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Not at all. It's people who want to play around with the technology, but can't afford FPGAs or ASICS to do the job. Or maybe they could afford FPGAs or ASICS, b

Not at all. It's people who want to play around with the technology, but can't afford FPGAs or ASICS to do the job. Or maybe they could afford FPGAs or ASICS, but they want to be able to see more of what's going on behind the curtain. Not a huge number of people, no. But then a lot of services on the Internet have a long tail.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
But from what you describe, it's an open question whether anyone has used a GPU to mine bitcoin in the last ten years, as opposed to just setting a GPU to work on the kinds of problems involved in mining bitcoin. If you never mine any bitcoin, are your tools being used to mine bitcoin?
- bradknowles 4y ago
  The bitcoin market is big enough, and there are enough places where power is free and the hardware is already paid for, that I am quite certain there's at least a few people still mining bitcoin today on GPUs. Then there's the educational market, where it's less important that people mine bitcoin to earn money, and more about learning how bitcoin works by actually running the code. So, no -- I don't think that's actually an open question at all. I don't have any proof, but then neither do you. And all I'd have to do to create my proof would be to spin up my own machine with a GPU and use it to mine bitcoin for a while. Maybe on a free AWS account or something. Not that I'd actually do that, but it would be possible.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Name one piece of software that mines BTC on GPUs that has been updated in the last few years.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    > and more about learning how bitcoin works by actually running the code. You can find an old CPU miner for that. There's a few that have been written clearly with demonstration/learning in mind. If you don't expect any gains, why even go with a GPU?
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      Maybe because you want to study how Bitcoin works on a GPU?
      - viraptor 4y ago
        Then they'll play with https://github.com/FourDizzle/js-gpu-bitcoin-miner/blob/master/client/src/webgl/shaders/og-fs.glsl https://github.com/FourDizzle/js-gpu-bitcoin-miner/blob/mast... or similar on some custom chain or simulated environment. They wouldn't be doing any actual mining.
        bradknowles 4y ago
        Maybe. Maybe not. But you can't force them to do so, even if that is the only way to save your theory. Maybe they want to play with real software on real hardware. And maybe they've got access to free power to do it, or they already pay enough for power that the cost of a single GPU is not material to them.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > The bitcoin market is big enough, and there are enough places where power is free and the hardware is already paid for, that I am quite certain there's at least a few people still mining bitcoin today on GPUs. > So, no -- I don't think that's actually an open question at all. But you didn't even address my question! It doesn't matter whether someone is assigning their GPU to the job of mining bitcoin. Has any bitcoin actually been mined by a GPU? That would be the difference between "using a GPU to mine bitcoin" and "using a GPU to LARP mining bitcoin".
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      Can you prove that there is any Bitcoin throughout history that wasn't mined on GPU? If that's what people are doing, then they have their reasons. And unless you can prove that they don't exist, then you can't rightly claim they don't exist.
latchkey 4y ago
That makes zero sense. If someone wants to play around with the concept of mining with a GPU, then mine ETH. Not only is there recent software that supports ETH mining on GPUs, but also the fact that it would take a long time to mine a single share on a BTC pool at this point. Software for mining BTC on GPUs hasn't been updated in many many years. It would be a struggle to even get something working.
- bradknowles 4y ago
  Maybe. Maybe not. Bitcoin is a better known name, and an easier algorithm to compare the differences between running on CPU versus GPU, and so that might be a very interesting thing to study. I can definitely see a CS professor assigning that kind of work to their class for a while. Then maybe a couple of weeks later, they do ETH instead. Or maybe Dogecoin, or whatever else the professor wants people to study. For a hobbyist, maybe they really are married to Bitcoin on GPU, and damn the torpedoes. The point is that there are billions of people in the world, and presumably at least millions of people who might be interested in mining Bitcoin. You can't account for every single person who might want to do that, nor can I. My advantage is that only one such person needs to exist to support my thesis, whereas your position requires that there are no such people anywhere on the planet. Like I said, these aren't going to be large bulk operations, I totally grant you that point. But I'm confident that there are at least a few examples out there.
  - tarsinge 4y ago
    Are you sure you really understand mining and the different algorithms used by the different cryptos? You don’t learn sha256 by putting a GPU rig that was only a transition between original CPU mining in the beginning and current ASICS mining. > My advantage is that only one such person needs to exist to support my thesis, whereas your position requires that there are no such people anywhere on the planet. Still nobody sane or competent would do it.
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      There are still edge cases where it could be done by people who are "sane". They're just interested in other things than you are. And they may have different cost structures than you do. But they're not "insane", even though they are making very little profit.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

But from what you describe, it's an open question whether anyone has used a GPU to mine bitcoin in the last ten years, as opposed to just setting a GPU to work on the kinds of problems involved in mining bitcoin. If you never mine any bitcoin, are your tools being used to mine bitcoin?

bradknowles 4y ago
The bitcoin market is big enough, and there are enough places where power is free and the hardware is already paid for, that I am quite certain there's at least a few people still mining bitcoin today on GPUs. Then there's the educational market, where it's less important that people mine bitcoin to earn money, and more about learning how bitcoin works by actually running the code. So, no -- I don't think that's actually an open question at all. I don't have any proof, but then neither do you. And all I'd have to do to create my proof would be to spin up my own machine with a GPU and use it to mine bitcoin for a while. Maybe on a free AWS account or something. Not that I'd actually do that, but it would be possible.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Name one piece of software that mines BTC on GPUs that has been updated in the last few years.
- viraptor 4y ago
  > and more about learning how bitcoin works by actually running the code. You can find an old CPU miner for that. There's a few that have been written clearly with demonstration/learning in mind. If you don't expect any gains, why even go with a GPU?
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    Maybe because you want to study how Bitcoin works on a GPU?
    - viraptor 4y ago
      Then they'll play with https://github.com/FourDizzle/js-gpu-bitcoin-miner/blob/master/client/src/webgl/shaders/og-fs.glsl https://github.com/FourDizzle/js-gpu-bitcoin-miner/blob/mast... or similar on some custom chain or simulated environment. They wouldn't be doing any actual mining.
      - bradknowles 4y ago
        Maybe. Maybe not. But you can't force them to do so, even if that is the only way to save your theory. Maybe they want to play with real software on real hardware. And maybe they've got access to free power to do it, or they already pay enough for power that the cost of a single GPU is not material to them.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > The bitcoin market is big enough, and there are enough places where power is free and the hardware is already paid for, that I am quite certain there's at least a few people still mining bitcoin today on GPUs. > So, no -- I don't think that's actually an open question at all. But you didn't even address my question! It doesn't matter whether someone is assigning their GPU to the job of mining bitcoin. Has any bitcoin actually been mined by a GPU? That would be the difference between "using a GPU to mine bitcoin" and "using a GPU to LARP mining bitcoin".
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    Can you prove that there is any Bitcoin throughout history that wasn't mined on GPU? If that's what people are doing, then they have their reasons. And unless you can prove that they don't exist, then you can't rightly claim they don't exist.

latchkey 4y ago

That makes zero sense. If someone wants to play around with the concept of mining with a GPU, then mine ETH. Not only is there recent software that supports ETH mining on GPUs, but also the fact that it would take a long time to mine a single share on a BTC pool at this point. Software for mining BTC on GPUs hasn't been updated in many many years. It would be a struggle to even get something working.

bradknowles 4y ago
Maybe. Maybe not. Bitcoin is a better known name, and an easier algorithm to compare the differences between running on CPU versus GPU, and so that might be a very interesting thing to study. I can definitely see a CS professor assigning that kind of work to their class for a while. Then maybe a couple of weeks later, they do ETH instead. Or maybe Dogecoin, or whatever else the professor wants people to study. For a hobbyist, maybe they really are married to Bitcoin on GPU, and damn the torpedoes. The point is that there are billions of people in the world, and presumably at least millions of people who might be interested in mining Bitcoin. You can't account for every single person who might want to do that, nor can I. My advantage is that only one such person needs to exist to support my thesis, whereas your position requires that there are no such people anywhere on the planet. Like I said, these aren't going to be large bulk operations, I totally grant you that point. But I'm confident that there are at least a few examples out there.
- tarsinge 4y ago
  Are you sure you really understand mining and the different algorithms used by the different cryptos? You don’t learn sha256 by putting a GPU rig that was only a transition between original CPU mining in the beginning and current ASICS mining. > My advantage is that only one such person needs to exist to support my thesis, whereas your position requires that there are no such people anywhere on the planet. Still nobody sane or competent would do it.
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    There are still edge cases where it could be done by people who are "sane". They're just interested in other things than you are. And they may have different cost structures than you do. But they're not "insane", even though they are making very little profit.