So, as I mentioned recently, my interest in BitCoin has been piqued. I’m curious how it’s going to pan out in the future. It seems to me like one of two things is likely to happen. Either BitCoin will flop, lose all value, and become a nerd’s plaything. All theoretical ciphers, and secret keys that nobody else is interested in. Or, maybe, it will take a global foothold and become a major market disruptor. The idea that you can exchange something that is as secure as handing someone a dollar bill in the store, and yet requires no middleman (like paypal, visa, mastercard, etc) having to confirm the transaction. It’s just crazy, and yet, absolutely makes sense.
So I’ve decided to try mining bitcoins. Not on the scale that some people are doing it. Some people are fricken fanatic about this. I understand, the more processing power you throw at it, the better your chances of getting paid are… but I simply don’t have that kind of expendable income. So I went out and bought ONE single ASUS Radeon 7850 graphics card and threw it into my server. The computer’s already running 24/7 and has 7 SATA drives spinning in it. I can’t imagine I’m using that much more power mining bitcoins. I borrowed my buddy’s kill-a-watt for 2 weeks to be sure.
When the computer was running idle, or recording something with the DVR segment, the kill-o-watt read 130 watts with the monitor off, and 165-180 with the monitor on. This was pretty consistent every time I checked on it for a week. When I shut down the computer, and turned the monitor off, the kill-o-watt reported that my networking devices and hdhomerun use about 35watts. After adding the ATI card, my wattage didn’t move at all. The computer draws almost exactly the same wattage at idle using the discreet graphics as it did with the inboard intel graphics. Now the big test, I fired up the bitcoin mining software, and started mining. BAM! my usage jumps to 300watts (from 180) and drops back down to settle at about 295-315watts. When I turn the monitor off, it drops back down to about 260, and flickers a little up or down from there, but stays pretty much consistent for the week.
During this week I was able to mine approximately 0.07 bitcoins. Approximately 0.01BTC per day is what one of these graphics cards makes. And if you’re not mining in a pool, good luck, you’re basically just playing a game of lottery. Just hoping to crack the hash before anybody else and get the 25BTC reward. It is my understanding that this is not a profitable level, and apparently GPU mining is only going to be feasible for a little longer before the ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) miners start to roll out and do multiple times the work for fractions of the electrical costs.
So, I’m going to leave my little miner running on the server that sits idle most of the day otherwise anyway, and I’m going to watch my paltry pieces of bitcoin trickle in, but I don’t suggest you go out and build a dedicated system to do this. You will pay more in electricity than it’s worth. Plus the hardware costs involved. If you happen to have some old GPUs laying around, like if you’re playing WoW all the time, and constantly getting new graphics cards… then you might have an opportunity to repurpose them, and make a dime… but otherwise, just see about getting paid in bitcoin and using it to buy things. That’s really how it’s going to increase in value – by becoming currency that people can use as a substitute for other fiat currencies.
Also, if you’re interested in ways to get free bitcoins, there are some things to check out.
Let me know of other good ones in the comments.