4 ms·

Actually, regular CPU miners are nearly 1,000 times slower than GPU miners. I wouldn't be surprised if a JavaScript miner was several orders of magnitude slower

by rudiger 15y ago

Actually, regular CPU miners are nearly 1,000 times slower than GPU miners. I wouldn't be surprised if a JavaScript miner was several orders of magnitude slower than that (ie. a million times slower than GPU miners). What about using gamers' excess GPU to mine Bitcoins in an installable massively-multiplayer game? Is anyone trying this?

vabole 15y ago
I wonder when will the bitcoin mining viruses appear. If done stealthily they could use spare resources and fall back when other GPU/CPU intensive task is launched. Such virus could be quite profitable if it spread widely enough.
- Groxx 15y ago
  And easily detectable by owning a laptop (that burning sensation isn't a UTI) or having fans in your computer (harder to tell if you live near an airport).
- rmc 15y ago
  Since bitcoin mining is rapidly getting uneconomical on non-specialised hardware, if you control a botnet you probably get more money from the usual botnet activies like spamming or ddosing.
rmc 15y ago
If you control a massively multiplayer game you probably get more money from the player subscriptions.
- regularfry 15y ago
  If you could turn out a bitcoin per day per player, that's massively more than the subscriptions at today's rates. Of course, there's no guarantee that you could do this, and there's no guarantee that today's exchange rates have anything more than blind optimism keeping them afloat, but the idea's not inherently stupid. In fact, it might be an interesting way for EVE (for instance) to link ISK to real-world value. There's a lot that a MMORPG company could do with a system which encourages people to stay in-game more than they already do...
  - rmc 15y ago
    "If you could turn out a bitcoin per day per player" Can't be done. According to this BitCoin calculator[1] you need to generate 245 Mhashes/sec (mega-hashes per second) to generate 1 bitcoin per day today. (Remeber that number will go up as time goes on) I assume that calculator is for 24/7 calculation (which you won't get with gamers), let's assume they are hardcore and play 6 hours per day, every day. You can't dedicate 100% of your customer's GPU power to bitcoin mining (since they'll need to actually play yoru game), let's say you dedicate 20% of their GPU. To get 1 bitcoin per day you need hardware that's able to do 245 × 4 × 5 = 4,900 Mhashes/sec. This thread[2] from the bitcoin forum today has some idea of what current hardware can do. They say "5870's are $250 apiece at the moment and each only get around 350 Mh/s", so in order to get 4,900 Mh/s, you'll need about 14 of them. i.e. If the players of your MMO have 14 graphics cards (costing ~US$250 each) in their machine, then you can probably generate 1 bitcoin per day per hardcore player. i.e. It's not possible, forget about it. [1] http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php [2] http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9052.0 http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9052.0
    - nicpottier 15y ago
      Nice number crunching.. But then let's reassess this 1 BT/Day thing. That's $8 a day right now, you'd be pretty pissed paying $8/day for most any game. What if we said 1 BT/month instead? Then all your numbers kind of point to that being pretty feasible no? If I'm reading your calculations right, then a gamer with one GPU would generate 2 BTs per month.
      - rmc 15y ago
        Except when someone on your games forum points out how players can get a 25% increase in graphics quality (By going from 80% GPU power to 100% GPU power) by stopping a certain process (your BitCoin miner). Hardcore games are going to care about that kind of numbers. I think miners also need to download a lot of data initially (i think 500GB). Mining might require network access which has a negative impact on network latency, and a negative impact on most real time MMOs. i.e. there are also a whole pile reasons why running a miner would pissed off your paying customers.
- MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
  Agreed. I'm amazed at the people drooling over the bitcoins they could make when generating actual dollars seems so much easier, especially once you're assuming such "trivials" as millions of users and pageviews each month.

by rudiger 15y ago

vabole 15y ago

I wonder when will the bitcoin mining viruses appear. If done stealthily they could use spare resources and fall back when other GPU/CPU intensive task is launched. Such virus could be quite profitable if it spread widely enough.

Groxx 15y ago
And easily detectable by owning a laptop (that burning sensation isn't a UTI) or having fans in your computer (harder to tell if you live near an airport).
rmc 15y ago
Since bitcoin mining is rapidly getting uneconomical on non-specialised hardware, if you control a botnet you probably get more money from the usual botnet activies like spamming or ddosing.

rmc 15y ago

If you control a massively multiplayer game you probably get more money from the player subscriptions.

regularfry 15y ago
If you could turn out a bitcoin per day per player, that's massively more than the subscriptions at today's rates. Of course, there's no guarantee that you could do this, and there's no guarantee that today's exchange rates have anything more than blind optimism keeping them afloat, but the idea's not inherently stupid. In fact, it might be an interesting way for EVE (for instance) to link ISK to real-world value. There's a lot that a MMORPG company could do with a system which encourages people to stay in-game more than they already do...
- rmc 15y ago
  "If you could turn out a bitcoin per day per player" Can't be done. According to this BitCoin calculator[1] you need to generate 245 Mhashes/sec (mega-hashes per second) to generate 1 bitcoin per day today. (Remeber that number will go up as time goes on) I assume that calculator is for 24/7 calculation (which you won't get with gamers), let's assume they are hardcore and play 6 hours per day, every day. You can't dedicate 100% of your customer's GPU power to bitcoin mining (since they'll need to actually play yoru game), let's say you dedicate 20% of their GPU. To get 1 bitcoin per day you need hardware that's able to do 245 × 4 × 5 = 4,900 Mhashes/sec. This thread[2] from the bitcoin forum today has some idea of what current hardware can do. They say "5870's are $250 apiece at the moment and each only get around 350 Mh/s", so in order to get 4,900 Mh/s, you'll need about 14 of them. i.e. If the players of your MMO have 14 graphics cards (costing ~US$250 each) in their machine, then you can probably generate 1 bitcoin per day per hardcore player. i.e. It's not possible, forget about it. [1] http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php [2] http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9052.0 http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9052.0
  - nicpottier 15y ago
    Nice number crunching.. But then let's reassess this 1 BT/Day thing. That's $8 a day right now, you'd be pretty pissed paying $8/day for most any game. What if we said 1 BT/month instead? Then all your numbers kind of point to that being pretty feasible no? If I'm reading your calculations right, then a gamer with one GPU would generate 2 BTs per month.
    - rmc 15y ago
      Except when someone on your games forum points out how players can get a 25% increase in graphics quality (By going from 80% GPU power to 100% GPU power) by stopping a certain process (your BitCoin miner). Hardcore games are going to care about that kind of numbers. I think miners also need to download a lot of data initially (i think 500GB). Mining might require network access which has a negative impact on network latency, and a negative impact on most real time MMOs. i.e. there are also a whole pile reasons why running a miner would pissed off your paying customers.
MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
Agreed. I'm amazed at the people drooling over the bitcoins they could make when generating actual dollars seems so much easier, especially once you're assuming such "trivials" as millions of users and pageviews each month.