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A tangentially related question (I am a complete ignoramus when it comes to bitcoin). Suppose I could harness the power of 1,000 or even 10,000 private compute

A tangentially related question (I am a complete ignoramus when it comes to bitcoin). Suppose I could harness the power of 1,000 or even 10,000 private computers distributed over the internet and all contributing resources. Could I profitably mine bitcoin?(This is not a theoretical question, I actually do have a way to do this) .

saalweachter 10y ago
No.
- Lordarminius 10y ago
  > No. Explain please?
  - digler999 10y ago
    Same reason a CPU can't compete with a GPU when floating point math is involved. GPUs evolved to do one thing and do it very well, in parallel. CPUs are swiss army knives. It's like comparing a swiss army knife to an electric meat slicer at a deli. Bitcoin miners built their own chips (called ASIC's, application-specific IC's) just to do hashing.
CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
These days: not reasonably (more on that later). The computations are the kinds that traditional computers just don't do great on (intentionally, in both directions). In the past: Yup. That is why many server admins for the big clusters learned what bitcoin was. Either to do that themselves or to yell at the people who were trying to. But this is (arguably) a problem as certain geopolitical regions have a LOT of miners and resources which give them a significant advantage with respect to mining new coins. Think of it as increased probability rather than a guaranteed return. But, more importantly, it arguably gives them too much control over the system. Do some research on the subject, but I am sure that if I gave you two guesses you would get it.
dagw 10y ago
Do these machines have top of the line GPUs that you can use? If not you are basically screwed. Using even a modern fast CPU you are literally looking at, at most, a penny a year if you run all core flat out 24/7. Even 'normal' $200-300 GPUs you won't do much better.
pdpi 10y ago
Mining bitcoin is basically the process of spamming a loop of incrementing a nonce and calculating SHA-256, until you hit a hash that's lower than a certain threshold. In the beginning, people used general-purpose CPUs for this, but it's the sort of embarrassingly parallel problem that GPUs are great at, so GPU mining rapidly outstripped anything that a CPU could do. These days, even GPUs are outclassed by ASICs designed specifically for mining. The amount of bitcoin you'd get by mining with a CPU would be minute and, worse still, would actually be a net negative, once you factor in the power bill to keep that CPU running. The ASICs are just too power-efficient for anything else to compete.
zeven7 10y ago
As others have said ASICs have made it impossible to mine Bitcoin on normal hardware at any sort of profit. However, there are many ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies out there that may be worth looking into. The most well-known is Ethereum, but there are others with different strategies. Which would be best probably depends on your specific hardware (some are probably more CPU-friendly while others are better for GPUs).
- davidgerard 10y ago
  > ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies No such thing. If it relies on a Proof of Work hash, it can be put into a chip, and specialist hardware for a simple function will always be more efficient (hashes per watt) than general hardware. The main barrier is not capability, but bothering to. Proof of Stake would be different, but all examples are presently experimental.
  - tromp 10y ago
    > more efficient (hashes per watt) than general hardware That's not the only relevant measure, since specialist hardware must be designed and produced. For a memory-latency bound PoW requiring hundreds of MB, it's far from certain that custom designed RAM can compete with commodity RAM. For instance, SRAM is one order of magnitude faster than DRAM, but two orders of magnitude more expensive, making it much less suitable for mining.
  - zeven7 10y ago
    ASIC-resistant != ASIC-proof There is such a thing as ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies as evidenced by the fact that there are many cryptos in existence today that have been around for longer a year and have no ASIC mining yet. OP can mine on this today and not have to compete against ASICs.
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      This may be the same problem as DRM, i.e. someone has to care first. Even Litecoin eventually got ASICs.
vinhboy 10y ago
FYI, this has happened about 2 years ago. Bot networks have been used to mine bitcoins, and IT managers have gotten in trouble for using their company/school computer networks to mine bitcoins.

saalweachter 10y ago

No.

Lordarminius 10y ago
> No. Explain please?
- digler999 10y ago
  Same reason a CPU can't compete with a GPU when floating point math is involved. GPUs evolved to do one thing and do it very well, in parallel. CPUs are swiss army knives. It's like comparing a swiss army knife to an electric meat slicer at a deli. Bitcoin miners built their own chips (called ASIC's, application-specific IC's) just to do hashing.

CmdrSprinkles 10y ago

These days: not reasonably (more on that later). The computations are the kinds that traditional computers just don't do great on (intentionally, in both directions). In the past: Yup. That is why many server admins for the big clusters learned what bitcoin was. Either to do that themselves or to yell at the people who were trying to. But this is (arguably) a problem as certain geopolitical regions have a LOT of miners and resources which give them a significant advantage with respect to mining new coins. Think of it as increased probability rather than a guaranteed return. But, more importantly, it arguably gives them too much control over the system. Do some research on the subject, but I am sure that if I gave you two guesses you would get it.

dagw 10y ago

Do these machines have top of the line GPUs that you can use? If not you are basically screwed. Using even a modern fast CPU you are literally looking at, at most, a penny a year if you run all core flat out 24/7. Even 'normal' $200-300 GPUs you won't do much better.

pdpi 10y ago

Mining bitcoin is basically the process of spamming a loop of incrementing a nonce and calculating SHA-256, until you hit a hash that's lower than a certain threshold. In the beginning, people used general-purpose CPUs for this, but it's the sort of embarrassingly parallel problem that GPUs are great at, so GPU mining rapidly outstripped anything that a CPU could do. These days, even GPUs are outclassed by ASICs designed specifically for mining. The amount of bitcoin you'd get by mining with a CPU would be minute and, worse still, would actually be a net negative, once you factor in the power bill to keep that CPU running. The ASICs are just too power-efficient for anything else to compete.

zeven7 10y ago

As others have said ASICs have made it impossible to mine Bitcoin on normal hardware at any sort of profit. However, there are many ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies out there that may be worth looking into. The most well-known is Ethereum, but there are others with different strategies. Which would be best probably depends on your specific hardware (some are probably more CPU-friendly while others are better for GPUs).

davidgerard 10y ago
> ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies No such thing. If it relies on a Proof of Work hash, it can be put into a chip, and specialist hardware for a simple function will always be more efficient (hashes per watt) than general hardware. The main barrier is not capability, but bothering to. Proof of Stake would be different, but all examples are presently experimental.
- tromp 10y ago
  > more efficient (hashes per watt) than general hardware That's not the only relevant measure, since specialist hardware must be designed and produced. For a memory-latency bound PoW requiring hundreds of MB, it's far from certain that custom designed RAM can compete with commodity RAM. For instance, SRAM is one order of magnitude faster than DRAM, but two orders of magnitude more expensive, making it much less suitable for mining.
- zeven7 10y ago
  ASIC-resistant != ASIC-proof There is such a thing as ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies as evidenced by the fact that there are many cryptos in existence today that have been around for longer a year and have no ASIC mining yet. OP can mine on this today and not have to compete against ASICs.
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    This may be the same problem as DRM, i.e. someone has to care first. Even Litecoin eventually got ASICs.

vinhboy 10y ago

FYI, this has happened about 2 years ago. Bot networks have been used to mine bitcoins, and IT managers have gotten in trouble for using their company/school computer networks to mine bitcoins.