• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Bitcoin Discussion Thread Part 2

yes, yes and yes

ASIC has not hit yet, the block reward halved to 25 a couple weeks ago, since then difficulty has dropped somewhat as unprofitable GPU farms go offline.

Price hovers in the low 13s
 
It is tough going right now. My 4.8 GH/s FPGA farm gets me around 5 coins/week with the current difficulty and reward. It is still profitable, but I doubt it would be with GPUs any longer. I will be going to ASIC farming once the units are available.
 
musky said:
It is tough going right now. My 4.8 GH/s FPGA farm gets me around 5 coins/week with the current difficulty and reward. It is still profitable, but I doubt it would be with GPUs any longer. I will be going to ASIC farming once the units are available.
Click to expand...

yeah, I am blessed with very cheap power rates in my location. My GPUs are right around break even, which I figure puts me up this time of year with the heat.

I have a BFL preorder...stillllllllllllllll waiting.

Just looked at the network graph, shrinking at .5%/day, pretty nice difficulty drop last night.
 
ya, I fire up the miners anytime I kick on the heater in the house. If you're paying to mine and paying to cool then you're not making much if any profit.
 
EdGaRRRRR said:
anyone have an ASIC miner? Which pool is good nowadays?
Click to expand...

No ASIC in the wild as yet, not even manufacturer testing on any noticeable scale.

Smaller pools are better as they decentralize the network, P2Pool is best from that point of view.

If you don't have the patience to set that up BTCGuild works well, though it has grown too large, and the pool op is responsive on bitcointalk.org.

Just please stay away from Eligius.
 
Amount of the diffculty make me feel like there are ASIC in the pool already
 
no, hashrate was growing rather lineally since June and was actually slowing its growth rate starting in October. Then the reward halving kicked it in the nuts and since then it has been shrinking about .5%/day.

I see no evidence whatsoever of ASIC coming online as yet, and I am watching rather closely.

speed-small-lin.png
 
But my Guess-o-Meter makes belive other wise............
I have no Data to prove that
 
19.30 this morning - looks like it spoked to 19.78 overnight. I'm not sure what is driving it, but I like it!
 
jojo69 said:
ASIC confidence?
Click to expand...

I would actually expect that to drive down prices as GPU miners get out of the business.

We'll see what happens if BFL starts shipping ASIC units in 2 weeks like their last plan says they will.
 
Has BFL released any specs about their ASICs? All I saw on their website is the different G/Hash variants. What about power draw of their units, how do you access them to configure them, what kind of networking capabilities do they have, etc...

Regardless...dropping 650 on an ASIC that pumps out 30 g/hash is going to be a lot more profitable then dropping that same coin on a high end GPU and, im assuming, use less or equivilent levels of power.

Be nice if they had wireless support and a gui that you could access remotely by typing in its IP address in a browser. Stick a couple in your basement, fire them up and let them run 24/7 without ever having to deal with it...except on withdraw days.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Has BFL released any specs about their ASICs? All I saw on their website is the different G/Hash variants. What about power draw of their units, how do you access them to configure them, what kind of networking capabilities do they have, etc...
Click to expand...

Power usage estimated per device: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showwiki.php?title=FAQ:Power+Usage+and+Connections

Other than the minirig, they are just USB devices and need something else to run them and provide network connectivity. That something else can be an Android device, Raspberry Pi, or any PC. The minirig actually comes with an embedded Google Nexus 7" tablet, so you could just plug it in and go.
 
Last edited:
musky said:
Power usage estimated per device: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showwiki.php?title=FAQ:Power+Usage+and+Connections

Other than the minirig, they are just USB devices and need something else to run them and provide network connectivity. That something else can be an Android device, Raspberry Pi, or any PC. The minirig actually comes with an embedded Google Nexus 7" tablet, so you could just plug it in and go.
Click to expand...

Interesting...did some looking around on the forums and am very tempted to preorder a little SC...a few threads made it appear that at worst they anticipate the little SC bringing a return of 180/mon...I do realize however that these are estimates cause nobody really knows.

So....is there an app that is loaded onto the host device that runs the ASIC units or what? I mean...have they made it simple enough that I could just plug it into an old Galaxy S2 cellphone and rock and roll. Im digging around for the info. but no luck thus far.
 
I've been out of the bitcoin loop for a while, so forgive my ignorance, but are these ASIC essential FPGAs made for calculating bitcoins? If so, that's quite interesting since I was trying to get something like this going almost a year ago.
 
So this kinda sucks. With the new price hike I thought I would finally cash in. I didn't have many, but would get a nice chunk of change at this current rate.

So I tried using my old wallet.dat the new client, doesn't work. Just comes up with an empty balance, even after all the blocks were sync'd up. I even tried this "drag your wallet file" on the blockchain.info site. Nothing, nada.
 
Dallows said:
So this kinda sucks. With the new price hike I thought I would finally cash in. I didn't have many, but would get a nice chunk of change at this current rate.

So I tried using my old wallet.dat the new client, doesn't work. Just comes up with an empty balance, even after all the blocks were sync'd up. I even tried this "drag your wallet file" on the blockchain.info site. Nothing, nada.
Click to expand...

It works for me, you either incorrectly backed it up or didn't put it in the correct folder. Install bitcoin client first, then drag the appropriate wallet.dat file to
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
 
elite.mafia said:
It works for me, you either incorrectly backed it up or didn't put it in the correct folder. Install bitcoin client first, then drag the appropriate wallet.dat file to
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
Click to expand...

I don't know how you can incorrectly back up a single file. It was just sitting on a hard drive unused for a long, long time. So I slaved the drive, copied over the file.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Interesting...did some looking around on the forums and am very tempted to preorder a little SC...a few threads made it appear that at worst they anticipate the little SC bringing a return of 180/mon...I do realize however that these are estimates cause nobody really knows.

So....is there an app that is loaded onto the host device that runs the ASIC units or what? I mean...have they made it simple enough that I could just plug it into an old Galaxy S2 cellphone and rock and roll. Im digging around for the info. but no luck thus far.
Click to expand...

There are several apps you can use on your host machine to run the external miners. If you belong to a pool, setup is as simple as downloading the app, configuring it (command-line parameters in a shortcut with what i am using), and starting it. Android configuration isn't that simple...yet. It is possible though - here is a youtube video of someone doing it with a BFL FPGA unit and a Galaxy S2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9hBRljvZPI. At some point, you will be able to download an app from your favorite app store, plug your phone into a USB hub along with a few miners, and start up the app to start mining.
 
crazjayz said:
Thanks musky! Has anyone on [H] tried getting an ASIC going? Moreover, does [H] have it's own pool yet, or is everyone still using other pools?
Click to expand...

No ASICs are in the wild yet that I've heard of. For a pool I've been mining with Eclipse. Solid pool with responsive management and donation only.
 
Avalon supposedly started shipping units last week, but I haven't heard of anyone receiving them. BFL is still saying they will start shipping the week of Feb 10. I'm far enough down the list that I won't see a unit until March or April at the earliest.

I think that the majority of [H] DC folks are anti-bitcoin (hence the single thread allowed on the subject), so I don't see a pool happening. I use slush's pool, and have had no issues at all.
 
Last edited:
musky said:
Avalon supposedly started shipping units last week, but I haven't heard of anyone receiving them. BFL is still saying they will start shipping the week of Feb 10. I'm far enough down the list that I won't see a unit until March or April at the earliest.
Click to expand...

BFL's largest system seems very very interesting. $30k for 1500GH/s is a pretty damn good deal. Just by the nature of the BTC system, the fastest to mine and hold will eventually be the most profitable. If a 7970 pulls 600MH/s you would need 2,500 just to compete with one of those. At $300 a pop, it would too cost prohibitive to even compete once these miners come out.

And forgive me, but I'm still trying to see what the difference between ASIC and FPGAs are. I'm relatively familiar with FPGAs (the use and concept of them; I can't write hardware code in verilog or VHDL), but since last week, I've never heard of ASICs specifically.

musky said:
I think that the majority of [H] DC folks are anti-bitcoin (hence the single thread allowed on the subject), so I don't see a pool happening. I use slush's pool, and have had no issues at all.
Click to expand...

Anti-bitcoin or not, I've always wondered why [H]er's don't have their own pool. I mean, before it was "oh, because there's not enough of us, and so we don't have enough GH/s". I suppose with pools that are donation only, it doesn't matter, but I know that as a group, [H]er's are much more active than other people just jumping on a bandwagon.
 
crazjayz said:
Anti-bitcoin or not, I've always wondered why [H]er's don't have their own pool. I mean, before it was "oh, because there's not enough of us, and so we don't have enough GH/s". I suppose with pools that are donation only, it doesn't matter, but I know that as a group, [H]er's are much more active than other people just jumping on a bandwagon.
Click to expand...

There was someone in here that is/was running a pool that many members contributed to. The problem with running a smaller pool back then (and probably still today) is the lack of consistency of earnings. It can be very hit or miss depending on whether the pool finds a block, so the average user will see that they earned 0BTC in a week and jump ship to the larger pools that find a block an hour and they can get paid out on a regular basis. With the lower hash rate, running the pool as PPS can be risky for whoever is running it as well....
 
Simplecoin was the pool, and it is defunct now. As David said, smaller pools were all over the map on when/if you get coins. That is why I moved to a different one.
 
/sigh/

I know enough people where I could technically design an ASIC, go through fab, and test the product. But with BFL coming out with their product in the next 2-3 months, it's not worth it.

I wish I had pursued the FPGA option further, where then I would have realized that ASICs are the best alternative (assuming the algo doesn't change).
 
Well...ive started mining with 50BTC....I earned like .3 of a coin after 5-6 hours of mining on my machine at roughly 1180M/Hash...unfortunately, one of my cards is gimped somehow and was running at 97 degrees celsius....and its watercooled...the other two cards that sandwhich the retard were running at a cool 75C.

I've got to run through a few life scenarios here and one of them involves a large sum of cash freeing up, if things pan out in that direction im definately getting a small SC and either hooking it up to a Rasberry Pi B or my old Galaxy S2.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Well...ive started mining with 50BTC....I earned like .3 of a coin after 5-6 hours of mining on my machine at roughly 1180M/Hash...unfortunately, one of my cards is gimped somehow and was running at 97 degrees celsius....and its watercooled...the other two cards that sandwhich the retard were running at a cool 75C.

I've got to run through a few life scenarios here and one of them involves a large sum of cash freeing up, if things pan out in that direction im definately getting a small SC and either hooking it up to a Rasberry Pi B or my old Galaxy S2.
Click to expand...

I've been following Bitcoin "happenings" for while - and butterfly labs promising to ship has been going on for 6 months. They promised to ship back in November, then again at the start of the new year.

More than a few people have cancelled their pre-orders - the wait list remains VERY long as I understand it.

From what i can see if you aren't one of the people in the first batch of shipments in terms of every company working on shipping ASICS -- they are you are going to see very poor return.

The reason the unit will be able to "generate 250 dollars a day" is because the difficulty is so low relative to how much hashing power it has. Difficulty has been adjusting every 10 days or so... when you dump that much compute power into the network, suddenly the max you can make is less and less.

Hindsight is 20/20 - luckily enough I live in an all bills paid situation, and the measly 0.2 coins I can mine per day on my two 7970's is fine with me as it's free money basically.

If I had money falling out of my ass it would be fun to try and get in on the ASIC game... but just can't gamble in that manner with the money I DO have.

I so wish I would have known about bitcoin from the very early days when you could mine hundreds of coins per day. 1000 dollar investment when the price was pennies would have gotten you a 400,000 dollar return. I could have gotten a free house and a free Ferrari playing around in the early days.
 
I'm sorry but at 500w it wouldn't make that big of a difference if the other ran off 10w, it's not enough lost in power costs to justify shutting one down.
 
You say that while bitcoins are at $20. If bit coin prices fall again and / or people start making money off of transactions rather then generating coins you could be dead wrong.

When the BFL SC produces roughly the same ghash, costs $200 less, and uses a fraction of the power their is no point in purchasing an avalon other than current supply issues.
 
Yes but when will BFL actually ship? They've been saying next month for some time. My guess is mid April to June start seeing the first BFL shipments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top