent.

About 6 years too late for layman to mine bitcoin. Only way is to try and identify a brand new crypto which you think could stick around and become something some day (like the earliest bitcoin miners did). But considering the investment required in buying and running a mining rig, wouldn't it be so much easier to just spend that some money on cheap coins at an early stage and then bag holding?

By just spending that money on coins you can buy into a few different alt coins, instead of mining one, and then have greater chance of of success?

 

[ausername]

To put it all simply, if the drive can be driven up this quickly by nothing other than 'optimism' it can be driven down many times faster by panic.

Winners in this will be those who hedged their bets by moving half of the BTC into USD at $16k and will move it back into BTC at say $11k/$12k.... buying in at $16k is stupid when a correction is so inevitable. Those are the people who will be making bank out of all of this, the ones who know how to ride the waves.

 

[aZooZa]

Interesting to read exactly why Valve have stopped taking Bitcoin payments after 18 months of accepting them.
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...coin-experiment-will-no-longer-accept-payment

Thanks for that. It explains EXACTLY why "I'm out" as they say.

Mining for all of the established coins is controlled by huge players who have in invested tens of millions into infrastructure, e.g. https://i0.wp.com/www.altcointoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/OXBTC-mining-farm-2.jpg?resize=828,552

And the UK has high energy prices, so clearly if you were going to be building a mining farm you'd be doing it somewhere where energy is cheap or subsidised.... our energy prices are amongst the highest in the world, so trying to set up a mining operation here would be like trying to grow bananas in Kent.

About 6 years too late for layman to mine bitcoin. Only way is to try and identify a brand new crypto which you think could stick around and become something some day (like the earliest bitcoin miners did). But considering the investment required in buying and running a mining rig, wouldn't it be so much easier to just spend that some money on cheap coins at an early stage and then bag holding?

By just spending that money on coins you can buy into a few different alt coins, instead of mining one, and then have greater chance of of success?

That's a big rig shed in your pic - but you'll never beat the Chinese at this. They have buildings the size of Boeing's 787 assembly plants - chock full of mining kit, and the price of leccie there is relatively negligible. I've actually seen one first-hand but they're very secretive - unless you know a friendly Chinese copper...

 

[ausername]

That photo is from OXBTC, which is the largest bitcoin mining operation in the world (in three locations in China).

So that 'shed' probably has hundreds more rows like that.

Some big ones in Iceland too, not sure why because energy prices not particularly cheap there.... although it may be "conglomeration" or something, they have some huge data centers too so it may have something to do with data centre owners just having the existing space / infrastructure and expertise to operate them alongside their existing operations.

 

[aZooZa]

That photo is from OXBTC, which is the largest bitcoin mining operation in the world (in three locations in China).

So that 'shed' probably has hundreds more rows like that.

Some big ones in Iceland too, not sure why because energy prices not particularly cheap there.... although it may be "conglomeration" or something, they have some huge data centers too so it may have something to do with data centre owners just having the existing space / infrastructure and expertise to operate them alongside their existing operations.

Thanks - yes quite right about the 'shed' comment.

I think the Iceland deal has something to do with climate and the need for less cooling.

 

[Edwin]

Actually Iceland has both free natural cooling and cheap geothermal energy
https://www.thebalance.com/bitcoin-mining-in-the-beauty-of-iceland-4026143

If you wanted to do your own mining in the UK it would probably only make sense if you could afford to eat the sunk costs of a wind turbine and/or solar panel and a Tesla battery. Because then your ongoing electricity bill (excluding your initial investment) would be near or at zero.

In fact, there’s a fun thought experiment: is it cheaper to pay for electricity or to extend a mortgage to cover the cost of getting ongoing electricity free?

I don’t know the answer, but it’s that kind of lateral thinking that might - just might - find you a bit of profit down the crack in the back of the cryptocoin sofa.

 

[Edwin]

Ok. This is rough and ready, and simplistic because it doesn’t account for an existing mortgage, but £20,000 repaid over 10 years at 2.49% fixed (First Direct) would cost £188 a month. Figures are from MoneySavingExpert.

£20K should be ample to buy you a renewable energy solution and a battery or two.

 

[Edwin]

Three good “food for thought” articles...
http://time.com/money/5056346/bitcoin-ownership/
https://www.coindesk.com/threat-bitcoin-futures/
https://www.coindesk.com/lightning-bitcoin-scaling-tech-really-know/

When you look at the last article, consider this: why would Lightning have to use Bitcoin? Why couldn’t the same solution be married to a different cryptocoin?

If the answer is “no real reason” then that in itself is interesting...

 

[vu4kata]

Our government has not yet confirmed.

https://www.coindesk.com/bulgarian-government-sitting-3-billion-bitcoin/

 

[JMI]

Pity anyone heavily investing in this 'now'..