<div>Coderman sent this to me, and I'm a little upset because the extra $60.00/month for 0 bitcoins is very annoying. I have since stopped trying to generate bitcoins, because it's just wasting electricity. More comment inline below debating this point.</div>
<div><br></div><div><br></div>For those who are wondering if it's worth trying to generate bitcoins, here is something to think about.<div>I've had a single Quad-Core (2.6GHz/core, 12MB L2 cache) server crunching on bitcoins for about 6 months now. About 2-3 months ago, it stopped generating bitcoins.</div>
<div>Someone is out there with a lot of GPU's, crunching away at the bitcoin network and is hording/generating all the bitcoins. I say this because the amount of chatter on the bitcoin forums in regards to GPUs vs CPUs has exploded, and new GPU clients are being released.<br>
<br></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>
From: Jeffrey Paul <<a href="mailto:sneak@datavibe.net">sneak@datavibe.net</a>><br>
Date: Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 11:22 AM<br>
Subject: Re: Bitcoin And The Electronic Frontier Foundation<br>
To: coderman <<a href="mailto:coderman@gmail.com">coderman@gmail.com</a>><br>
Cc: Sarad AV <<a href="mailto:jtrjtrjtr2001@yahoo.com">jtrjtrjtr2001@yahoo.com</a>>, Eugen Leitl <<a href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org">eugen@leitl.org</a>>,<br>
<a href="mailto:cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net">cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net</a><br>
<br>
<br>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----<br>
Hash: SHA256<br>
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<br>
On 15 Nov, 2010, at 19:19 , coderman wrote:<br>
<br>
><br>
> the cuda cards are killing bitcoin, why bother?<br>
><br>
> (i suppose it is an interesting footnote...)<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Nothing could be further from the truth. Mining/Minting operations<br>
have little/nothing to do with the viability of the network itself.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>That's correct, it has to do with the number of operations per second you CPU/GPU can do. The network is based on the number of supporters. Apple's and oranges. </div><div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">It's a novel way of dealing with inflation, but, if anything, the easy<br>
availability of cheap and fast GPUs is accelerating adoption.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You're twisting facts together here, again apple's and orange's. </div><div>Inflation aside, GPUs will generate bitcoins much, much faster than a CPU. </div>
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Opportunists will quickly drive the profit from generating down to<br>
almost exactly that of the power costs, but that's to be expected.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>No, the value of bitcoins starts to be cut in half as the more bitcoins are generated.</div><div><br></div><div>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, 'Bitstream Vera Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; ">The number of blocks times the coin value of a block. The coin value is 50 bc per block for the first 210,000 blocks, 25 bc for the next 210,000 blocks, then 12.5 bc, 6.25 bc and so on." -- </span><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/faq#What-s_the_current_total_amount_of_Bitcoins_in_existence">http://www.bitcoin.org/faq#What-s_the_current_total_amount_of_Bitcoins_in_existence</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>So when the value of BTC's starts to be cut in half, and with INFLATION now at a record high, the cost of electricity is NOT GOING DOWN.</div><div>Hence, the chance of you generating bitcoins will go down because a CPU can not compete with someone else's GPU, more power/electricity is being used to generate (or not generate) bitcoins, and after the last six month's of running bitcoin, I haven't generated a single block in over two months because someone has already cornered this market with GPU's.</div>
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">They are also the driving force behind a free market. Or do you think<br>
they are killing those, too? :)<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Of course someone quotes the "free market" when they have a large corner of it. Free market's always FAIL when someone is hording all the (bit)coins, and while it may support free market's, it certainly is not a fair market today. If 2,000,000 bitcoins are spread about a few thousand people, and 19,000,000 coins are held by 1 person, your "Free Market" goes down the drain because one person could out-buy anyone else.</div>
<div><br></div><div>One last point; by looking @ the #bitcoin channel on IRC, it shows that about 600 people are wasting their CPU cycles because someone has most likely has a cluster of GPU's working away at this. This is the wasted cost of TRYING to generate a bitcoin. If only one person can generate the block (ie, 50 Bitcoins right now), then 599 people are wasting their electricity and time. So the ~$60 a month (increase in my electric bill) * 599 = $35,940. Even if we decide to be really conservative (not realistic in this case) and cut this cost down by a tenth, it's still ~$3,594 being wasted per month while someone else get's the coins. How "green" or "eco-friendly" is that?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Now I ask the community, If your chance of generating a bitcoin block for yourself is slim-to-none, would you want to waste your time and money trying to generate bitcoins?</div><div><br></div><div>Don't get me wrong, I hate what is happening to the USD, and love the idea of crypto currency, but I see some serious flaws with bitcoin. </div>
<div>He who has the biggest cluster will win the day, and leaves the rest of us with next to nothing.</div><div><br></div><div>- Kyle</div></div></div>