4 ms·

I'm not sure, but you can't compete with mining ASIC rigs using CPUs is my general understanding.

by mattbillenstein 9y ago

montrose 9y ago
I believe that. But a day of ordinary CPU must have some value, however small, and I'm curious what it is.
- JPLeRouzic 9y ago
  Check the cost of a basic cloud/saas product. Otherwise an accountant would tell you it is something like the cost of ownership: Let say very roughly $0.5 per cpu/per day.
- mattbillenstein 9y ago
  Not true -- it has a definite cost, power. Plenty of perfectly fine working rackmount servers are replaced every year because for their power/space footprint you can put something that's about to do 50% more work.
- anonfunction 9y ago
  There are too many variables at play, what CPU, what crypto, etc... Why don't you run a miner on your computer and find out. If you're paying for your energy and equipment it'll most likely be a negative in terms of profit but would be a fun experiment and espouse a hacker ethos.
eesmith 9y ago
I did a DDG search for "economics of cryptocurrency mining on ordinary hardware". The first hit was for https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.01354.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.01354.pdf . > We assumed that miners in the market at initial time ... own a personal PC such as Core i5 2600K, and hence they are initially endowed with a hashing capability ... equal to 0.0173GH/sec, that implies a power consumption equal to 75W as well as: > Over time, the different mining hardware available was characterized by an increasing hash rate, a decreasing power consumption per hash, and increasing costs. For example, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M, 16 cores, belonging to the GPU generation, has a hash rate equal to 3.6 MH/s and a power consumption equal to 14 W [16]; ModMiner Quad, belonging to the FPGA generation, has a hash rate equal to 800 MH/s and power consumption equal to 40 W [16]; Monarch(300), belonging to the ASIC generation, has a hash rate equal to 300 GH/s and power consumption equal to 175 W Using those numbers to give hash/Joule (a watt is a Joule/second): CPU = 17.3MH / 75 W = 0.23 MH/J GPU = 3.6 MH/s / 14 W = 0.25 MH/J FPGA = 800 MH/s / 40 W = 20 MH/J ASIC = 300000 GH/s / 175 W = 1700 MH/J Since the primary cost is power consumption, that suggests that a CPU is about 1000x more expensive than an ASIC. There's a bajillion other cryptocurrencies these days. The economics is different for every one.
chatmasta 9y ago
Depends if you’re selling the coins immediately or not. If price is up 2x in 6 months the ROI will obviously be different than today.

I'm not sure, but you can't compete with mining ASIC rigs using CPUs is my general understanding.

montrose 9y ago

I believe that. But a day of ordinary CPU must have some value, however small, and I'm curious what it is.

JPLeRouzic 9y ago
Check the cost of a basic cloud/saas product. Otherwise an accountant would tell you it is something like the cost of ownership: Let say very roughly $0.5 per cpu/per day.
mattbillenstein 9y ago
Not true -- it has a definite cost, power. Plenty of perfectly fine working rackmount servers are replaced every year because for their power/space footprint you can put something that's about to do 50% more work.
anonfunction 9y ago
There are too many variables at play, what CPU, what crypto, etc... Why don't you run a miner on your computer and find out. If you're paying for your energy and equipment it'll most likely be a negative in terms of profit but would be a fun experiment and espouse a hacker ethos.

eesmith 9y ago

I did a DDG search for "economics of cryptocurrency mining on ordinary hardware". The first hit was for https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.01354.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.01354.pdf . > We assumed that miners in the market at initial time ... own a personal PC such as Core i5 2600K, and hence they are initially endowed with a hashing capability ... equal to 0.0173GH/sec, that implies a power consumption equal to 75W as well as: > Over time, the different mining hardware available was characterized by an increasing hash rate, a decreasing power consumption per hash, and increasing costs. For example, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M, 16 cores, belonging to the GPU generation, has a hash rate equal to 3.6 MH/s and a power consumption equal to 14 W [16]; ModMiner Quad, belonging to the FPGA generation, has a hash rate equal to 800 MH/s and power consumption equal to 40 W [16]; Monarch(300), belonging to the ASIC generation, has a hash rate equal to 300 GH/s and power consumption equal to 175 W Using those numbers to give hash/Joule (a watt is a Joule/second): CPU = 17.3MH / 75 W = 0.23 MH/J GPU = 3.6 MH/s / 14 W = 0.25 MH/J FPGA = 800 MH/s / 40 W = 20 MH/J ASIC = 300000 GH/s / 175 W = 1700 MH/J Since the primary cost is power consumption, that suggests that a CPU is about 1000x more expensive than an ASIC. There's a bajillion other cryptocurrencies these days. The economics is different for every one.

chatmasta 9y ago

Depends if you’re selling the coins immediately or not. If price is up 2x in 6 months the ROI will obviously be different than today.