Bitcoin Mining

drhycodan · 02-06-2015, 11:49 PM #1

Somebody recommended I start bitcoin mining because they saw the specs on my computer, but never gave me any info how. How does it work and is my computer really enough?

**Anti-Ultimate** · 02-07-2015, 12:21 AM #2

1. You can't mine Bitcoins on your computer.

2. Even if you could, you'd get so little, it wouldn't be worth the energy bill.

3. Don't do it unless you have several ASICs.

TL;DR; it's not worth it.

***Shonumi*** · 02-07-2015, 12:40 AM #3

You're a few years late for bitcoin mining to be worth your time and electricity. It's a currency that favors early adopters.

teh_speleegn_polease · 02-07-2015, 04:07 AM #4

(02-07-2015, 12:40 AM)Shonumi Wrote: You're a few years late for bitcoin mining to be worth your time and electricity. It's a currency that favors early adopters.

How so? As far as I understand, mining is increasingly not worth it as time goes on, but this is the case for both early adopters and late ones. At any point in time, new miners are at no disadvantage to veteran ones (assuming an identical rig).

Unless by "favouring early adopters" you mean that people who started mining at the beginning made a lot of money and now have the freedom to spend it, while new miners don't have bitcoins yet and have no efficient way to get any. In that case yeah.

**Anti-Ultimate** · 02-07-2015, 04:10 AM #5

(02-07-2015, 04:07 AM)teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:
(02-07-2015, 12:40 AM)Shonumi Wrote: You're a few years late for bitcoin mining to be worth your time and electricity. It's a currency that favors early adopters.

How so? As far as I understand, mining is increasingly not worth it as time goes on, but this is the case for both early adopters and late ones. At any point in time, new miners are at no disadvantage to veteran ones (assuming an identical rig).

Unless by "favouring early adopters" you mean that people who started mining at the beginning made a lot of money and now have the freedom to spend it, while new miners don't have bitcoins yet and have no efficient way to get any. In that case yeah.

You can't mine Bitcoins with your PC. What you mean is Litecoin.

**KHRZ** · 02-07-2015, 06:33 AM #6

The issue is that specialized mining hardware uses less electricity per mined bitcoin. For other hardware, the price of the electricity used will be higher than the value of bitcoin mined.

DatKid20 · 02-07-2015, 06:47 AM #7

(02-07-2015, 04:10 AM)Anti-Ultimate Wrote:
(02-07-2015, 04:07 AM)teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:
(02-07-2015, 12:40 AM)Shonumi Wrote: You're a few years late for bitcoin mining to be worth your time and electricity. It's a currency that favors early adopters.

How so? As far as I understand, mining is increasingly not worth it as time goes on, but this is the case for both early adopters and late ones. At any point in time, new miners are at no disadvantage to veteran ones (assuming an identical rig).

Unless by "favouring early adopters" you mean that people who started mining at the beginning made a lot of money and now have the freedom to spend it, while new miners don't have bitcoins yet and have no efficient way to get any. In that case yeah.
You can't mine Bitcoins with your PC. What you mean is Litecoin.

You don't mine Litecoin with your PC either.

**RachelB** · 02-07-2015, 09:02 AM #8

(02-07-2015, 04:07 AM)teh_speleegn_polease Wrote:
(02-07-2015, 12:40 AM)Shonumi Wrote: You're a few years late for bitcoin mining to be worth your time and electricity. It's a currency that favors early adopters.

How so? As far as I understand, mining is increasingly not worth it as time goes on, but this is the case for both early adopters and late ones. At any point in time, new miners are at no disadvantage to veteran ones (assuming an identical rig).

Unless by "favouring early adopters" you mean that people who started mining at the beginning made a lot of money and now have the freedom to spend it, while new miners don't have bitcoins yet and have no efficient way to get any. In that case yeah.

Because early on you could use standard pc hardware to mine coins by the thousands. Now, you need very expensive dedicated hardware to get any at all. It favors early adopters because they were actually around during a time when mining was actually profitable.

***Shonumi*** · 02-07-2015, 10:54 AM #9

Basically what RachelB said. CPU bitcoin mining used to be feasible, but generating bitcoins became increasingly more demanding to the point where highend GPUs were the standard, then dedicated hardware. Early adopters could get loads of bitcoins for little HW resources. All they had to do then was be patient with the markets.

shreduhsoreus · 02-11-2015, 12:39 AM **#10**

I don't like thinking about Bitcoins lol. In 2010 I had 5 figures sitting in the bank that I could have built a pretty good mining rig with and got in the game early, or at the very least made a small $100 investment in the currency and turned that into a fortune.

I didn't and like most of us, I'm still kicking myself in the ass for not getting involved.