Bitcoin Q & A - Ask Me Anything

[LAwLz]

Lost 33%, after a 400% climb? you're point.. The growth is pretty normal for any tech start up prior to it's IPO, ask any venture capitalist or angel investor that have an interest in upcoming technology. You know what I'm doing on the way down, buying more, because today Bitcoin is on sale. Increase holdings while lowing overall average buy in. Also thanks to diversification my portfolio as a whole didn't lose the 33%.

Say that to the guy who invested half a million dollars a few hours ago.

 

My point is, Bitcoins will never be a serious currency as long as it keeps fluctuating like this. Serious currencies need to have a very stable and low inflation rate. Right now it's like babies-first-stock exchange at best.

[Judahnator]

Say that to the guy who invested half a million dollars a few hours ago.

 

My point is, Bitcoins will never be a serious currency as long as it keeps fluctuating like this. Serious currencies need to have a very stable and low inflation rate. Right now it's like babies-first-stock exchange at best.

 

Yes and no. I believe the value of bitcoin has been exploding off its own hype.

Lets say you put $100 in, and a week later you get $150. You would go tell all your friends to jump on board, and everyone would get excited quickly. Eventually though, it needs to go back down.

 

I see two possible outcomes for Bitcoin. Either it flattens out and becomes accepted by governments, or it dies and a better one comes from it. Only time will tell though. Just cross your fingers

[RuecanOnRails]

I realize you're somewhat anti-Bitcoin, waiting and anticipating the next crash. I could debate the validity, risks, reward, potential, and concepts of Bitcoin day and night. But this is a Q & A thread, not a thread for debating subjective opinion. Please don't post off topic FUD, create your own thread if you would like to do that.

 

Try to keep this thread on topic with general questions and answers.

[VelocitySpeed]

Hi again! i ordered my parts online about a week ago and iam down to waiting for my last part to come!...so, here are a few new questions i have.

 

1) i heard some operating systems idles down your video cards , so you are basicaly required to buy a dummy plug? can anyone shed to light into this? iam going to be mining on a windows 7 home premium, would i need a dummy plug stil?

 

2) i downloaded guiminer from 2 different sources and it showed that it was a trojan (one from this forum and another from bitcointalk.org) , could it be a false positive? both sources seem highly trustworthy.

 

ps: iam mining litecoins.

[LAwLz]

Currently down to 576 USD (lost more than half its value in less than a day).

 

Forgot my question in the earlier post. When people see this stuff happening, what do you (whoever is reading this) recommend? Buy, sell or wait it out?

What do you think of the bots trying to artificially inflate the price of bitcoins by selling at almost twice the current value back and forth with each other?

[BRiteBak]

Would I be wasting my time setting up my 290 to mine bitcoin or litecoin?

[Zeo2002]

Currently down to 576 USD (lost more than half its value in less than a day).

 

Forgot my question in the earlier post. When people see this stuff happening, what do you (whoever is reading this) recommend? Buy, sell or wait it out?

What do you think of the bots trying to artificially inflate the price of bitcoins by selling at almost twice the current value back and forth with each other?

 

The price drop seems very inviting... There are a couple of thoughts with these items - 1) It may knock a lot of people out of the Bitcoin mining market (those looking for profits). 2) Perhaps someone is trying to manipulate the currency, finding this out is harder given the nature of Bitcoins.

 

First, as far as recommendations - my biggest suggestion is to first look into why you are investing/getting into Bitcoin. That alone will help determine what you want to do with Bitcoin, stay in, buy more, sell off, or nothing. My general advice, take it for someone who is still fairly new to Bitcoin in general, is if you have it, keep it. If you've bought into Bitcoin at lower amounts, hopefully you've staged off some selling points so that you've already gotten your investment back and everything else is profit. If you just bought in before the crash... Ouch, sorry - but you should know there is a potential to lose anything invested.

 

Would I be wasting my time setting up my 290 to mine bitcoin or litecoin?

 

Depends on what you're in it for, but since most are for profit I'm assuming you're in it for that. I'll say for Bitcoin - you would absolutely be wasting your time. For Litecoin, you have to go through the numbers yourself and determine if you want to as there are variables such as electricity costs and difficulty as time passes.

Determine current profitability (use daily figures): https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc

Determine hashrates/wattage: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

[SaifaFox]

I have a sticky thread about the introduction to bitcoins here.

To keep things clean I am opening a different thread for you guys to ask questions. Whether it be about mining, the currency, anything.

Hopefully others who are knowledgeable in bitcoins can answer any questions I do not know as well.

How would this handle Bitcoin. Heard it uses a lot of memory from your card. NVIDIA Tesla C2075 GPU computing processor - 6 GB - GDDR5 SDRAM or something like this sense AMD is the best for this stuff: AMD FirePro™ W9000. Each have 6GB GDDR5 ram. What would it be like for someone who used these specs:

ASUS FX-8350 processor

ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z

two of either AMD FirePro W9000, or 2 ASUS Mars gtx 760s

G.Skills Ripjaws 16gb ram

1000W Fractal Newton PSU

128gb SSD

4tb WD black

In a case with great air flow with water cooling.

This is a made up PC but how would that hold up when mining Bitcoin or litecoin?

[kizoku_95]

Which coin can be mined easily right now ??

[Travis]

Which coin can be mined easily right now ??

Litecoins.

They are made to be mined on everyday hardware. ASICs for Litecoin might come along but it's not the same as Bitcoin so they will be more difficult and more expensive to make.

[Terminashunator]

I currently BOINC, so my hardware is known stable for the past 4 months or so, nearly 24/7.

Should I bother switching to Litecoin? Currently running an overclocked 7770, planning on adding a GTX 660 Ti as well.

Power costs aren't a matter to me, all I want is to see if I could earn some snack funds

[BRiteBak]

Will flat out 24/7 mining at high temps damage an r9 290?

[RuecanOnRails]

Would I be wasting my time setting up my 290 to mine bitcoin or litecoin?

If you already have the hardware, there's no starting cost. The reasons not to are very few. I'd say go for it, the card could potentially pay for itself one day.

 

How would this handle Bitcoin. Heard it uses a lot of memory from your card. NVIDIA Tesla C2075 GPU computing processor - 6 GB - GDDR5 SDRAM or something like this sense AMD is the best for this stuff: AMD FirePro™ W9000. Each have 6GB GDDR5 ram. What would it be like for someone who used these specs:

ASUS FX-8350 processor

ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z

two of either AMD FirePro W9000, or 2 ASUS Mars gtx 760s

G.Skills Ripjaws 16gb ram

1000W Fractal Newton PSU

128gb SSD

4tb WD black

In a case with great air flow with water cooling.

This is a made up PC but how would that hold up when mining Bitcoin or litecoin?

Bitcoin mining would be useless. However mining Litecoin and other Scrypt based coins is possible. While AMD based are much better in terms of mining, you may still be able to turn some form of profit with Nvidia. You don't need professional grade GPU's either, basic consumer gaming cards work best. Here you can compare various GPU's https://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison The 7950 is currently the best $ per hash. 

 

You can calculate your estimated earnings here (any results are valid for 3 days only, The difficulty adjustments occur every 3 days making any estimates further than 3 days inaccurate)

https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc 

 

Which coin can be mined easily right now ??

There are many coins which can be mined. Consumer grade hardware such as high end AMD GPU's can mine Scrypt based coins. You can see a current rating of profitability on http://coinchoose.com/ Keep in mind the highest profitability coins jump around a lot. One of the more stable coins to mine would be Litecoin.

 

I currently BOINC, so my hardware is known stable for the past 4 months or so, nearly 24/7.

Should I bother switching to Litecoin? Currently running an overclocked 7770, planning on adding a GTX 660 Ti as well.

Power costs aren't a matter to me, all I want is to see if I could earn some snack funds

 

 

Will flat out 24/7 mining at high temps damage an r9 290?

Depending on how high the temps are. In general it wont cause any short term damage. Long term is a possibility, but by the time any damage catches up it will be time to replace the card anyways. There's also the option to RMA if any issues happen within the warranty.

[Terminashunator]

Okay. I got a 660Ti today, so I want to dedicate my 7770 to Litecoins. How do I get started? I downloaded GUIminer, signed up in Slush, but how do I mine litecoins and not bitcoins? Can i get some pointers?

[RuecanOnRails]

Okay. I got a 660Ti today, so I want to dedicate my 7770 to Litecoins. How do I get started? I downloaded GUIminer, signed up in Slush, but how do I mine litecoins and not bitcoins? Can i get some pointers?

 

If you downloaded guiminer scrypt, it will be auto set for Litecoin's scrypt algorithm. you will need to sign up with a Litecoin pool, Slush is a Bitcoin mining pool.

 

Here's a list of known Litecoin pools and their % of the network, try to spread the overall hashrate out, try not to pile into the highest % pool. The higher the distribution of mining power the better. https://www.litecoinpool.org/pools

[Terminashunator]

If you downloaded guiminer scrypt, it will be auto set for Litecoin's scrypt algorithm. you will need to sign up with a Litecoin pool, Slush is a Bitcoin mining pool.

 

Here's a list of known Litecoin pools and their % of the network, try to spread the overall hashrate out, try not to pile into the highest % pool. The higher the distribution of mining power the better. https://www.litecoinpool.org/pools

Thank you! I'll check that out!!

[Terminashunator]

If you downloaded guiminer scrypt, it will be auto set for Litecoin's scrypt algorithm. you will need to sign up with a Litecoin pool, Slush is a Bitcoin mining pool.

 

Here's a list of known Litecoin pools and their % of the network, try to spread the overall hashrate out, try not to pile into the highest % pool. The higher the distribution of mining power the better. https://www.litecoinpool.org/pools

I joined wemineltc.com and i can't get it to connect. I made an account, started GUIminer-scrypt and i can't get a Host that works.

 

Edit: sorry for double post, the forums are buggy on my browser.

[RuecanOnRails]

I joined wemineltc.com and i can't get it to connect. I made an account, started GUIminer-scrypt and i can't get a Host that works.

 

Edit: sorry for double post, the forums are buggy on my browser.

 

Try using that pools set up guide, I believe they automatically generate a .bat file for you.

https://www.wemineltc.com/gettingstarted

[Terminashunator]

Try using that pools set up guide, I believe they automatically generate a .bat file for you.

https://www.wemineltc.com/gettingstarted

I ended up getting it working. At 150k/hs. at .003 LTC

Yay for difficulty!

[SirReallySam]

Do you think it's worth buying a few litecoins now, not mining just like stocks... Do you think they will go up ?!

[Zeo2002]

Ultimately, the more people that get into it after you - the more likely it will be to go up (supply and demand). So yes, if you believe that this is a long term thing and not just a fad - absolutely. If you really want to test the waters, you could trade LTC like stocks.

[RuecanOnRails]

Do you think it's worth buying a few litecoins now, not mining just like stocks... Do you think they will go up ?!

 

If your looking to invest into Crypto-Currencies you have two options.You're taking a guess at which would see your money go further.

1) Buy coins directly.

2) Buy mining hardware to slowly mine overtime.

 

Both methods have their own positive and negatives. In the end both options see you putting money in and getting a return in Litecoins. When you purchase you get a single lump sum (you could spread out your purchasing) and that's it. When you buy mining hardware, you will have a small stream of incoming Litecoins.

 

As the difficulty increases, that stream of incoming coins will lower and may not earn the same amount of coins you would have initially got if you purchased directly. At the same time if the price and difficulty lowers, mining would see you earning more coins.

 

 

I do both, I purchase coins and I mine them. I also use the coins as they were meant to be used, not just a speculative tool. I will usually try to pay via Bitcoin/Litecoin any chance I get over fiat. To remain bullish while spending coins, I try to keep an active float in my local exchange to make sure anything I spend I purchase back.

[SirReallySam]

If your looking to invest into Crypto-Currencies you have two options.You're taking a guess at which would see your money go further.

1) Buy coins directly.

2) Buy mining hardware to slowly mine overtime.

 

Both methods have their own positive and negatives. In the end both options see you putting money in and getting a return in Litecoins. When you purchase you get a single lump sum (you could spread out your purchasing) and that's it. When you buy mining hardware, you will have a small stream of incoming Litecoins.

 

As the difficulty increases, that stream of incoming coins will lower and may not earn the same amount of coins you would have initially got if you purchased directly. At the same time if the price and difficulty lowers, mining would see you earning more coins.

 

 

I do both, I purchase coins and I mine them. I also use the coins as they were meant to be used, not just a speculative tool. I will usually try to pay via Bitcoin/Litecoin any chance I get over fiat. To remain bullish while spending coins, I try to keep an active float in my local exchange to make sure anything I spend I purchase back.

Very useful thanks

[garrett9505]

hello, currently i have a LGA 1155, core i7 3770k, a GTX 670 , both cpu and gpu are water cooled, (not over clocked yet been busy with engineering school) and a maximus 4 gene (i believe haha been a while since ive really cared....) and 8gb of ram, 1000 WATT REVOLUTION PSU,would this be capable of minning? and is it worth while to mine with this set up? and one more thing my friend has same gpu (air cooled) and a core i5 (lga 1155) with some MSI mobo. would he be able to as well (chances are we will pool together) would it be worth while to do so and how much do you think we could make in Canadian currency? please and thank you

[Terminashunator]

hello, currently i have a LGA 1155, core i7 3770k, a GTX 670 , both cpu and gpu are water cooled, (not over clocked yet been busy with engineering school) and a maximus 4 gene (i believe haha been a while since ive really cared....) and 8gb of ram, 1000 WATT REVOLUTION PSU,would this be capable of minning? and is it worth while to mine with this set up? and one more thing my friend has same gpu (air cooled) and a core i5 (lga 1155) with some MSI mobo. would he be able to as well (chances are we will pool together) would it be worth while to do so and how much do you think we could make in Canadian currency? please and thank you

It's Nvidia, so not much. I have a 660ti and an AMD 7770. The 7770 does about 180k/hs. The 660ti does 30k/hs.