Bitcoin Discussion Thread Part 2

I had 12 BTC 4 months ago......

I wish for a time machine....one that takes me back to the first few years of BTC where I could mine thousands of coins in a week...
 
So I'm the only one holding?

I've been mining LTC for awhile and traded some to get 8.5 BTC. The LTC gains have been very impressive; but I'm going to hold.

I pre-ordered a Cointerra IV for January delivery less than 2 weeks ago. They sold out right after I ordered and then the Februrary batch sold out in the past 2 days with all the BTC price surges.

There's two ways to estimate future difficulty;
1. Percentage increase based on short term periods from the previous months. This method is used by most of the BTC difficulty calculators.
2. Bubble method: Increases in network hashing power based on releases of ASICs.

A percent based method cannot sustain itself and is not representative of previous difficulty increases over a period of time. This is primarily due to a limited number of confirmed shipments by companies selling ASICs. As the difficulty climbs, applying a percentage increase every 10 days shows that the difficulty is climbing much faster than what the ASICs have been confirmed. Cointerra has only confirmed adding 2000 TH to the network every month. BFL & their monarch are a small player because it's so overpriced and many people probably feel burned by them from previous delays.

I have plotted the difficulty back using the data since January 2013 and the increase in difficulty varies between 0.8% per day to 4.6% per day. The bubble method has merit and works with previous data.
There are many discussions on future difficulty, so if you're interested, you can go read about it.

A reasonable estimation of 2% increase that can be used with an online calculator indeed shows that a $6k purchase would not pay for itself if you received it in Feb or March. However, Cointerra orders make up the bulk of the hashpower increases. So, even if there is a delay for them, it doesn't mean it won't make ROI for those who ordered a Feb batch.

Using a very conservative bubble method by adding 4000 TH in december and another 4000TH in Jan and 20%, I estimate around 1.5 million difficulty by Jan 14. Cointerra has confirmed 2000TH for Dec. & Jan. So 4000 TH for estimates is extremely conservative. I estimate about 60 BTC would be earned for a January delivery of a Cointerra IV miner, and 40 BTC for a FEb, and 30 BTC for a March.

Of course these are just estimates, but that means BTC would have to drop to $200 to break even for a March delivery to not be a worthwhile investment.

Yes, BTC can drop to <$100, and in that case, the January rigs will barely break even. But it could go to $1000 quite easily, in which case there would be $55k profit.
 
Can someone recommend an online wallet and the best way in the US to cash out those bitcoins and get the money in my bank account?

I don't like keeping bitcoins on my computer because if something unforseen happens, they're gone. I've had it happen once and my backup failed me. So I prefer to store them in an online wallet.
 
Archer75 said:
Can someone recommend an online wallet and the best way in the US to cash out those bitcoins and get the money in my bank account?

I don't like keeping bitcoins on my computer because if something unforseen happens, they're gone. I've had it happen once and my backup failed me. So I prefer to store them in an online wallet.
Click to expand...

Not sure about an online wallet but you could throw the bat file on a couple of usb's
 
Archer75 said:
Can someone recommend an online wallet and the best way in the US to cash out those bitcoins and get the money in my bank account?

I don't like keeping bitcoins on my computer because if something unforseen happens, they're gone. I've had it happen once and my backup failed me. So I prefer to store them in an online wallet.
Click to expand...

NO ONLINE WALLET!!!

jeebus people
 
jojo69 said:
NO ONLINE WALLET!!!

jeebus people
Click to expand...

Why not? I've already lost bitcoins having them locally. And how do I pay with bit coin when i'm out and about? I could put them on my phone I suppose but what if my phone dies?

And how do I cash out?
 
Just put a password protected, encrypted zip file of your wallet.dat file in cloud storage somewhere.
 
Parja said:
Just put a password protected, encrypted zip file of your wallet.dat file in cloud storage somewhere.
Click to expand...

Do I have to do that every time bitcoins are added to it? I assume so.

Sorry, just trying to understand this. Seems so easy to lose them. Trying to figure out the best practices for storing, backing up, spending and selling and getting the cash into my bank account.

Let's say I have the bitcoins on my computer in the bitcoin qt wallet and I decide I want to send them somewhere to cash out. I open the wallet but it takes days to sync. Before the coins are sent somewhere to cash out is it going to wait days for the sync to complete? I don't want to miss out on selling some coins at a good price if it takes that long to run when I open the wallet.
 
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So as of today, November 18, is bitcoin or litecoin mining still a worthwhile investment considering the cost of building a multiple GPU pc? I've pondered the idea of going for it but never did.
 
Modder said:
So as of today, November 18, is bitcoin or litecoin mining still a worthwhile investment considering the cost of building a multiple GPU pc? I've pondered the idea of going for it but never did.
Click to expand...

bitcoin mining has long outgrown the GPU rigs of yore, custom ASIC hardware has driven difficulty orders of magnitude above GPU profitability. I hear people are still making a go at litecoin, though I imagine the clock is ticking there
 
Modder said:
So as of today, November 18, is bitcoin or litecoin mining still a worthwhile investment considering the cost of building a multiple GPU pc? I've pondered the idea of going for it but never did.
Click to expand...

gpu mining LTC with multiple GPUs can be a pain to setup and maintain. The heat is good for winter, but bad for summer. There is an incredible amount of stress, and a $300 video card will only mine 0.5 LTC/day. However, due to the increased prices, I expect difficulty will increase within the next 2-3 months such that a 280x (7970) will only be able to mine 0.25 LTC/day. Then the difficulty increases will subside.

So you decide if it's worth it. a $1500-$1600 expense for one rig with 4 gpus will only make 2 LTC/day and will decrease to 1 LTC/day in 2-3 months. It adds up over time, but it can be a decent amount of work to setup & maintain. You will spend a lot of time learning.

Do not mine BTC with gpus. You're far too late.
 
Archer75 said:
Do I have to do that every time bitcoins are added to it?
Click to expand...

As long as you don't create new addresses, no. Wallet.dat files just store the private key associated with an address, so it's basically like an account number.

I open the wallet but it takes days to sync. Before the coins are sent somewhere to cash out is it going to wait days for the sync to complete? I don't want to miss out on selling some coins at a good price if it takes that long to run when I open the wallet.
Click to expand...

That's because it's downloading the block chain. Every time you make a transaction, it appends the block chain. So until you have the fully updated block chain to append, you can't make a transaction. Therefore, you want to leave the Bitcoin client running on one PC where you do your transactions so you've always got the fully updated block chain.
 
So back to my original question, how do you cash out? Where do you send your bitcoins that can give you cash in your bank account for them?
 
Archer75 said:
So back to my original question, how do you cash out? Where do you send your bitcoins that can give you cash in your bank account for them?
Click to expand...

coinbase will do that

EDIT: and to those saying they want to use online wallets or they think they need flash drives, get Armory, it lets you print out your private key quickly and easily and re-import it just as easily. It also doesn't have to keep up with the bitcoin network like bitcoin-QT does, OTOH, its third party. You can dump your private key from the official client using the debug console if you don't want to deal with third party wallets, but the official wallet takes up north of 10GB now as it has to download the whole blockchain.

Note, one should make this address/key on a livecd on a computer not connected to the internet with no writable media attached for maximum security. When you want to spend your bitcoin later, you can just import the private key on a computer that is online, spend what you want, make a new address the same as before, and send your remaining balance to it.
 
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lilfiend said:
coinbase will do that

EDIT: and to those saying they want to use online wallets or they think they need flash drives, get Armory, it lets you print out your private key quickly and easily and re-import it just as easily. It also doesn't have to keep up with the bitcoin network like bitcoin-QT does, OTOH, its third party. You can dump your private key from the official client using the debug console if you don't want to deal with third party wallets, but the official wallet takes up north of 10GB now as it has to download the whole blockchain.

Note, one should make this address/key on a livecd on a computer not connected to the internet with no writable media attached for maximum security. When you want to spend your bitcoin later, you can just import the private key on a computer that is online, spend what you want, make a new address the same as before, and send your remaining balance to it.
Click to expand...

I endorse this post
 
to clarify you can generate and dump a private key from the default client offline, but if you want to spend your bitcoin (with no 3rd party apps) you'll need a bitcoin wallet that is up to date on the blockchain, which can take quite a while of heavy CPU usage and disk I/O, like a couple days.
 
I'm messing around with a GTX Titan on FTC mining right now to see what kind of hash rates I can get out of it. So far, the max I've reached is 460 kH/s using CudaMiner (1150mhz core clock). If it didn't consume so much power, as in like over 350W while mining at that core frequency, it wouldn't be too bad of a miner. :(
 
blade52x said:
I'm messing around with a GTX Titan on FTC mining right now to see what kind of hash rates I can get out of it. So far, the max I've reached is 460 kH/s using CudaMiner (1150mhz core clock). If it didn't consume so much power, as in like over 350W while mining at that core frequency, it wouldn't be too bad of a miner. :(
Click to expand...

rofl....that's horrible cost/performance...When I was in the game, 7950s would get you 550-650Kh/s while using no more then 225w though im willing to bet consumption is far below that.

bwahaha...just looked at costs...Newegg has 7950s for $240 and Titans are $1000....so your looking at (7950 stock vs your OC) 17% more performance in mining with a 7950 at 76% less up front cost.
 
protip - search the for sale forums here for some of my old mining gear =)
 
USMCGrunt said:
rofl....that's horrible cost/performance...When I was in the game, 7950s would get you 550-650Kh/s while using no more then 225w though im willing to bet consumption is far below that.

bwahaha...just looked at costs...Newegg has 7950s for $240 and Titans are $1000....so your looking at (7950 stock vs your OC) 17% more performance in mining with a 7950 at 76% less up front cost.
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Well, I'm running 4x 7950s, 3x 7870s, a 7850, and a 7790 so you don't need to tell me that. I wasn't seriously considering to use my Titans for mining. I've actually got more important work to do on them. :p

I'm hoping to upgrade the lower end GPUs I have into 7950s this Black Friday.
 
So theoretically, with a site like Coinbase you could buy a few bitcoins, wait for the price to double, then cash out for huge profit? What am I missing? The price has tripled this month alone...

The spike in value this month is insane. Some people have just made a bucket of cash. If you have media connections and put bitcoin in the front page of media you can really manipulate the price.
 
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bigdogchris said:
So theoretically, with a site like Coinbase you could buy a few bitcoins, wait for the price to double, then cash out for huge profit? What am I missing? The price has tripled this month alone...
Click to expand...

You are missing the unpredictable aspect of this.
 
bigdogchris said:
Yeah, just looking over the history I see the price is very volatile, especially this month.
Click to expand...

in absolute numbers yes, in percentage terms both the previous blow offs ($32 and $266) were more volatile than this
 
the radeons I have (290x) only have dvi d.
Anyone know how I would use a dummy plug or something so that the second one can mine?
 
I'm debating if I should sell as I mine right now. Everything is high right now, and it's like $30/day after electricity for me. The last time I had anything comparable was back in May/June when LTC was $4 and mining difficulty was much lower. It feels like it's almost too profitable on a day-by-day basis right now. I guess I'll have to watch LTC difficulty adjustments in the coming days/weeks and see if it reacts accordingly.

FTC was about 50-100% more profitable than LTC yesterday for a short period of time and its difficulty has almost doubled in 24 hours.
 
depends what you're mining with? i've got a lot of newer gear and I sold my older stuff about 6 months ago to pave way for the newer stuff. some gear is not worth it to mine with, particular GPUs and even some older avalons.

whatcha got?
 
note235 said:
the radeons I have (290x) only have dvi d.
Anyone know how I would use a dummy plug or something so that the second one can mine?
Click to expand...

i have two 290's in a crossfire config and I don't need a dummy plug at all

Running two 27" monitors (off the primary card) the 2nd card just sits in it's PCI slot doing its thing, it successfully mines, with no dummy adapters and even in crossfire mode.

Currently getting 1.6Mhash (Litecoin) off my two 290's. This is at stock core/memory. Oddly enough any bumps in memory or gpu speed caused me to net LESS hash rate.
 
note235 said:
the radeons I have (290x) only have dvi d.
Anyone know how I would use a dummy plug or something so that the second one can mine?
Click to expand...

Unless something has changed recently, you shouldn't need dummy plugs at all. I have 2 systems with 7950's in them, neither system has dummy plugs on its GPUs and neither has Crossfire bridges installed either and my 7950's continue to mine nonstop. I know I'm not talking the same model of card as yours, but I don't know why the requirement for dummy plugs would suddenly resurface after being gone for quite awhile. In fact, if I guess right, the requirement for dummy plugs went away because of the growth of distributed computing projects like folding and mining.
 
I've been so focused on SHA-256 mining for the past half year that I neglected to check out hash-rate/$ of other alt-coins. I am shocked at how profitable it is to mine Litecoins!

wow!

Definitely something I need to look further into. What are some effective Litecoin mining setups out there?
 
wmcleod said:
I've been so focused on SHA-256 mining for the past half year that I neglected to check out hash-rate/$ of other alt-coins. I am shocked at how profitable it is to mine Litecoins!

wow!

Definitely something I need to look further into. What are some effective Litecoin mining setups out there?
Click to expand...

I think the only effective setup at this point is a motherboard plus a bunch of AMD GPUs. For the record, I got into mining by starting with Litecoins a few months ago mainly because it still was viable to mine with GPUs.

7950's used to be the hash/watt leaders and still are to some extent if you can still find them cheap enough. The R9 290 is starting to look good as well (the non-X version)... however with the R9 290's, there are none with custom coolers out of the box yet, so they tend to run hot and loud with the stock cooler. 7970's and R9 280X's are also good choices.

LTC, being ASIC resistant (due to its fast memory requirement) probably won't be overrun by super ASICs that will increase the difficulty overnight to ungodly proportions. There are some ASICs coming out, but so far, the most powerful one I've read about is a 10Mhash/s one. Definitely not leaps and bounds over the performance of a bunch of GPUs... so GPU mining should still be around for awhile.
 
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