5 ms·

Hmmm. Regarding the "relative profit" of small scale mining: There must be some gain in efficiency to moving to these largescale mining systems. Or everyone wou

by jorgem 13y ago

Hmmm. Regarding the "relative profit" of small scale mining: There must be some gain in efficiency to moving to these largescale mining systems. Or everyone would just make lots of the small scale systems, right?

mrb 13y ago
I think you misunderstand me. By "large scale" I mean people having 10,000 watt or more of mining hardware. It doesn't matter for my argument how these 10,000 watts are deployed (5,000 USB thumbdrive-sized miners, or 500 large water-cooled PCBs). Obviously, someone with 10,000 watts of USB thumbdrive-sized miners would run into the same costs eating his profitability: 10,000 watt of electricity bill, 10,000 watt that need to be cooled, etc.
- jorgem 13y ago
  I think I get your point now: As an example, if I could somehow distribute a million USB sticks to a million different people and get them to mine for me (using their electricity and PC at no cost), I could more efficiently mine bitcoins because my lower costs would exceed the gains in processing efficiency that the largescale miners achieve?
  - mrb 13y ago
    Exactly!
    - mbreese 13y ago
      But that's actually less efficient! You are making negligible amounts for each small USB miner, and whoever you are giving them to is probably spending more in the electricity than you are making! It would be just as profitable to ask those million people to just give you a penny every day or two. At least with larger setups, you get to pool your costs, and your power usage would be more efficient. Now, the counter to this are the micro-mining setups where you are using very little electricity, such as using a flashed router or Raspberry Pi to host your USB miners. In this case, you could even probably run it off of solar in most places to make running costs actually zero. You'd have maybe $100 more in initial costs (for solar), but you'd have no ongoing costs, only profit. BTW, your username is funny to me - those are my initials. It's like I'm having an argument with myself. It's been known to happen.
      - bottled_poe 13y ago
        I doubt the bitcoins mined via raspberry pi would ever cover the sunk cost of $100. When it comes to mining bitcoins ASICs are a millions times more power-efficient than the raspberry pi.
        mbreese 13y ago
        Perhaps I wasn't clear... I meant a Raspberry Pi running as the host for a bunch of USB ASICs. This way you are effectively reducing the power requirements of the host to the minimum amount. You could do the same thing with any low-power embedded system that could run bfgminer or cgminer and keep up with the network. This would be opposed to running a Linux or Windows desktop system as a host.
      - nullc 13y ago
        There is some scale level where you've captured all the manufacturing efficiencies (e.g. the asicminer boards in those pictures are only 10GH/s per board), and once you've crossed that it's generally more efficient to distribute the hardware because you can make better use of low level waste heat as home heating (or at least not having to actively cool it).
wmf 13y ago
Note that most of the ASIC makers are selling them, not operating data centers; this supports mrb's point.
- alexkus 13y ago
  Steady income (as an ASCI manufacturer) vs a gamble (as the consumer). Do you want to be the punter or the house?
- dingaling 13y ago
  Actually there are rather vicious allegations that some of the ASIC manufacturers do mine with their own designs for some time before shipping them to customers and moving onto hardware rev+1.
  - nullc 13y ago
    Allegations which are just that. They're unsubstantiated, not even supported by the hashrate visible on the network. People are trying to rationalize out how someone they though was trustworthy would be so overdue in delivering. People actually went as far as to sneak into Butterfly Labs' facilities and found no evidence of it.
    - dingaling 13y ago
      Thanks for the follow-up!
- Smegger 13y ago
  It like the Alaska and California gold rush. There was a lot of gold mined, but very few of the minners struck it rich, many got some gold. but the people that made the real money were the support as every miner has to eat, and needs a new pick or shovel every so often. the silicon makers are just this economic rush's green grocers and shovel salesmen.

by jorgem 13y ago

mrb 13y ago

I think you misunderstand me. By "large scale" I mean people having 10,000 watt or more of mining hardware. It doesn't matter for my argument how these 10,000 watts are deployed (5,000 USB thumbdrive-sized miners, or 500 large water-cooled PCBs). Obviously, someone with 10,000 watts of USB thumbdrive-sized miners would run into the same costs eating his profitability: 10,000 watt of electricity bill, 10,000 watt that need to be cooled, etc.

jorgem 13y ago
I think I get your point now: As an example, if I could somehow distribute a million USB sticks to a million different people and get them to mine for me (using their electricity and PC at no cost), I could more efficiently mine bitcoins because my lower costs would exceed the gains in processing efficiency that the largescale miners achieve?
- mrb 13y ago
  Exactly!
  - mbreese 13y ago
    But that's actually less efficient! You are making negligible amounts for each small USB miner, and whoever you are giving them to is probably spending more in the electricity than you are making! It would be just as profitable to ask those million people to just give you a penny every day or two. At least with larger setups, you get to pool your costs, and your power usage would be more efficient. Now, the counter to this are the micro-mining setups where you are using very little electricity, such as using a flashed router or Raspberry Pi to host your USB miners. In this case, you could even probably run it off of solar in most places to make running costs actually zero. You'd have maybe $100 more in initial costs (for solar), but you'd have no ongoing costs, only profit. BTW, your username is funny to me - those are my initials. It's like I'm having an argument with myself. It's been known to happen.
    - bottled_poe 13y ago
      I doubt the bitcoins mined via raspberry pi would ever cover the sunk cost of $100. When it comes to mining bitcoins ASICs are a millions times more power-efficient than the raspberry pi.
      - mbreese 13y ago
        Perhaps I wasn't clear... I meant a Raspberry Pi running as the host for a bunch of USB ASICs. This way you are effectively reducing the power requirements of the host to the minimum amount. You could do the same thing with any low-power embedded system that could run bfgminer or cgminer and keep up with the network. This would be opposed to running a Linux or Windows desktop system as a host.
    - nullc 13y ago
      There is some scale level where you've captured all the manufacturing efficiencies (e.g. the asicminer boards in those pictures are only 10GH/s per board), and once you've crossed that it's generally more efficient to distribute the hardware because you can make better use of low level waste heat as home heating (or at least not having to actively cool it).

wmf 13y ago

Note that most of the ASIC makers are selling them, not operating data centers; this supports mrb's point.

alexkus 13y ago
Steady income (as an ASCI manufacturer) vs a gamble (as the consumer). Do you want to be the punter or the house?
dingaling 13y ago
Actually there are rather vicious allegations that some of the ASIC manufacturers do mine with their own designs for some time before shipping them to customers and moving onto hardware rev+1.
- nullc 13y ago
  Allegations which are just that. They're unsubstantiated, not even supported by the hashrate visible on the network. People are trying to rationalize out how someone they though was trustworthy would be so overdue in delivering. People actually went as far as to sneak into Butterfly Labs' facilities and found no evidence of it.
  - dingaling 13y ago
    Thanks for the follow-up!
Smegger 13y ago
It like the Alaska and California gold rush. There was a lot of gold mined, but very few of the minners struck it rich, many got some gold. but the people that made the real money were the support as every miner has to eat, and needs a new pick or shovel every so often. the silicon makers are just this economic rush's green grocers and shovel salesmen.