Deep Web/Bitcoin Mining

[alistairolsen]

So what's the prognosis on R3v, do we reckon the whole thing is a bubble that's due a burst soon before individual currencies do well on their own merit, or will it continue?

Weve had bitcoin, then Litecoin and Etherium, Ripple and Funfair make meteoric rises recently, what's next?

Caveat: I'm aware no one knows and these are at best educated guesses, values can drop as well as rise, only invest what you can afford to lose etc

[noid]

I'm perplexed.

What prevents existing crypto-currencies from being devalued by new crypto-currencies in the manner in which the US dollar is affected by the government printing more of it?

Are there differences in the underlying technology like Betamax vs. VHS? Will the dark web or other markets embrace one currency to the detriment of others the way VHS's longer recording time (and the porn industry's choice of VHS) killed Betamax?

There are over 1400 crypto currencies now, everyone and their dog is starting one.

However I wouldn't think about bitcoins like Betamax vs VHS, I would think about it more like the US dollar versus some new startup republic somewhere with their own currency.

Just like the US dollar, there is massive infrastructure, support, and use of bitcoins, so to dethrone it as the primary currency would require substantial change.

All other crypto currencies are exchangeable for BTC/other crypto on crypto markets. So many cryptos can exist at the same time; just like euros, GBP, USD, CAD, etc exists at any one time.

Fundamentally crypto currencies are just that, currencies, with the primary goal of being decentralized and anonymous.

Regarding your question about printing money: there is a finite amount of BTC, and the difficulty is adjusted so that it gets twice as difficult every 4 years for miners to get the same reward. By 2032, 99% of all bitcoins will have been distributed and by ~2140 the last 1%. Thereafter miners will have the incentive to keep mining to claim transaction fees.

Bitcoins as many other cryptos are open-source, there are currently ~16,797,000 bitcoins in existence. What that means is, if someone can hack the code (which is in plain sight), they could theoretically collect a bounty of ~$233,853,125,055 US Dollar. No one has ever been able to do it (including a millionare who hired two security firms to try). That trust of security, as with holding US dollars, is an important backbone of BTC's value.

Other crypto tries to compete with BTC by either being ASIC resistant, having larger block sizes (lower fees, transaction speed), claiming greater anonymity (unsearchable blockchain), enabling smart contracts, etc.

Realistically, many alts will have an uphill battle to fight for market share as segwig is more widely implemented and the lighting protocols start to come online.

So what's the prognosis on R3v, do we reckon the whole thing is a bubble that's due a burst soon before individual currencies do well on their own merit, or will it continue?

Weve had bitcoin, then Litecoin and Etherium, Ripple and Funfair make meteoric rises recently, what's next?

Caveat: I'm aware no one knows and these are at best educated guesses, values can drop as well as rise, only invest what you can afford to lose etc

I think we will see Bitcoin and Ethereum grow with every other alt as feeders (because of asic resistance). I think as scalability is resolved with segwig/lighting, we will see bitcoin cash and many other "benefits" of other crypto stripped away.

Etheruem being the exception because of smart contracts and their ERC20 standard. BTC and Eth are aiming for two completely different applications.

BTC moves slow and steady because of the sheer volume of commitment you need for a softfork. Luckily bitcoin core has one hell of a team (education/skill wise).

Ripple is a joke; centralized control, with centralized distribution of XRP, no minability.

[gwb72tii]

this is exactly what i was talking about when i mentioned international monetary transfer. it's already happening.

gwb, you kind of have to think outside the scope of you running your own two-bit retail shop... there are other use cases.

that would be three bit, thank you

[Wschnitz]

Buying the dip, no money invested just mined, so no fucks given.

[supermansocks95]

The Monero blockchain has reduced reward by like %40 lately. Starting to wonder if it's going to be worth me funding the rest of my build for it. Any ideas on the best stuff to mine with gpu's and the best pool to do it from? If it becomes really impractical for me to do it, I'll probably just sell it all and use it to build a gaming comp instead.

[supermansocks95]

Looks like I'm going the gaming route instead. But, now all of the GPU's have like doubled in price the last month.

[z31maniac]

Yep, that's why my sim rig is on hold now.

I'm not paying $1500 for a 1080Ti that was $700 in November.

I'm hoping the China and S. Korea crackdown + Stripe (is it stripe?) stopping accepting bitcoins will drive the price down enough that people stop caring about mining.

[supermansocks95]

Yep, that's why my sim rig is on hold now.

I'm not paying $1500 for a 1080Ti that was $700 in November.

I'm hoping the China and S. Korea crackdown + Stripe (is it stripe?) stopping accepting bitcoins will drive the price down enough that people stop caring about mining.

Yeah, I'm just waiting for it to go down and probably giving up on mining.

[Wschnitz]

im just holding onto my ripple until coinbase or robinhood accepts it as an option, then selling the rise.

[Dagamus(NM)]

I had been mining ZEC and XMR but the XMR payout rate went down as everybody jumped on that. Finally hit my payout of 1XMR after five weeks on one of my computers. When I started it was supposed to hit 1XMR after three weeks but that is what happens when everybody jumps in and the difficulty goes up. I was making a ZEC every six days with my other five PCs but found it considerably more profitable to return to Nicehash. My different rigs are mining all kinds of different things. Neoscrypt, Nist5, equihash. I don't even know what coins Neoscrypt and Nist5 are but I don't really care as I get paid in BTC which is nice.

I like having it spread around a bit but being tied in can be rough waiting to hit a payout amount.

As far as GPUs being too expensive, I am still buying them at MSRP. Go on newegg, set the filters to whatever GPU you want and select newegg as the seller. Everything is sold out but if set the auto-notifications and are fast when they come in you can get the card you want pretty easily. In the past week I scooped up six GTX 1060s, a 1070, and a 1070Ti.

If that doesn't suit you then buy a Titan X Pascal or the new Titan Volta. If your tech doesn't need that much power then buy a Kepler based Titan for cheap or even 780Tis for gaming. All of the 9 and 10 series cards are busy mining it seems.

[jrobie79]

How rich are you now?

[nando]

you can walk into your grocery store and buy food for your family? pay your mortgage? buy a car?

interesting.

oh, wait.. you can't really do any of those things. Just like I can't plunk down a stock certificate and buy parts for my E30 at the auto parts store.

it's speculative. that's fine - I have some very risky, very rewarding stocks. But I'm aware that they are risky and I could lose all of my money in the blink of an eye.

That's all I'm saying - be aware that you are investing in something that is extremely risky. Even normal currency investing is very risky unless you really know your shit.

Things just don't increase 500% in value for no reason. Nothing appreciates forever. There could be a huge bubble in bitcoins but since the market is so opaque, you have no real idea why it has gone up so much. the same thing happens in all kinds of investments all the time. Housing? Check. Stocks? Check. Bonds? Check check. Tulips? oh yeah. huge bubble that nearly cratered whole economies.

-it's unregulated
-the market is not transparent (who is buying bitcoins? in massive quantities? if somebody buys/sells more than a certain amount of a stock I own, they have to report to the SEC and I can see who, why, and how much)
-it's appreciated like 500% in a short amount of time (why?)
-could be potentially used for money laundering purposes (I don't want to spend my life in prison, do you?)
-it's a currency, which even if it were a "normal" one, is already a very risky investment

make hay while the sun shines, just don't forget what you're really doing.

I saw this thread come up, and that I had posted in it, and I wanted to see what I wrote.. I'm not disappointed. Although I wonder what opportunity cost I gave up for not buying a small position back then. Probably nothing I'd have missed by now!

But wow. I have no memory at all of writing this. And still, my advice stands. If you don't understand what it is, what it could be used for, and who is buying/selling - it's speculation, not an investment. This is true generally, not just of Bitcoin. And I still can't do any of the things from my first sentence, although there are definitely more options for spending it now (who knew it would take so long??).

I'm willing to eat a tiny bit of crow here though. Maybe I've been overly conservative, but I've finally "speculated" with a small bitcoin position. It's not money that I'd miss if it disappeared, it's more of an inflation/USD hedge than anything. The crypto market is still completely opaque, mostly unregulated, and I doubt many people "investing" really know how it works ("cyrpto" is as much of a bullshit buzzword now as ".com" was back in 1999). And I'm still pretty sure many transactions are criminal in nature. Is it going to double tomorrow, or drop by 80% in an hour? Who knows! That's part of the fun.

I'd like to eventually own 1 full coin, and just sit on it indefinitely. Which is almost hilarious to think about; I'm pretty sure when me and my friends first started talking about BTC an eon ago, 1 coin was well under $100. But, $100 to me then was like $10,000+ to me now.. lol. Reading about some guy spending 30 coins on a pizza or something just hurts to think about!

That said, if you were sitting on just a few bitcoins when this thread was started - you've done pretty well! I genuinely hope some of these guys held on and made out big. My advice was more meant for people who just wanted to follow the herd, not realizing that they could have lost everything (like in the last big crash). It could still happen too.

Bitcoin still has problems (massive energy consumption, for one). But it's probably not going away anytime soon. Possibly better than stuffing gold bars, or even worse, cash, under your mattress for 10 years.. I'll check back in 10 more years, to see what happened to my small "speculative" position. ;)

[R3Z3N]

As I have the RTX 3090 FE rig to do it as of last week I have been mining Etherum. So far pulling 116MH/s after replacing thermal pads. Pulling ~$10/day, the pool pays out every 2nd weekend. Why not? Figure I will convert to FIAT immediately once payout to the wallet happens, though who knows what will happen when Etherum converts to Proof of Stake instead of Proof of Work. At this rate it's a win situation, can just turn off the miner if the coin stops profiting.