17 ms·

Don't mine Bitcoin, mine Altcoins

140 points by jhabdas 9y ago

fiatjaf 9y ago
I want to mine Ethereum when they start using Proof-of-Stake, because my computer is from the 2000's. Will I be able to do it?
- ilitirit 9y ago
  You can't "mine" using Proof-Of-Stake (POS). I don't know which algorithm they will choose when/if they eventually do switch to POS, but one method is that the wallets that store the most ETH have a higher chance of being selected to perform some inexpensive computation. You get paid for performing these computations. So to answer your question, you could potentially use your old PC to host your POS wallet and earn ETH. The amount you will earn will depend on how much you currently have and how long your are connected to the network.
cheez 9y ago
All the cryptocurrencies are pump and dump. It's a perfect space for people who normally trade currencies because they are generally not invested in the currencies. So I wholeheartedly support pumping and dumping tons of cryptocurrencies. It has been free money for a while now.
tinfoilman 9y ago
Make up your own mind but Minergate has a rep for stealing your hash and lower hash speeds than if you do its yourself https://www.reddit.com/r/BytecoinBCN/comments/6dh2ci/minergate_is_a_scam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BytecoinBCN/comments/6dh2ci/minerga... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1975859.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1975859.0 https://steemit.com/blockchain/@carlagonz/6xhcnh-minergate-scam https://steemit.com/blockchain/@carlagonz/6xhcnh-minergate-s...
- epmaybe 9y ago
  If you "do it yourself" what would the net profit be including the cost of hardware and electricity?
  - soggypretzels 9y ago
    That question is as impossible to answer as "if I started an apple orchard how profitable would that be".
    - epmaybe 9y ago
      Why? Assume that the value of these altcoins do not change, and see how many you can mine given a certain amount of time. The value of altcoins could very well go down, but for the sake of demonstration you could still calculate a very rough estimate, no?
      - OJFord 9y ago
        > Assume that the value of these altcoins do not change, and see how many you can mine given a certain amount of time. The value of altcoins could very well go down, but for the sake of demonstration you could still calculate a very rough estimate, no? And likewise if you assume values for the cost of apple seeds land, see how many apples you can grow given a certain amount of time - and the value of apples could very well go down - but for the sake of demonstration you can also calculate a very rough estimate of apple orchard profitability, no?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - honestlyreally 9y ago
        whattomine.com Unless you have free/ very cheap power, is likely not worth your time.
        e12e 9y ago
- temp987654 9y ago
  Is there any better alternative that offers similar simplicity?
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    NiceHash
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ilitirit 9y ago
You can mine alt-currencies on some exchanges which pay out in bitcoin. This allows you to "mine" bitcoin on unfeasible hardware. I used zpool.ca for a while when Blake2s alts were highly profitable. I don't know what the best alt-coins are these days. It tends to fluctuate quite rapidly.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Along those lines is a service called "NiceHash". They basically sell your PC's "hashing ability" on various algorithms to buyers. This ends up acting like you the "seller" of hashing power getting paid in bitcoin to hash whatever altcoin is most profitable at the moment. They have an auto-switching GUI client for windows, and allow you to point basically any miner that they support the algorithm at their service and get paid in bitcoin at a roughly comparable rate to mining the actual coin.
  - ilitirit 9y ago
    The problem with these exchanges is you can never be sure what your actual return is going to be (this is true to an extent for all coins, but the effect is not as big for the more established coins that you mine directly). Suppose there's altcoin called ALT which can be mined very quickly and is worth let's say $0.00001 per coin. Mining a block takes 5 minutes and the payout is 10000 ALT coins or whatever. The 10000 coins are distributed across the pool, and you determine that on your setup you should be able to mine $3 USD in terms of BTC a day on the pool. You get wind that ALT is about to get pumped hard, which means your potential earnings could reach $20 per day (or whatever). What's the problem (ignoring exchange fees) with going "all in"? Firstly, ALT coin may have a confirmation time of several hours or even days. You can't sell unconfirmed coins. Secondly, the exchange has to sell these coins elsewhere (usually another exchange). Because of the low value, this other exchange may have a rule that you can only sell in batches of 1 million. So even though you've mined X amount of coins, you still have to wait for the batch to be fulfilled. Thirdly once the batch is fulfilled, you still have to wait for it to be sold on the other exchange. And finally, the BTC <-> ALT exchange rate may fluctuate independently of known factors. By the time this happens, your ALT coin will almost certainly be worth a different value to what they were when you first mined them. It could be worth more or less, but the point is you can't efficiently forecast on most alt-coins when you use exchanges like Zpool and NiceHash. This is why they usually have several values for your "earnings" - Total, Unconfirmed, Confirmed, and Sold. It's also why "profit switching" algorithms and techniques are kind of a silly idea for most alt-coins - you cannot calculate profit based on current market values.
_wdh 9y ago
Where did the data for the growth rate table come from? I can see that the original source is a reddit post but I can't find where the reddit post got it's numbers from.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  coinmarketcap.com but there are many others like that site, its just historical price data.
shubb 9y ago
How much 'real' transaction goes on through these alt coins? Bitcoin enabled trade accross borders without going through banks, and with the possibility of evading normal money launderng proceedures. Ethereum offered fascinating new applications like DAO, providing new ways of trading in funds and structuring companies. Possibly there would be space for a zero knowledge alt-coin in dark pools and for mediating illegal tranasctions. But I don't think there is a market leader yet. The huge majority of these alt coins are bucket shops. Surely that should effect the way we talk about them. There are a lot of bucketshops these days. American gambling laws make it better to pretend to be legitimate. I wish America would just legalize online gambling.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  My friends and I settle up our beer tabs or things like that with Aeon, a Monero like currency popular in my age bracket.
  - shubb 9y ago
    Thanks - here in the UK Monzo (a startup but more or less a traditional bank) is filling that niche, and I'd not hear of Aeon. I think a mobile privacy platform like that has a lot of potential but you'd need to make it very easy to buy the coins too.
    - jameskegel 9y ago
      Ah yes, happy to help you in any way. Thanks to the asic resistant mining algorithm we are able to generate coins fairly reliably with CPUs that are already in our desktops and inexpensive GPU arrays that we have pieced together from Newegg.
freech 9y ago
I don't know about altcoins but I doubt learning about new ones and setting them up is worth your time. The electricity mining Bitcoins costs with a normal CPU/GPU though is definitely more then you're going to make. (Even if your PC is on anyway, just the added cycles.) EDIT: This is a good place to remind everyone that most people in the original gold rush lost money, their health and years of their lifes for nothing.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Bitcoin is far past the point of being profitable with CPU or GPU, but there are many coins out there that are more than profitable for most americans (it has to mainly do with electricity cost in your area how much it will be profitable)
  - cryoshon 9y ago
    can you provide any examples? i'm very skeptical because generally any coins that are viable with GPU mining are very quickly made not so by an influx of miners...
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      Ethereum is still more than worth it for me. At my electricity rates (which are a hair above the national average), it costs me very roughly $1 a day (I calculated actual usage numbers a bit ago for various algorithms but I don't have them on hand) to run an old R9 390 I had laying around (and the 390 is a VERY power hungry card). Hashing Ethereum, i'm making around $2 USD per day from that card. Hashing ZCash I'm making about $1.70 USD a day from that card. (both without any real optimizations). Also that's pre-power-consumption-cost, so the "profit" is $1/day and $0.70/day respectively. There are others which cut it even closer, but there are other people who live in areas with cheaper power that make even those worth it. It's not the cash-cow it was in it's hayday where people were making $5-10 per card in some cases, but for me it's still a nice $200 a month in profit in my bank account from just older equipment I had laying around and about $100 in parts and stuff to run it in my garage. Accounting for the several hours I put into setting it up makes the money less worth it, but it was fun for me to do so I'm happy with it.
slammer123 9y ago
I'm not sure about the other coins, but you can't mine NEO. You have to purchase it. https://www.guidetocrypto.com/neo-neo/neo-neo-mining-guide-version-2-0-1/ https://www.guidetocrypto.com/neo-neo/neo-neo-mining-guide-v...
kpeterson 9y ago
I'm very suspicious of the prices for some of these more exotic coins. If you mine something like Golem or Pepe Cash with no name recognition, how do you find a seller? The big exchanges don't sell them and finding a buyer yourself is very time consuming. Seems like you're likely to end up with a lot of cryptocurrency you cannot find a buyer for and a lot of wasted electricity.
- aarreedd 9y ago
  You could trade it on shapeshift.io for Bitcoin and sell those.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    Shapeshift still requires a buyer on the other end, though I'm not entirely in agreement with the op. Seems like most relevant coins have some real volume
    - aarreedd 9y ago
      I am just pointing out that you do not need to go "find a buyer yourself" like op suggested. I agree there is a lot to be suspicious about with new coins/tokens.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  You look for where the markets are? Were you speaking in hyperbole? I don't even think you can mine any of your examples but lets entertain it: Golem has $3,000,000 in daily volume and is listed on 17 distinct exchanges (separate sources of liquidity, some of which are on the same website) Pepecash as upwards of $40,000 in daily volume and is listed on 4 exchanges. You are going to be making pennies to maybe a few thousand dollars daily from mining and you think there is a liquidity problem that is even applicable to your low-income class?
- Grangar 9y ago
  https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/pepe-cash/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/pepe-cash/#markets Volume is low, but at garden variety mining scale you can easily sell.
rublev 9y ago
More profitable to trade altcoins and get in on rumors then sell when they go high, and cash out to BTC/BCC when you can. Problem with a lot of alts is they don't go anywhere. If you were lucky and say mined NEO then you're fine, but what about the other 100's of alts?
sorenjan 9y ago
All this crypto currency mining and speculation is a perverse form of wasting resources. While most people talk about energy conservation others keep buying hardware they don't need to burn electricity 24/7 so they can "create" made up resources to sell to other speculators online.
- mlevental 9y ago
  what's the difference between it and absolutely any other commodity that has zero use value? nothing
- redcalx 9y ago
  Question: Are the resource demands of the entire world banking system a perverse use of resources? If bitcoin supplants a large chunk of that system but in doing so uses less resources overall...?
  - mikeash 9y ago
    The second question is based on faulty assumptions. Bitcoin uses orders of magnitude more energy per transaction.
    - ayemiller 9y ago
      Does it? How many employees does bitcoin have?...
      - mikeash 9y ago
        Yes, it does. The figures are out there. Bitcoin is absolutely tiny on the scale of global finance, so the denominator is extremely small. Not having employees doesn't save it.
    - honestlyreally 9y ago
      But virtually all mining is done near cheap renewable power. People talk a lot about how much energy it uses, yet to see attempt at quantifying co2 emissions, they are likely quite low.
chatmasta 9y ago
An unfortunate side effect of the recent ICO boom, specifically the many "altcoins" built on ethereum, is a conflation of terms between "altcoin" and "smart contract," and therefore also what it means to "mine" a coin. Yes, these ethereum "altcoins" are just as tradeable as any other crypto coin. However, it would be more accurate to refer to them as "smart contracts," because you cannot "mine" them in the traditional sense of redirecting CPU cycles. Let's define "mining" an altcoin as receiving that altcoin in exchange for services. For example, you can "mine" BTC or ETH by providing the service of compute cycles. Then how do you "mine" an altcoin that is really an ethereum smart contract? The service could literally be anything, depending on the contract. It could mean anything from leasing disk space, to freelance programming. If you have a generic mining rig setup, you can probably redirect it to mine ETH, BTC, or any CPU based proof-of-work coin. But your CPU can't freelance for people. It can't lease disk space. It can't fulfill any arbitrary ethereum contract. There needs to be a distinction between the term "altcoin" and "smart contract," because even though you can trade them both on exchanges, the process for receiving the coin in exchange for services can vary widely. It's misleading to refer to "mining BTC" and "mining <insert smart contract here>" as interchangeable ideas.
lightedman 9y ago
Quit wasting power on this nonsense, period! As of right now, Bitcoin alone accounts for more power usage than the entirety of Iceland. All that pollution for a non-tangible currency you can't even fold up and make a paper airplane out of, or eat, or even wipe your butt with.
- Sean1708 9y ago
  While I understand the argument that mining cryptocurrencies is a waste of energy, I don't understand why cryptocurrencies are any worse than keeping money in a bank. Do you keep all your money as cash? Am I missing something?
  - disgusting_guy 9y ago
    Money kept in the bank is guaranteed by your government to retain (some) value; it is backed by the economy of your country. Bitcoin is not backed by anything other than speculation on implied value
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
Multipool mining is nothing new, so it should be known that Minergate has a shaky reputation. My independent analysis of it is that there exists merely an optimization on your mining yield by not using Minergate, but you will have to do that calculation yourself based on your mining hardware, electricity costs and throughput, and determine if the convenience makes up for the possibilities of alleged resource theft. Mining pools pay out directly to any designated address, and so they don't store your earned funds at all. The risk of impropriety is very low, but miner's yields are also low enough that they would still complain about minor variances in mining pools.
tlrobinson 9y ago
First of all, past increases in price shouldn't be used to calculate mining profitability. If you want to speculate on the price, just buy directly on an exchange. It's a bit misleading to only show coins that have appreciated in value. It's odd the article doesn't mention the different mining algorithms. It's definitely not profitable to CPU or GPU mine any SHA256 coins, given ASICs are ~10,000 times more power efficient. Yet he suggests CPU and GPU mining, then says he's considering buying Antminers?
- Grangar 9y ago
  Just the fact that the author suggests Minergate as a good option speaks volumes about his understanding of the crypto market.
jameskegel 9y ago
I never thought there would be so many irrational, dissenting opinions for a newer sector of tech. Some of the guffaws in this thread are astonishing; this is the most uninformed I have ever seen HN.
beepboopbeep 9y ago
Woof. It's frightening how quickly these crypto threads get toxic with foam mouthed, wide eyed cultists.
- HugoDaniel 9y ago
  And yet the political threads are the ones that get censored (among so many others)...
  - beepboopbeep 9y ago
    I'm 100% ok with political threads being censored here. I'd immediately stop bothering with this site if that toxin got unleashed here.
quotha 9y ago
Money is not everything you know
zMiller 9y ago
"According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy" http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-of-the-bank-bailout/3309/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-o... HN is truly a hub for a great set of minds in the tech community but when it comes to crypto it just amazes me how myopic opinions can be.
rashthedude 9y ago
The majority of newer coins cannot be mined since they based on PoS.
crimsonalucard 9y ago
This site recommends a program called minersgate. My virus scanner when off on it. Looking online it seems to not legit.

140 points by jhabdas 9y ago

I want to mine Ethereum when they start using Proof-of-Stake, because my computer is from the 2000's. Will I be able to do it?

ilitirit 9y ago
You can't "mine" using Proof-Of-Stake (POS). I don't know which algorithm they will choose when/if they eventually do switch to POS, but one method is that the wallets that store the most ETH have a higher chance of being selected to perform some inexpensive computation. You get paid for performing these computations. So to answer your question, you could potentially use your old PC to host your POS wallet and earn ETH. The amount you will earn will depend on how much you currently have and how long your are connected to the network.

cheez 9y ago

All the cryptocurrencies are pump and dump. It's a perfect space for people who normally trade currencies because they are generally not invested in the currencies. So I wholeheartedly support pumping and dumping tons of cryptocurrencies. It has been free money for a while now.

tinfoilman 9y ago

Make up your own mind but Minergate has a rep for stealing your hash and lower hash speeds than if you do its yourself https://www.reddit.com/r/BytecoinBCN/comments/6dh2ci/minergate_is_a_scam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BytecoinBCN/comments/6dh2ci/minerga... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1975859.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1975859.0 https://steemit.com/blockchain/@carlagonz/6xhcnh-minergate-scam https://steemit.com/blockchain/@carlagonz/6xhcnh-minergate-s...

epmaybe 9y ago
If you "do it yourself" what would the net profit be including the cost of hardware and electricity?
- soggypretzels 9y ago
  That question is as impossible to answer as "if I started an apple orchard how profitable would that be".
  - epmaybe 9y ago
    Why? Assume that the value of these altcoins do not change, and see how many you can mine given a certain amount of time. The value of altcoins could very well go down, but for the sake of demonstration you could still calculate a very rough estimate, no?
    - OJFord 9y ago
      > Assume that the value of these altcoins do not change, and see how many you can mine given a certain amount of time. The value of altcoins could very well go down, but for the sake of demonstration you could still calculate a very rough estimate, no? And likewise if you assume values for the cost of apple seeds land, see how many apples you can grow given a certain amount of time - and the value of apples could very well go down - but for the sake of demonstration you can also calculate a very rough estimate of apple orchard profitability, no?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - honestlyreally 9y ago
      whattomine.com Unless you have free/ very cheap power, is likely not worth your time.
      - e12e 9y ago
temp987654 9y ago
Is there any better alternative that offers similar simplicity?
- jameskegel 9y ago
  NiceHash
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

ilitirit 9y ago

You can mine alt-currencies on some exchanges which pay out in bitcoin. This allows you to "mine" bitcoin on unfeasible hardware. I used zpool.ca for a while when Blake2s alts were highly profitable. I don't know what the best alt-coins are these days. It tends to fluctuate quite rapidly.

Klathmon 9y ago
Along those lines is a service called "NiceHash". They basically sell your PC's "hashing ability" on various algorithms to buyers. This ends up acting like you the "seller" of hashing power getting paid in bitcoin to hash whatever altcoin is most profitable at the moment. They have an auto-switching GUI client for windows, and allow you to point basically any miner that they support the algorithm at their service and get paid in bitcoin at a roughly comparable rate to mining the actual coin.
- ilitirit 9y ago
  The problem with these exchanges is you can never be sure what your actual return is going to be (this is true to an extent for all coins, but the effect is not as big for the more established coins that you mine directly). Suppose there's altcoin called ALT which can be mined very quickly and is worth let's say $0.00001 per coin. Mining a block takes 5 minutes and the payout is 10000 ALT coins or whatever. The 10000 coins are distributed across the pool, and you determine that on your setup you should be able to mine $3 USD in terms of BTC a day on the pool. You get wind that ALT is about to get pumped hard, which means your potential earnings could reach $20 per day (or whatever). What's the problem (ignoring exchange fees) with going "all in"? Firstly, ALT coin may have a confirmation time of several hours or even days. You can't sell unconfirmed coins. Secondly, the exchange has to sell these coins elsewhere (usually another exchange). Because of the low value, this other exchange may have a rule that you can only sell in batches of 1 million. So even though you've mined X amount of coins, you still have to wait for the batch to be fulfilled. Thirdly once the batch is fulfilled, you still have to wait for it to be sold on the other exchange. And finally, the BTC <-> ALT exchange rate may fluctuate independently of known factors. By the time this happens, your ALT coin will almost certainly be worth a different value to what they were when you first mined them. It could be worth more or less, but the point is you can't efficiently forecast on most alt-coins when you use exchanges like Zpool and NiceHash. This is why they usually have several values for your "earnings" - Total, Unconfirmed, Confirmed, and Sold. It's also why "profit switching" algorithms and techniques are kind of a silly idea for most alt-coins - you cannot calculate profit based on current market values.

_wdh 9y ago

Where did the data for the growth rate table come from? I can see that the original source is a reddit post but I can't find where the reddit post got it's numbers from.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago
coinmarketcap.com but there are many others like that site, its just historical price data.

shubb 9y ago

How much 'real' transaction goes on through these alt coins? Bitcoin enabled trade accross borders without going through banks, and with the possibility of evading normal money launderng proceedures. Ethereum offered fascinating new applications like DAO, providing new ways of trading in funds and structuring companies. Possibly there would be space for a zero knowledge alt-coin in dark pools and for mediating illegal tranasctions. But I don't think there is a market leader yet. The huge majority of these alt coins are bucket shops. Surely that should effect the way we talk about them. There are a lot of bucketshops these days. American gambling laws make it better to pretend to be legitimate. I wish America would just legalize online gambling.

jameskegel 9y ago
My friends and I settle up our beer tabs or things like that with Aeon, a Monero like currency popular in my age bracket.
- shubb 9y ago
  Thanks - here in the UK Monzo (a startup but more or less a traditional bank) is filling that niche, and I'd not hear of Aeon. I think a mobile privacy platform like that has a lot of potential but you'd need to make it very easy to buy the coins too.
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    Ah yes, happy to help you in any way. Thanks to the asic resistant mining algorithm we are able to generate coins fairly reliably with CPUs that are already in our desktops and inexpensive GPU arrays that we have pieced together from Newegg.

freech 9y ago

I don't know about altcoins but I doubt learning about new ones and setting them up is worth your time. The electricity mining Bitcoins costs with a normal CPU/GPU though is definitely more then you're going to make. (Even if your PC is on anyway, just the added cycles.) EDIT: This is a good place to remind everyone that most people in the original gold rush lost money, their health and years of their lifes for nothing.

Klathmon 9y ago
Bitcoin is far past the point of being profitable with CPU or GPU, but there are many coins out there that are more than profitable for most americans (it has to mainly do with electricity cost in your area how much it will be profitable)
- cryoshon 9y ago
  can you provide any examples? i'm very skeptical because generally any coins that are viable with GPU mining are very quickly made not so by an influx of miners...
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    Ethereum is still more than worth it for me. At my electricity rates (which are a hair above the national average), it costs me very roughly $1 a day (I calculated actual usage numbers a bit ago for various algorithms but I don't have them on hand) to run an old R9 390 I had laying around (and the 390 is a VERY power hungry card). Hashing Ethereum, i'm making around $2 USD per day from that card. Hashing ZCash I'm making about $1.70 USD a day from that card. (both without any real optimizations). Also that's pre-power-consumption-cost, so the "profit" is $1/day and $0.70/day respectively. There are others which cut it even closer, but there are other people who live in areas with cheaper power that make even those worth it. It's not the cash-cow it was in it's hayday where people were making $5-10 per card in some cases, but for me it's still a nice $200 a month in profit in my bank account from just older equipment I had laying around and about $100 in parts and stuff to run it in my garage. Accounting for the several hours I put into setting it up makes the money less worth it, but it was fun for me to do so I'm happy with it.

slammer123 9y ago

I'm not sure about the other coins, but you can't mine NEO. You have to purchase it. https://www.guidetocrypto.com/neo-neo/neo-neo-mining-guide-version-2-0-1/ https://www.guidetocrypto.com/neo-neo/neo-neo-mining-guide-v...

kpeterson 9y ago

I'm very suspicious of the prices for some of these more exotic coins. If you mine something like Golem or Pepe Cash with no name recognition, how do you find a seller? The big exchanges don't sell them and finding a buyer yourself is very time consuming. Seems like you're likely to end up with a lot of cryptocurrency you cannot find a buyer for and a lot of wasted electricity.

aarreedd 9y ago
You could trade it on shapeshift.io for Bitcoin and sell those.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Shapeshift still requires a buyer on the other end, though I'm not entirely in agreement with the op. Seems like most relevant coins have some real volume
  - aarreedd 9y ago
    I am just pointing out that you do not need to go "find a buyer yourself" like op suggested. I agree there is a lot to be suspicious about with new coins/tokens.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
You look for where the markets are? Were you speaking in hyperbole? I don't even think you can mine any of your examples but lets entertain it: Golem has $3,000,000 in daily volume and is listed on 17 distinct exchanges (separate sources of liquidity, some of which are on the same website) Pepecash as upwards of $40,000 in daily volume and is listed on 4 exchanges. You are going to be making pennies to maybe a few thousand dollars daily from mining and you think there is a liquidity problem that is even applicable to your low-income class?
Grangar 9y ago
https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/pepe-cash/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/pepe-cash/#markets Volume is low, but at garden variety mining scale you can easily sell.

rublev 9y ago

More profitable to trade altcoins and get in on rumors then sell when they go high, and cash out to BTC/BCC when you can. Problem with a lot of alts is they don't go anywhere. If you were lucky and say mined NEO then you're fine, but what about the other 100's of alts?

sorenjan 9y ago

All this crypto currency mining and speculation is a perverse form of wasting resources. While most people talk about energy conservation others keep buying hardware they don't need to burn electricity 24/7 so they can "create" made up resources to sell to other speculators online.

mlevental 9y ago
what's the difference between it and absolutely any other commodity that has zero use value? nothing
redcalx 9y ago
Question: Are the resource demands of the entire world banking system a perverse use of resources? If bitcoin supplants a large chunk of that system but in doing so uses less resources overall...?
- mikeash 9y ago
  The second question is based on faulty assumptions. Bitcoin uses orders of magnitude more energy per transaction.
  - ayemiller 9y ago
    Does it? How many employees does bitcoin have?...
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Yes, it does. The figures are out there. Bitcoin is absolutely tiny on the scale of global finance, so the denominator is extremely small. Not having employees doesn't save it.
  - honestlyreally 9y ago
    But virtually all mining is done near cheap renewable power. People talk a lot about how much energy it uses, yet to see attempt at quantifying co2 emissions, they are likely quite low.

chatmasta 9y ago

An unfortunate side effect of the recent ICO boom, specifically the many "altcoins" built on ethereum, is a conflation of terms between "altcoin" and "smart contract," and therefore also what it means to "mine" a coin. Yes, these ethereum "altcoins" are just as tradeable as any other crypto coin. However, it would be more accurate to refer to them as "smart contracts," because you cannot "mine" them in the traditional sense of redirecting CPU cycles. Let's define "mining" an altcoin as receiving that altcoin in exchange for services. For example, you can "mine" BTC or ETH by providing the service of compute cycles. Then how do you "mine" an altcoin that is really an ethereum smart contract? The service could literally be anything, depending on the contract. It could mean anything from leasing disk space, to freelance programming. If you have a generic mining rig setup, you can probably redirect it to mine ETH, BTC, or any CPU based proof-of-work coin. But your CPU can't freelance for people. It can't lease disk space. It can't fulfill any arbitrary ethereum contract. There needs to be a distinction between the term "altcoin" and "smart contract," because even though you can trade them both on exchanges, the process for receiving the coin in exchange for services can vary widely. It's misleading to refer to "mining BTC" and "mining <insert smart contract here>" as interchangeable ideas.

lightedman 9y ago

Quit wasting power on this nonsense, period! As of right now, Bitcoin alone accounts for more power usage than the entirety of Iceland. All that pollution for a non-tangible currency you can't even fold up and make a paper airplane out of, or eat, or even wipe your butt with.

Sean1708 9y ago
While I understand the argument that mining cryptocurrencies is a waste of energy, I don't understand why cryptocurrencies are any worse than keeping money in a bank. Do you keep all your money as cash? Am I missing something?
- disgusting_guy 9y ago
  Money kept in the bank is guaranteed by your government to retain (some) value; it is backed by the economy of your country. Bitcoin is not backed by anything other than speculation on implied value

ringaroundthetx 9y ago

Multipool mining is nothing new, so it should be known that Minergate has a shaky reputation. My independent analysis of it is that there exists merely an optimization on your mining yield by not using Minergate, but you will have to do that calculation yourself based on your mining hardware, electricity costs and throughput, and determine if the convenience makes up for the possibilities of alleged resource theft. Mining pools pay out directly to any designated address, and so they don't store your earned funds at all. The risk of impropriety is very low, but miner's yields are also low enough that they would still complain about minor variances in mining pools.

tlrobinson 9y ago

First of all, past increases in price shouldn't be used to calculate mining profitability. If you want to speculate on the price, just buy directly on an exchange. It's a bit misleading to only show coins that have appreciated in value. It's odd the article doesn't mention the different mining algorithms. It's definitely not profitable to CPU or GPU mine any SHA256 coins, given ASICs are ~10,000 times more power efficient. Yet he suggests CPU and GPU mining, then says he's considering buying Antminers?

Grangar 9y ago
Just the fact that the author suggests Minergate as a good option speaks volumes about his understanding of the crypto market.

jameskegel 9y ago

I never thought there would be so many irrational, dissenting opinions for a newer sector of tech. Some of the guffaws in this thread are astonishing; this is the most uninformed I have ever seen HN.

beepboopbeep 9y ago

Woof. It's frightening how quickly these crypto threads get toxic with foam mouthed, wide eyed cultists.

HugoDaniel 9y ago
And yet the political threads are the ones that get censored (among so many others)...
- beepboopbeep 9y ago
  I'm 100% ok with political threads being censored here. I'd immediately stop bothering with this site if that toxin got unleashed here.

quotha 9y ago

Money is not everything you know

zMiller 9y ago

"According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy" http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-of-the-bank-bailout/3309/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-o... HN is truly a hub for a great set of minds in the tech community but when it comes to crypto it just amazes me how myopic opinions can be.

rashthedude 9y ago

The majority of newer coins cannot be mined since they based on PoS.

crimsonalucard 9y ago

This site recommends a program called minersgate. My virus scanner when off on it. Looking online it seems to not legit.