6 ms·

800 Giga Hash per second user just started mining at BTCGuild

30 points by shocks 14y ago

shocks 14y ago
http://www.btcguild.com/halloffame.php http://www.btcguild.com/halloffame.php Now at 1,211.06 GH/s... Wow. That's about $130,000 per month in the current market.
johnmurch 14y ago
With ASIC bitcoin miners starting to be released I wonder if this means we are close to peak in terms of making $$$ of mining. Most likely not, but still crazy to see someone mining this much when the price of a BTC is $26+
steeve 14y ago
So what happens when all bitcoins are mined ?
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  I'll be amazed if bitcoin is still around in 2140. Automation and home manufacturing are going to do some weird things to the economics all currencies depend on. We could end up with a barter system where we trade in manufactured goods and creative output instead of currency.
  - dfc 14y ago
    You think society is going to take a step back? How do you invest in a company in a barter based economy? To save time I'm stealing the following issues with a barter based economy from wikipedia.[1] How do you think home manufacturing and automation are going to mitigate these issues? Need for presence of double coincidence of wants: For barter to occur between two people, both would need to have what the other wants. Absence of common measure of value: In a monetary economy, money plays the role of a measure of value of all goods, so their values can be measured against each other; this role may be absent in a barter economy. Indivisibility of certain goods: If a person wants to buy a certain amount of another's goods, but only has for payment one indivisible unit of another good which is worth more than what the person wants to obtain, a barter transaction cannot occur. Lack of standards for deferred payments: This is related to the absence of a common measure of value, although if the debt is denominated in units of the good that will eventually be used in payment, it is not a problem. Difficulty in storing wealth: If a society relies exclusively on perishable goods, storing wealth for the future may be impractical. However, some barter economies rely on durable goods like pigs or cattle for this purpose. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter
    - mkr-hn 14y ago
      This hypothetical barter society works, for a while, because no one needs anything. Most things are made by machines, and you can make most of the rest. You could charge a currency like bitcoin for your creations, but what would you buy with it if you convinced someone to pay for it in currency instead of something like perishable goods? You would run out of uses for it quickly. Currency already relies on our belief in its value. It won't last long when it's easier to trade for your own production and swap goods for things than to try and find a buyer for your bits.
      - dfc 14y ago
        I would buy electricity, natural gas and shares of a financial instrument in order to save for retirement. I don't plan on running out of those uses for a while.
        mkr-hn 14y ago
        You can make your own electricity and natural gas, or form a co-op with your neighbors. And I never said it would be an instant transition to an interplanetary utopia of self-sustaining, currency-free communities. 2140 is a long way away. We're going to live through the transition, and it's not going to be pleasant.
        dfc 14y ago
        How are my neighbors and I going to make enough natural gas to heat our houses in the winter? Most importantly if automation and efficient manufacturing are so widely dispersed why would someone else accept goods they can just as easily make themselves? You forgot to answer how I will save for retirement. EDIT: I just saw your revision. You seem to assume that society will decide to give up currency go back to a barter based system. Why will we go back?
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
- icebraining 14y ago
  Miners will get the transaction fees: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees
- tomjen3 14y ago
  (That won't happen for a while, no matter how many are mining.) Basically you pay a small transaction fee and the miner gets that.
- SlipperySlope 14y ago
  Each bitcoin transaction has an optional fee set by the party issuing the transaction. The miner, or mining pool, solving the block containing the new transaction is awarded the fee. At the moment bitcoin mining is all about solving blocks from newly created bitcoins. When they are gone, then bitcoin mining will be all about collecting transaction fees.
gigantor 14y ago
At $3000/day 'revenue', can anyone chime in for the cost of electricity to run that rig assuming $0.10/kWh, not factoring in the initial investment of the hardware?
- shocks 14y ago
  See SlipperySlope's excellent comment. :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213780
DoubleCluster 14y ago
I just found out about mining pools; interesting idea to spread the risk of not finding any bitcoins for a long time. Why would a user with such massive mining speed need this though? Wouldn't it be more efficient for him to bear the risk himself and earn a bit more?
- SlipperySlope 14y ago
  At the moment you are correct. But pool mining software is very easy to configure and maintain, and anyway within a few months there will be many more rigs mining at this rate - and thus justifying using the pool. When I was running mining rigs in 2011, I used BTCGuild as they had very reasonable fees.
- shocks 14y ago
  He risks not finding a block at all, and wasting his early advantage. This kind of mining won't last very long because soon more people will have ASICs and it will become much harder to compete.
- wmf 14y ago
  He may be using the pool for bragging rights.
- path411 14y ago
  I would assume it's much easier to join a pool rather than create his own pool for his devices to use.
- pdog 14y ago
  A mining pool significantly lowers the volatility and yields a more consistent rate of return. The difference in expected return isn't much: an effective fee of approximately 1%.
SlipperySlope 14y ago
Bottom line ... "By the way, whoever user 67117 is they will be generating about 122.83 bitcoins a day at the rate of 800 GH/s, or $3,000 US Dollars at today’s rates." Using the bitcoin mining hardware info at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison , ... assuming that the miner is using the Avalon ASIC batch #1 device, the reported hash rate per device is 68,000 mega hashes per second - which is 500 times faster than an example AMD 5770 graphics card. The Avalon box uses 400 watts. 800 giga hash per second could be supplied by 11 Avalon ASIC devices. Total they would cost $14000 plus shipping from China. Plugging this data into the bitcoin mining profitability calculator at: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ , we get 122 bitcoins mined from the pool each day, at this moment valued at $26, for a total daily revenue of $3193. Only $15 worth of electricity is consumed at $0.15 kWh. The mining hardware for this lucky miner pays for itself within a week. More info about Avalon at: http://launch.avalon-asics.com/ http://launch.avalon-asics.com/ As the owner of the BTCGuild mining pool said on his IRC channel, "welcome to the future"! Its obvious that graphic card based mining will not be profitable when ASIC mining rigs become common. Lucky miners are those who invest first in disruptive technology rigs. Most miners are gambling that they can pay off their rigs before the technology changes.
- Osmium 14y ago
  Serious question: why would Avalon sell these things, rather than just mine Bitcoins themselves? at the very least, the cost of the device seems far too low at current Bitcoin conversation rates.
  - xhrpost 14y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142274 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142274
  - wmf 14y ago
    Discussed extensively two weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142021 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142021 Summary: They probably didn't have the money to build anything, so they funded it using Kickstarter-like preorders.
xhrpost 14y ago
Could this possibly cause a drop in exchange price for BTC? If this user bought a bunch of ASICs, he needs to make his money back which could mean selling a lot of coin on a regular basis. However, if most miners already sell, it shouldn't make a difference, may even cause an increase if he starts hoarding more after making a full return on investment.
- Retric 14y ago
  The overall rate of BTC production is basically fixed. If anything this is going to push some people to stop mining BTC.
- yk 14y ago
  In the short term and if the miner sells all of his BTC yes. But in the medium term, the difficulty will increase, the same amount of coins as always will be mined and the price should remain roughly constant. ( And in addition, if you want to move the market to 25.50 $/BTC, you need to sell about 3k BTC [1] at the moment.) So the market would not move much, even if all of these bitcoins are dumped in an instant. [1]http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html
notdrunkatall 14y ago
So is this as simple as buying the hardware, installing a mining program on it, and letting it run?
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Yes. Bitcoin mining favors the already wealthy, but that's how most investments go.
- SlipperySlope 14y ago
  Yes, and previously it was even simpler. At first, bitcoins could be profitably mined using just your CPU. Back in July 2010, I solved two blocks by myself - there were no pools then - using my Linux development desktop. Within a year, CPU mining was no longer profitable because gamers were re-purposing their AMI/AMD graphics cards for much more electricity-efficient mining. Again, all you had to due was to download software into an existing gaming rig.
  - notdrunkatall 14y ago
    If that's the case, do you have an avalon machine on the way?
    - SlipperySlope 14y ago
      Oh no!! Its actually far less effort and risk to simply buy and hoard bitcoins periodically during price dips. I gave up mining bitcoins in 2011 and sold off my six card 5770 rigs. I believe that bitcoin hoarding has the same place in a diversified investment portfolio that gold does - namely some small percentage so that one can ignore short term price volatility.
cadab 14y ago
The graph shows the impact of this user. http://www.btcguild.com/pool_chart.php http://www.btcguild.com/pool_chart.php
shocks 14y ago
Looks like the link has died. Here's the cached version. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fzkWVrsaLH8J:mineforeman.com/2013/02/13/800-giga-hash-per-second-user-just-started-mining-at-btcguild/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fzkWVrs...
cs702 14y ago
The race for ever faster and cheaper Bitcoin-mining technology is eerily similar to the race for ever faster and cheaper gold-mining solutions during the Gold Rush of 1848-1855. During the early stages of the Gold Rush, gold miners would just pan for gold in rivers and streams. Then they organized themselves into larger teams and started using mining "cradles" and diverting river water into sluices. Then they developed modern hydraulic mining with high-pressure hoses. Towards the end of the 19th century they invented dredging technology for mining.[1] Let's call this what it is: The Bitcoin Rush. -- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Development_of_gold-recovery_techniques http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Developmen...

30 points by shocks 14y ago

http://www.btcguild.com/halloffame.php http://www.btcguild.com/halloffame.php Now at 1,211.06 GH/s... Wow. That's about $130,000 per month in the current market.

johnmurch 14y ago

With ASIC bitcoin miners starting to be released I wonder if this means we are close to peak in terms of making $$$ of mining. Most likely not, but still crazy to see someone mining this much when the price of a BTC is $26+

steeve 14y ago

So what happens when all bitcoins are mined ?

mkr-hn 14y ago
I'll be amazed if bitcoin is still around in 2140. Automation and home manufacturing are going to do some weird things to the economics all currencies depend on. We could end up with a barter system where we trade in manufactured goods and creative output instead of currency.
- dfc 14y ago
  You think society is going to take a step back? How do you invest in a company in a barter based economy? To save time I'm stealing the following issues with a barter based economy from wikipedia.[1] How do you think home manufacturing and automation are going to mitigate these issues? Need for presence of double coincidence of wants: For barter to occur between two people, both would need to have what the other wants. Absence of common measure of value: In a monetary economy, money plays the role of a measure of value of all goods, so their values can be measured against each other; this role may be absent in a barter economy. Indivisibility of certain goods: If a person wants to buy a certain amount of another's goods, but only has for payment one indivisible unit of another good which is worth more than what the person wants to obtain, a barter transaction cannot occur. Lack of standards for deferred payments: This is related to the absence of a common measure of value, although if the debt is denominated in units of the good that will eventually be used in payment, it is not a problem. Difficulty in storing wealth: If a society relies exclusively on perishable goods, storing wealth for the future may be impractical. However, some barter economies rely on durable goods like pigs or cattle for this purpose. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    This hypothetical barter society works, for a while, because no one needs anything. Most things are made by machines, and you can make most of the rest. You could charge a currency like bitcoin for your creations, but what would you buy with it if you convinced someone to pay for it in currency instead of something like perishable goods? You would run out of uses for it quickly. Currency already relies on our belief in its value. It won't last long when it's easier to trade for your own production and swap goods for things than to try and find a buyer for your bits.
    - dfc 14y ago
      I would buy electricity, natural gas and shares of a financial instrument in order to save for retirement. I don't plan on running out of those uses for a while.
      - mkr-hn 14y ago
        You can make your own electricity and natural gas, or form a co-op with your neighbors. And I never said it would be an instant transition to an interplanetary utopia of self-sustaining, currency-free communities. 2140 is a long way away. We're going to live through the transition, and it's not going to be pleasant.
        dfc 14y ago
        How are my neighbors and I going to make enough natural gas to heat our houses in the winter? Most importantly if automation and efficient manufacturing are so widely dispersed why would someone else accept goods they can just as easily make themselves? You forgot to answer how I will save for retirement. EDIT: I just saw your revision. You seem to assume that society will decide to give up currency go back to a barter based system. Why will we go back?
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
icebraining 14y ago
Miners will get the transaction fees: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees
tomjen3 14y ago
(That won't happen for a while, no matter how many are mining.) Basically you pay a small transaction fee and the miner gets that.
SlipperySlope 14y ago
Each bitcoin transaction has an optional fee set by the party issuing the transaction. The miner, or mining pool, solving the block containing the new transaction is awarded the fee. At the moment bitcoin mining is all about solving blocks from newly created bitcoins. When they are gone, then bitcoin mining will be all about collecting transaction fees.

gigantor 14y ago

At $3000/day 'revenue', can anyone chime in for the cost of electricity to run that rig assuming $0.10/kWh, not factoring in the initial investment of the hardware?

shocks 14y ago
See SlipperySlope's excellent comment. :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213780

DoubleCluster 14y ago

I just found out about mining pools; interesting idea to spread the risk of not finding any bitcoins for a long time. Why would a user with such massive mining speed need this though? Wouldn't it be more efficient for him to bear the risk himself and earn a bit more?

SlipperySlope 14y ago
At the moment you are correct. But pool mining software is very easy to configure and maintain, and anyway within a few months there will be many more rigs mining at this rate - and thus justifying using the pool. When I was running mining rigs in 2011, I used BTCGuild as they had very reasonable fees.
shocks 14y ago
He risks not finding a block at all, and wasting his early advantage. This kind of mining won't last very long because soon more people will have ASICs and it will become much harder to compete.
wmf 14y ago
He may be using the pool for bragging rights.
path411 14y ago
I would assume it's much easier to join a pool rather than create his own pool for his devices to use.
pdog 14y ago
A mining pool significantly lowers the volatility and yields a more consistent rate of return. The difference in expected return isn't much: an effective fee of approximately 1%.

SlipperySlope 14y ago

Bottom line ... "By the way, whoever user 67117 is they will be generating about 122.83 bitcoins a day at the rate of 800 GH/s, or $3,000 US Dollars at today’s rates." Using the bitcoin mining hardware info at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison , ... assuming that the miner is using the Avalon ASIC batch #1 device, the reported hash rate per device is 68,000 mega hashes per second - which is 500 times faster than an example AMD 5770 graphics card. The Avalon box uses 400 watts. 800 giga hash per second could be supplied by 11 Avalon ASIC devices. Total they would cost $14000 plus shipping from China. Plugging this data into the bitcoin mining profitability calculator at: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ , we get 122 bitcoins mined from the pool each day, at this moment valued at $26, for a total daily revenue of $3193. Only $15 worth of electricity is consumed at $0.15 kWh. The mining hardware for this lucky miner pays for itself within a week. More info about Avalon at: http://launch.avalon-asics.com/ http://launch.avalon-asics.com/ As the owner of the BTCGuild mining pool said on his IRC channel, "welcome to the future"! Its obvious that graphic card based mining will not be profitable when ASIC mining rigs become common. Lucky miners are those who invest first in disruptive technology rigs. Most miners are gambling that they can pay off their rigs before the technology changes.

Osmium 14y ago
Serious question: why would Avalon sell these things, rather than just mine Bitcoins themselves? at the very least, the cost of the device seems far too low at current Bitcoin conversation rates.
- xhrpost 14y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142274 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142274
- wmf 14y ago
  Discussed extensively two weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142021 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142021 Summary: They probably didn't have the money to build anything, so they funded it using Kickstarter-like preorders.

xhrpost 14y ago

Could this possibly cause a drop in exchange price for BTC? If this user bought a bunch of ASICs, he needs to make his money back which could mean selling a lot of coin on a regular basis. However, if most miners already sell, it shouldn't make a difference, may even cause an increase if he starts hoarding more after making a full return on investment.

Retric 14y ago
The overall rate of BTC production is basically fixed. If anything this is going to push some people to stop mining BTC.
yk 14y ago
In the short term and if the miner sells all of his BTC yes. But in the medium term, the difficulty will increase, the same amount of coins as always will be mined and the price should remain roughly constant. ( And in addition, if you want to move the market to 25.50 $/BTC, you need to sell about 3k BTC [1] at the moment.) So the market would not move much, even if all of these bitcoins are dumped in an instant. [1]http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html

notdrunkatall 14y ago

So is this as simple as buying the hardware, installing a mining program on it, and letting it run?

mkr-hn 14y ago
Yes. Bitcoin mining favors the already wealthy, but that's how most investments go.
SlipperySlope 14y ago
Yes, and previously it was even simpler. At first, bitcoins could be profitably mined using just your CPU. Back in July 2010, I solved two blocks by myself - there were no pools then - using my Linux development desktop. Within a year, CPU mining was no longer profitable because gamers were re-purposing their AMI/AMD graphics cards for much more electricity-efficient mining. Again, all you had to due was to download software into an existing gaming rig.
- notdrunkatall 14y ago
  If that's the case, do you have an avalon machine on the way?
  - SlipperySlope 14y ago
    Oh no!! Its actually far less effort and risk to simply buy and hoard bitcoins periodically during price dips. I gave up mining bitcoins in 2011 and sold off my six card 5770 rigs. I believe that bitcoin hoarding has the same place in a diversified investment portfolio that gold does - namely some small percentage so that one can ignore short term price volatility.

cadab 14y ago

The graph shows the impact of this user. http://www.btcguild.com/pool_chart.php http://www.btcguild.com/pool_chart.php

shocks 14y ago

Looks like the link has died. Here's the cached version. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fzkWVrsaLH8J:mineforeman.com/2013/02/13/800-giga-hash-per-second-user-just-started-mining-at-btcguild/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fzkWVrs...

cs702 14y ago

The race for ever faster and cheaper Bitcoin-mining technology is eerily similar to the race for ever faster and cheaper gold-mining solutions during the Gold Rush of 1848-1855. During the early stages of the Gold Rush, gold miners would just pan for gold in rivers and streams. Then they organized themselves into larger teams and started using mining "cradles" and diverting river water into sluices. Then they developed modern hydraulic mining with high-pressure hoses. Towards the end of the 19th century they invented dredging technology for mining.[1] Let's call this what it is: The Bitcoin Rush. -- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Development_of_gold-recovery_techniques http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Developmen...