Author Topic: what software can i use to mine bitcoin  (Read 7323 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline sony mavicaTopic starter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 472
  • Country: nz
what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« on: January 30, 2018, 10:45:25 pm »
what program can i use for free to mine bitcoin?
MORE POWER!
 

Offline Monkeh

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7990
  • Country: gb
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2018, 10:50:48 pm »
You will simply be spending money on electricity for no gain.
 
The following users thanked this post: alexanderbrevig, Electro Detective

Offline Ampera

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2578
  • Country: us
    • Ampera's Forums
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2018, 12:18:45 am »
It's a case of if you have to ask, you're not in a position where you can mine bitcoin.

Mining bitcoin on general purpose hardware is COMPLETELY dead, and has been for years. Nobody who wants to make any sort of short term profit does it ever. They have switched to ASIC resistant currencies like Ethereum. However, even those currencies need a large upfront investment in order to be profitable, and you run the very possible, very constant risk of this mining bubble popping. Money just doesn't come out of nowhere, and I am very skeptical of the long term stability of CC's.

However, to answer your question properly, just look it up on Google. The only one that comes to mind is CUDA miner, but that's for nVidia cards, and possibly not even relevant anymore (I haven't checked). There are an amazing amount of resources on this topic, and while I can't accuse you of anything, it sounds to me like you made the classic mistake of asking a forum before asking Google.

I apologize if this seems a bit harsh. CCs are not exactly on my love list recently, due to the now crazy GPU market. Although, who knows, maybe if this bubble pops, which it may never, we will get an inverse cheap GPU influx from everybody trying to bail out.
I forget who I am sometimes, but then I remember that it's probably not worth remembering.
EEVBlog IRC Admin - Join us on irc.austnet.org #eevblog
 

Offline cloudscapes

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 198
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2018, 02:42:27 am »
A coworker of mine recently invested in a dozen GTX 1080 graphics cards (all on riser boards) to mine using nicehash. I believe he estimated he'd start making profit again after 4-5 months of mining 24/7, factoring electricity usage into it. A couple grand a month sort of thing.

I tried nicehash once. You sign up to be part of a pool or something. I made three bucks by letting it run overnight on my 1070. Then I forgot about it, not personally that interested.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8972
  • Country: us
  • "Don't turn it on - Take it apart!"
    • Facebook Page
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2018, 05:07:31 am »
I use cgminer for my Avalon 4. The only other mining software recommended for Bitcoin is bfgminer.

Now for altcoins, there are a few times as many miners as there are altcoins. You basically have to research which coins are worth mining.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline amspire

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3802
  • Country: au
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #5 on: January 31, 2018, 05:49:18 am »
There is a package called Awsome Miner that is a GUI front end for a few different mining programs. It is too hard to mine coins directly, so you want to join a mining pool. For many pools, you don't even have to subscribe. Just give them your wallet's public address, and point your miner at them, and then just wait for the money to come flooding in. You get a share of the earnings.

Just search YouTube and there are plenty of guides.

Now for the reality. If you are just using the CPU for mining, you would be lucky to be earning cents a day.

If you are using a top end nVidia or Radeon card, you could earn 10c a day to maybe a few dollars depending on the coin. Last time I tried was with Electroneum and in about 3 weeks, it dropped from about $2 a day to perhaps 30c a day - if you left the graphics card running flat out 24 hours a day. So if you spend $600 on a good graphics card and are using 4.8kWh of electricity a day, it will take a long time to repay the costs if you can find a coin with a decent return.

Even if you can find a coin that lets you earn, say, $5 a day, you will not be earning anything like that in 1 month.

As pointed out, coins such as Bitcoin suit ASIC miners and there is not much point in even trying with your PC.

It is much cheaper to take your $600 for the graphics cards and buy about 10 different kinds of crypto coins, put them into your own wallets and then just ignore them for the next 5 years. If history repeats itself, you could have hundreds of thousands of dollars by then. Or you could have $6.

Don't leave the coins with exchanges or use website-based wallets.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2018, 06:22:26 am by amspire »
 
The following users thanked this post: sony mavica

Offline daqq

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2301
  • Country: sk
    • My site
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #6 on: January 31, 2018, 06:15:10 am »
May I suggest gridcoin? If you want to burn away electricity and receive a token of dubious value, you can at least contribute to science whilst doing it...
Believe it or not, pointy haired people do exist!
+++Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
 

Offline NiHaoMike

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8972
  • Country: us
  • "Don't turn it on - Take it apart!"
    • Facebook Page
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #7 on: January 31, 2018, 06:50:39 am »
May I suggest gridcoin? If you want to burn away electricity and receive a token of dubious value, you can at least contribute to science whilst doing it...
I mine Curecoin/Foldingcoin with my GPU.

As for best efficiency, it used to be mining with (cheap) smartphones but that's becoming far less profitable the last few months. (The days of getting $100/month with 4 cheap smartphones ended about 2 years ago. Now it's like $15-20/month with 5 smartphones and the difficulty is still increasing.) HDD coins like Burstcoin and Storj seem to be be the ones where difficulty increases at a relatively slow rate.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Ampera

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2578
  • Country: us
    • Ampera's Forums
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2018, 08:35:30 am »
Honestly, we run BOINC on most of our machines in this house. It contributes to science, and makes use of your idle hardware. CC mining is a rather dangerous economical science. Like with stocks, if you aren't careful, you can loose your initial investment just by bad luck.
I forget who I am sometimes, but then I remember that it's probably not worth remembering.
EEVBlog IRC Admin - Join us on irc.austnet.org #eevblog
 

Offline Halcyon

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 5629
  • Country: au
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2018, 09:56:22 am »
Honestly, we run BOINC on most of our machines in this house. It contributes to science, and makes use of your idle hardware. CC mining is a rather dangerous economical science. Like with stocks, if you aren't careful, you can loose your initial investment just by bad luck.

Mining crypto costs nothing apart from any hardware you decide to purchase and the cost of electricity. You aren't buying crypto so you have nothing to lose. You really need to do your homework if you decide to mine and to get decent performance, you really need to spend a reasonable amount of money. Depending on where you live and how much electricity costs, it's almost not worth it.

I looked into it myself and with the gear I had already, I was going to make something like AUD$2.00 per day after taking into consideration power costs. On the flip side, I can save much more than $2 per day just by switching off my desktop machine when it's not in use and doing laundry/dishwashing etc... at the time of day when energy is cheap (or free from my PV array).

 

Offline eevblogger

  • Newbie
  • Posts: 3
  • Country: us
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2018, 08:15:53 pm »
Honestly, we run BOINC on most of our machines in this house. It contributes to science, and makes use of your idle hardware. CC mining is a rather dangerous economical science. Like with stocks, if you aren't careful, you can loose your initial investment just by bad luck.
You may be interested in gridcoin (https://www.gridcoin.us/) then - it is a cryptocurrency built on top of BOINC. Mine CC by contributing to scientific research!
 

Online nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2018, 10:22:15 pm »
IMHO it may be more worthwhile to speculate with the various coins. Trading between the various exchanges for example.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline MT

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1616
  • Country: aq
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2018, 11:21:03 pm »
How fascinating this mining of CC's are!
Real mining companies only start a mine unless they can reasonably secure a certain gram per tonnes after along period of evaluating hundreds of drill cores out of bedrock and chemical analysis and indepth market surveys and prognoses
of their find etc, etc, they take very few chances since starting amine is extremely expensive.
 

Offline CNe7532294

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 108
  • Country: us
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2018, 02:44:20 pm »
You're better off just getting out of bitcoin to be honest. Its crashing and will correct to "zero" eventually since its just a brand name with an evolutionary dead end. Its better to check out other cryptocurrencies and any related investments, see what they offer/who is backing them, then speculate/invest on those that can take crypto to the next level.

PS: bitcoin =/= cryptocurrency as a whole even though it influences all crypto at this time.

PSS: I do have some regrets of getting out early though. I didn't expect alot of people to be in the "mania phase". Lesson well learned.

PSSS/related: I'm hoping for a crash so that video cards can return to $200 - 300 USD instead of $500 - 800. I wonder if its worth getting used cards though. Some say they won't last cause of daily bitcoin mining. Others say it would be worth it.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2018, 02:49:53 pm by CNe7532294 »
 

Offline Ampera

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2578
  • Country: us
    • Ampera's Forums
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2018, 03:52:48 pm »
Printing money never ends well.
I forget who I am sometimes, but then I remember that it's probably not worth remembering.
EEVBlog IRC Admin - Join us on irc.austnet.org #eevblog
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #15 on: February 02, 2018, 04:11:47 pm »
Printing money never ends well.
This is literally and figuratively not printing money, as opposed to actual fiat currency which is both. Fiat currency gets printed at will. Cryptocurrency can't be created without a non-trivial effort on the part of the creator.

I'm not pretending cryptocurrency is without risks, but people are suprisingly consistently using arguments against cryptocurrency that either also apply to fiat currency, or apply to fiat currency alone. Don't misconstrue what I'm saying. I hate how people are currently going crazy, I hate what it does to the price of hardware and I hate how much energy is wasted on something that doesn't yield a more useful reward.
 

Offline Ampera

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2578
  • Country: us
    • Ampera's Forums
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #16 on: February 02, 2018, 09:05:42 pm »
It was a bad attempt at a joke.

CCs have a massive number of issues. In the same way having a lot of (fiat? like the car?) currencies in the world complicates things, having an abundance of different cryptos can only lead to people arguing about what to and not to accept. It is, however, easier-ish to accept a variety of CCs than it is normal currencies.

I personally don't see them becoming truly mainstream, and the money-grab attitude does worry me to the point of humor. (You know it's bad when I am making jokes about it).
I forget who I am sometimes, but then I remember that it's probably not worth remembering.
EEVBlog IRC Admin - Join us on irc.austnet.org #eevblog
 

Offline VK3DRB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2252
  • Country: au
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #17 on: February 02, 2018, 10:00:32 pm »
There is a friend of mine in Wangaratta who mined about 90 bitcoins on a gamer's PC in 2009/2010. No great feat, no big power bill. He lost interest and most unfortunately lost his hard disk after he upgraded it and threw it in the rubbish bin about 5 or 6 years ago. That hard disk would have gone to Wangaratta transfer station and then to a tip somewhere. The hard disk may still be there intact. It is would be very difficult to find.

Would it be profitable to mine the rubbish tip? Wangaratta district has about 17,000 residents. One bin full per week per household. Assuming 2.3 people per household, that's about 7,400 rubbish bins per week, or 385K bin loads per year. The 90 bitcoins peaked their value at about $1.8M. Assuming you narrow the tip dumping down to a 2 year window, that's roughly $2.30 cents cost per bin load. But for every hard disk, you would have to test it. And the price of Bitcoins has halved since the peak. Not worth trying to find it, I would say. 
 

Offline daybyter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 397
  • Country: de
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #18 on: February 02, 2018, 10:55:51 pm »
Take a look at monero.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #19 on: February 02, 2018, 11:24:03 pm »
Sounds fishy to me. It's like showing off your friend I hit the jackpot and lost the ticket.
There's plenty of stories like that and they're plausible. Many people into computers heard about it around that time and mined for a bit until the novelty wore off. Bitcoins weren't worth much back then, so it was mostly academic. Of course, people have deplorable backup strategies, even those that should know better. Add them together and many people have mined Bitcoins worth nothing back then, worth a fortune now, yet lost forever.
 

Offline amspire

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3802
  • Country: au
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #20 on: February 02, 2018, 11:55:35 pm »
A friend of mine was a manager at a internet hosting company where a bunch of technicians were dabbling in Bitcoin. They all had multiple coins. Then everyone lost interest for years. I suspect they were probably using free capacity on the companies servers for doing the mining.

Only one of those technicians actually could find their wallets - he bought a house in Sydney from his coins when Bitcoin was worth about $3000. He could have been a millionaire if he waited a bit longer, but still, getting a house for nothing was a pretty good outcome.

It is easy to think now - "How could anyone be so stupid" but if you go back a few years, people had written it all off. The wallet keys were probably in an obscure place in the hidden "App Data" folder and it was easy to forget to safely back it up. The whole infrastructure was pretty crude. Of the people who dabbled in Bitcoin right at the start, more probably lost their wallets then kept them.

At the start, you could mine on an ordinary PC and you could get 50 Bitcoin payout when you had a success. That was worth about $3.00 - if you could find a way to sell it. It was just a bit of fun at the time.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #21 on: February 03, 2018, 12:10:30 am »
I know a guy who made about $40K. He got out before the big hype started and could have been multimillionaire if he stayed in. I think the total would have been 25 or 30 million in December. But that's the name of the game. You can't just look at the ideal performance and cry over the difference. Well, you can, but you would be lying to yourself. Just like in the stock market, getting in and getting out at the perfect moment is unlikely. Some shares will fall, some will rise. There's a reason people tell you to spread the risk. As long as you gain more than you lose and come out on top, you win.
 

Online nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #22 on: February 03, 2018, 12:13:22 am »
Printing money never ends well.
It has to be done otherwise the economy cannot grow. BUT there has to be a balance between the size of the economy and the amount of money. Some people in an earlier thread on cryptocurrencies made an interesting point about how cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are useless as money just like gold is. If you can't make enough to keep up with economic growth then you get deflation which means the value of money increases without any work being done to justify the increase of value. That causes an economy to a grinding halt becuase investing money becomes a stupid idea. IOW: money has no intrinsic value other than the amount of work it represents.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline shteii01

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 266
  • Country: us
 

Offline mariush

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4982
  • Country: ro
  • .
Re: what software can i use to mine bitcoin
« Reply #24 on: February 03, 2018, 12:36:04 am »
Unlike paper money where the lowest you could go is 1 cent in most currencies, it's technically easy to divide an Ethereum coin (or other coins)  into smaller units, like 0.00001 ETH, so the total number of coins in the world is not a big deal : if the demand is high, the value of each individual coin can go up, and you use divisions of a coin to pay for things.

Also, unlike Bitcoin, coins like Ethereum produce new blocks more often (for example 3 ETH reward for every block created, which is every ~15 seconds) and this amount of reward can be adjusted by developers but only if more than 51% of the miners agree to upgrade their software to follow the new "set of rules" of the coin.

In the case of Ethereum for example, this happened last year, in October ... they decreased the difficulty to make mining easier, but lowered the reward to half the amount in return, you can see the chart here  : https://www.etherchain.org/charts/difficulty

The point is, if there's a need to increase the number of coins to "keep up with economy", miners will vote and if more than 51% agree, then amount can be changed.

Bitcoin suffers from the long block times (10m), small number of transactions per block (~2 transactions per second I think), high transaction fees, and the Chinese miners don't want to do anything that would lower their profitability. So they basically dug their own grave... the bitcoin is becoming less and less attractive.

In comparison, Ethereum runs around Bitcoin and they have active team of developers who are working on improving things substantially, like working on having proof of stake and proof of work systems simultaneously (mine some blocks, validate some blocks without mining) and they're also working on sharding, which will raise the number of transactions the coin can handle exponentially.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf