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BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:18 pm
by ShakeSpear
Hey guys, I got three raspberry pi's and a ethernet switch.

The Pi's are just sitting there ever since I found out that I can't do much with the cluster computer unless I had a decent upload speed (2Mbps atm), regarldess, I was trying to find a tutorial that would turn the pi's into a mining thing.

They are just sitting there so even if they make 0.1 BTC a day, I could care less because at least they would be getting used.

Why I bought them was solely for learning about Cluster Computing and I learned that its useless for a normal every day user.

Thanks in advance!

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:22 pm
by fruitoftheloom
ShakeSpear wrote:Hey guys, I got three raspberry pi's and a ethernet switch.

The Pi's are just sitting there ever since I found out that I can't do much with the cluster computer unless I had a decent upload speed (2Mbps atm), regarldess, I was trying to find a tutorial that would turn the pi's into a mining thing.

They are just sitting there so even if they make 0.1 BTC a day, I could care less because at least they would be getting used.

Why I bought them was solely for learning about Cluster Computing and I learned that its useless for a normal every day user.

Thanks in advance!
http://www.raspberrypi.org/bitcoin-farm ... rial-scale

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 8:55 pm
by ShakeSpear
I saw it already. That ASIC thing is what I don't get. Also, if I was looking for a tut. Do I have to buy something else other than the Pi in order to get this mining thing to work?

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 9:50 pm
by fruitoftheloom
ShakeSpear wrote:I saw it already. That ASIC thing is what I don't get. Also, if I was looking for a tut. Do I have to buy something else other than the Pi in order to get this mining thing to work?
http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials ... -cms-20353

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:49 am
by ShakeSpear
So if I follow that tutorial I will have a Pi running Bitcoin mining thing. Touché.

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 7:23 am
by ghans
You see , mining with the Pi alone is utterly hopeless. If you want to CPU mine Bitcoin , you're years late to the party. You need to buy
additional USB miners and even then you're propably taking a loss.

ghans

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 2:08 pm
by markatlnk
Yup, totally not worth it from financial point of view. But I have two PIs running a half dozen antimatter U2s and also a gridseed miner. Between all of them, I think I have $35 after mining for 6 months. Not one to let cpu cycles go wasted, both are cpu mining Mooncoins. They aren't worth anything, but it was just me attempting to understand how things work. I would guess in the 6 months, the PIs generated less than $0.05.

I also rant Seti at home on one of the PIs, but it takes 2 weeks to finish one packet, where my desktop can do it in 3 hours.

Just do it for a better understanding of how both crypto coins work and how to do things on the pi.

Mark

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:15 pm
by ShakeSpear
Yeah thats my main goal but i dont even know if that is even worth it like what is the absolute point.

I am trying to find a long-term use for the Pi's i thought this would help me get a few cents in my pocket but i didnt mean it literally haha.

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 4:39 am
by brendanofcincy
By the way, can bitcoin miners be reused? There are lots of USED thumb-drive-sized ASIC bitcoin miners on eBay for $20.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/191414829164?lpid=82

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 7:55 am
by RaTTuS
no they are ASIC i.e. do only the thing they are designed for if you can find a use for sha256xsha256 then you can use them

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:03 am
by ghans
Nobody wants them because the difficulty has increased so much - they are too slow
now and take too much electricity compared to new (expensive) miners.

ghans

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 3:04 pm
by brendanofcincy
So, building a Raspberry Pi bitcoin miner, like in the link below, with some used ASIC bitcoin miners from eBay wouldn't really do anything?
https://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-rasp ... coin-miner

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 3:08 pm
by brendanofcincy
RaTTuS wrote:no they are ASIC i.e. do only the thing they are designed for if you can find a use for sha256xsha256 then you can use them
What I meant was, do the bitcoin miners become "deactivated" or otherwise useless after being used? Is there a difference between buying these new or used? I don't intend to use them for any purpose other than bitcoin miners.

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 3:12 pm
by RaTTuS
they are not deactivated [they may be broken]
it's just that current difficulty of the bitcoin network is soooooo much higher than it was that those are effective worthless ,
they will cost you more in power [though very little] than you can make from them.

Re: BitCoin Miner?

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 7:48 pm
by markatlnk
I have been running 4 of the antimatter u2 ASICs clocked to 2GHps from the end of March to now. Just looked it up, they have generated a massive $23 so far. But they do have blinking lights and the watts are low enough that it doesn't cause any issues. The point is I am doing it as a curiosity not to make money. With the latest difficulty, I am making a huge 0.0001 BTC per day or $0.037 per day. Not quite enough to quit my day job. There is also a gridseed miner on the same Pi that does scrypt coins at 400K hashes per second and the cpu is also mining moon coins at a blazing 380 hashes per second.

I do this to understand how things work, not to actually make money.

This is an early vintage B with only 256M of ram running at 1Ghz.

Have fun,

Mark