I'm a Cryptojew AMA - watch me trade (sometimes poorly)

What's the deal with mining rigs? If they can generate profit with the only resource needed being electricity, why would it be economically sound to manufacture them and sell them instead of just using them? It always struck me as a scam, like selling someone a digital money tree.
 
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Star Wormwood said:
What's the deal with mining rigs? If they can generate profit with the only resource needed being electricity, why would it be economically sound to manufacture them and sell them instead of just using them? It always struck me as a scam, like selling someone a digital money tree.
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Modern altcoin mining rigs are video cards. They were never designed for mining. The demand for video cards for mining has raised the price of video cards. The biggest mining operations for bitcoin using proper purpose made SHA256 ASICs in China are government subsidized/corrupt electricity that isn't paid for at "fair market rate". Others try setup in special environments where they can cut on cooling costs using eco-friendly building designs. If there is a new efficiency in the mining market, it will be exploited until market equilibrium is reached.

SHA256 ASIC manufacturers like Bitmain are rumored to use their most efficient designs internally, only selling their old designs to the public.

It's really just basic supply-demand. Gamers are in a fortunate position of already owning mining hardware.

Edit: Recently AMD required their new line of video cards to be sold as motherboard bundles in order try to prevent all their cards from immediately selling out to miners. AMD hasn't been raising their prices, but retailers have because they know that the increased demand warrants increased prices. AMD hates this because it makes them look bad to gamers.

Also some more stuff about the shady shit that happens in ASIC land: https://medium.com/@WhalePanda/asicboost-the-reason-why-bitmain-blocked-segwit-901fd346ee9f
 
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Let's say I have access to free power in several sites around my area. Could I go buy some mini gaming pcs or something to start mining so I can stay covert. Ie the Intel nuc or the gigabyte brix models. Is it worth my time or is there a better option to take advantage of the free power without hooking something up super obvious
 
Whatdidyousay? said:
Let's say I have access to free power in several sites around my area. Could I go buy some mini gaming pcs or something to start mining so I can stay covert. Ie the Intel nuc or the gigabyte brix models. Is it worth my time or is there a better option to take advantage of the free power without hooking something up super obvious
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Not really, those two products you mentioned aren't viable for mining. You want to be able to fit at least one PCI-E video card in the machine, preferably more. This requires and appropriate power supply and cooling. In the end you're not going to be much better than an mATX spec case.

If you wanna get fancy you might be able to look into eGPU setups, or getting very long PCI-E bridge connectors to "flatten" out your mining rig into something that doesn't look like a computer case.
 
Did you lose anything in the Silk Road shutdown/seizure by the feds?
 
BillionBisonBucks said:
https://chia.network

Any thoughts on this? Seems pretty radically different to every other crypto I've seen.
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It's cool Bram Cohen is still kicking around (he did an interview about a year ago on Whalepool about this). Proof of Space isn't new (eg. MaidSafe, Storj, Filecoin, Burstcoin) and I'm very pessimistic on for a variety of economic and technical reasons. Proof of Space is different than "blockchain storage" which is an even worse idea than "proof of space" because I can never see it becoming economically viable for anything other than actual fucking child porn. The most successful coins that utilize decentralized storage (eg. LBRY) do so by using IPFS which is completely unrelated to cryptocurrency or blockchains and can be used right now for free.

I'm in a perfect position to rent my space in order to get compensated, but I do not because it's simply not worth it economically. I'm also in a position to outsource my data storage to a blockchain but I do not because of convenience, cost, speed and reliability.

Reminder that blockchain technology is inherently inefficient and cumbersome technology that makes everything it touches worse in exchange for immutability and decentralization. Try using a smart-contract based app like EtherDelta to experience the "joys" of decentralized computing.

PS. in general I ignore coins that aren't available to the public, and any ICO immediately de-legitimizes the technology.
 
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CrunkLord420 said:
Reminder that blockchain technology is inherently inefficient and cumbersome technology that makes everything it touches worse in exchange for immutability and decentralization.
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Blockchain is entropy on steroids. It brings the heat death of the universe closer.
 
How secure are these coin exchanges? If I have $10000 in coinbase or gemini how worried should I be that they'll just steal it?
 
raymond said:
How secure are these coin exchanges? If I have $10000 in coinbase or gemini how worried should I be that they'll just steal it?
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Coinbase is a bank-facing institution and licensed. It's probably the most trustworthy exchange just because it's under a great deal of scrutiny.

Still, anything can be hacked and anything crypto-related is a prime target. Never leave crypto on an exchange for longer than it takes to cash it out or move it to a private wallet you control, unless you're actively trading it.

My main current gripe with Coinbase is they've really started pushing it lately with their monopoly status and jacking up their transaction fees.
 
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Opinions on Lightning Network? Can it save BTC's potential as a medium of exchange? Are other altcoins that advertise their purpose as having more transaction throughput at risk from it?

Is Bitcoin Core's slowness of feature adoption a problem, or a selling point?
 
How easy is it to cash in on the Bitcoin? Say I bought $100 worth and it magically turned into $10 000. Who would be willing to give me normal money in return for it? Are there anyone who are obligated to do so and where would they get their money from?
 
SugarSnot said:
How easy is it to cash in on the Bitcoin? Say I bought $100 worth and it magically turned into $10 000. Who would be willing to give me normal money in return for it? Are there anyone who are obligated to do so and where would they get their money from?
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It's pretty easy except if you actually turn it into $10k you have to KYC/AML yourself, but which is a matter of identity verification. The USD comes from people buying the BTC from you, on an exchange. No one is obligated to buy from you, your BTC is only worth whatever people are willing to buy it at.

Including a picture of what the Bitfinex BTC/USD order book depth chart looks like to give context. In this picture you can see that you could sell up to 1000 BTC into the order book before the price dropped to $14000 USD. The thicker these books are the more liquidity is in the market, BTC is generally a very liquid market.
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LastOfTheMohicans said:
Opinions on Lightning Network? Can it save BTC's potential as a medium of exchange? Are other altcoins that advertise their purpose as having more transaction throughput at risk from it?

Is Bitcoin Core's slowness of feature adoption a problem, or a selling point?
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I'm suspicious of sidechains and LN, I'll believe it when I see it running well. DOGE is the best cryptocurrency because fast transactions times and low fees (right?).
 
What do you think of bitcoin cash considering the size of the blocks in bitcoin don't seem to be usable as a transactional coin?
 
chekovia said:
What do you think of bitcoin cash considering the size of the blocks in bitcoin don't seem to be usable as a transactional coin?
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BTC only has value for being the heaviest (longest, most hashrate). Forking it does nothing, Bcash is just an altcoin, like any other altcoin. Bcash isn't a very good altcoin.
 
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