"Folding" for profit, not fun - Bitcoin

[directhex]

Guys & girls, we know the main reason people stop doing stuff like F@H: justifying the price of electricity. It's why I stopped.

But what if leaving your PC running full tilt all the time was a way to make cash, not burn it?

It seems that with the right sweet spot, that's an entirely realistic proposition, courtesy of a system called Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's a "virtual" currency with a real market value - much like an MMO with gold farming, but those are generally against the rules. Rather than using your system to fold proteins, you use it to "mine" for sufficiently magic random numbers, which constitute a "block" worth 50 BTC. The faster your rig, the faster the rate at which you can evaluate millions of potential hits (your hash rate, usually in MHash/s).

The statistical likelihood of any random person mining a block is quite low though - it may take months on a decent system - so the more reliable option is to join a mining pool, where members all work on pieces of a given block, then are given a share of the 50 BTC reward when a successful match is found. It's not complicated to do - just pick a pool, sign up, and set your Bitcoin client to mine in pooled mode rather than solo.

When you install the Bitcoin client, you get assigned a random anonymous wallet address for receiving payment (you can create as many addresses, all linked to one wallet, as you like). You'll likely want to install a standalone miner rather than using the basic Bitcoin client (which I don't think supports pooled mode) - and for Windowsy folks, the easiest is probably Kiv's poclbm GUI (available here, just click on Downloads).

So, what kind of numbers are we talking about? At time of writing, the exchange rate for 1 BTC is about £3, depending on the currency exchange site you use (you can always buy things in BTC directly, there's even a site selling "adult novelties" in BTC). ATI cards are about 3x faster than Nvidia as far as GPU mining goes, and about 15 times faster than a Core i7 doing CPU mining, so if you don't have a Radeon, I wouldn't bother. My 5850 rig gets me a hash rate of about 240 MHash/sec, which adds up to about 1.5 BTC per day (and that's mostly because I quit it in the evenings to play games without fighting for cycles). I've had the client running on and off for about 2 weeks now, and just initiated a $100 transfer to my account. I intend to buy the 6970 that was going to go into the wife's PC a little early, leave the PC running while we're on holiday, and with luck the card will have been paid for by the time we get back. Here's some comparative numbers on hash rates - overclocking a GPU is worth the time!

So. tl;dr: got a Radeon? Switch to doing Bitcoin mining, and make more than a pint's worth a day in real cash.

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[1stRaven]

Interesting idea. Just trying it on my two 6870's at the moment since folding on the ati cards is so rubbish.

[ehhhhhhh]

Thanks for the post.

I'll give it a try with 2x 6970s

[Terbinator]

But who are we cracking the numbers for?

[Englander]

What do they get out of this?

[nibbler]

But who are we cracking the numbers for?

It's just a system with more "money" released every day, the fact that somebody is willing to exchange real world goods for it gives it value.

[Terbinator]

But the information must be used for something?

[directhex]

But the information must be used for something?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Introduction

Ultimately, it's utterly arbitrary (much like real-world gold only has value because we say it does). But because people have assigned it value, it has value. And bitcoins are "rare", much like gold or diamond, because it takes a lot of computing power to mine a block. And since the P2P system prevents counterfeiting, there's nothing to do but use real ones.

[ehhhhhhh]

I've set it up, and it's mining atm.

One thing is not really clear for me. the 2 cards I have generate 350mhash/sec each. with this speed should I do it solo, or continue in a pool?

[Hicks12]

damn Nvidia is slower?! Well, should we make a Hexus pool!

[directhex]

I've set it up, and it's mining atm.

One thing is not really clear for me. the 2 cards I have generate 350mhash/sec each. with this speed should I do it solo, or continue in a pool?

On average, it'll take you 11 days, 4 hours, 18 minutes to mine a block solo, at that rate. There's 95% probability that you'll mine one within 33 days. See http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php for those numbers.

So the question is, will you generate 50 as part of a pool faster than that? I'd estimate you generate about 4.5 per day in a pool, so that's about... 50 per 11.16 days

The difference is if you mine as part of a pool, you get guaranteed payout (a share of every block mined, where a pooled block rarely takes more than a couple of hours) - but the pool takes a fee (e.g. Slush's Pool takes 1 BTC per 50 BTC mined, a 2% agent fee)

To an extent, this is part of the "fun" of Bitcoin - working out the best ways to mine, clocking your hardware for extra cash, then playing the currency markets at the end to maximize your return. At its simplest, keep an eye on your pool's health, and be prepared to jump to a different pool if your main one starts to get unwell (e.g. mine for deepbit rather than slush)

[directhex]

damn Nvidia is slower?! Well, should we make a Hexus pool!

Given the server resources needed to run a pool, and the admin resources in keeping it secure & safe, it's probably not worth the fuss, not without major buy-in. And it likely wouldn't have competitive rates for a while.

[directhex]

damn Nvidia is slower?! Well, should we make a Hexus pool!

Calculating bitcoins doesn't require much intelligence - it just needs thousands of the simplest cores available. ATI's design, with up to 1600 stream processors, is much much better suited than NVIDIA's fewer-but-smarter approach

[ehhhhhhh]

At its simplest, keep an eye on your pool's health, and be prepared to jump to a different pool if your main one starts to get unwell (e.g. mine for deepbit rather than slush)

sorry for the noob question, but how can I check whether the pool's health is ok?

by default slush was selected in the client

[1stRaven]

I am using deepbit at the moment. Both my 6870's are given me an rate of around 420MH/sec but boy, is it using my machine. CPU and both cards are at 100% and kicking out some heat. Not one I could leave overnight I think.

[directhex]

sorry for the noob question, but how can I check whether the pool's health is ok?

by default slush was selected in the client

Add the summary tab in poclbm-gui, and make sure the Accepted number goes up sensibly. When it's ****ed, it'll be in the tens or lower, not the thousands, after a couple of hours