<story><title>Javascript Bitcoin Miner</title><url>http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9042.0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cloudwalking</author><text>An economist&apos;s take on bitcoin: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea?srid=pxt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-id...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spoiler: bitcoin is a scam</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>That was my first though - it&apos;s a nice idea, but came at least one year too late. Just yesterday, I ran miner through the www.bitcoinplus.com website, and on my regular PC machine it generated 0.002 BTC in 24 hours.&lt;p&gt;I am afraid the bitcoin mining is practically over, and the much more interesting question is - should I really invest my real money to buy some bitcoins? (current rate is about 7 USD). I am curious to learn what other HN-ers think of all this stuff.</text></item><item><author>cookiecaper</author><text>And I should add that the prospects of finding any meaningful amount of shares, while much better than finding a block, are still quite low. My GPU can find a couple of shares per minute in a good minute, but it operates at 55.5Mhash, over 10x faster than my CPU (i7-2600K). Consider that most are going to have really slow CPUs and share the processor power with other heavy applications (Flash games), and you might get one share from the best computers in an average 10-20 minute visit if you&apos;re lucky. Shares are worth increasingly little and it depends on how you calculate what each share is worth (since btc generation is really totally based on blocks and each pool decides the value / share on its own, etc.), but I really doubt this is a viable replacement for advertisements or any other money-making endeavor for anyone, even the largest websites where people spend lots of time (Facebook, gmail).</text></item><item><author>cookiecaper</author><text>It is bad to use a bunch of the user&apos;s CPU without any notice. They will probably notice that your site makes their computer slow and never come back again. Also, once they find out you&apos;ve been using their CPU power/electricity/battery life surreptitiously for private, unshared gain, you will probably have some angry customers.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, does this automatically hook in to slush&apos;s pool or something? Bitcoin mining is practically useless on CPU; even the fastest CPUs out get way, way less than 10mhash. The average length of time to find a block at 9999khash and current difficulty is 1200+ days, so even that estimate is over-optimistic, so this isn&apos;t worth anything if your users don&apos;t sit on your site for 5 years+, unless it&apos;s hooked into a pool or some other contraption to pay on shares instead of blocks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>basugasubaku</author><text>He is a software developer at &quot;SeatGeek&quot;, not an economist.  He wrote &quot;Internet Economist&quot; as a joke.</text></comment>
<story><title>Javascript Bitcoin Miner</title><url>http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9042.0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cloudwalking</author><text>An economist&apos;s take on bitcoin: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea?srid=pxt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-id...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spoiler: bitcoin is a scam</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>That was my first though - it&apos;s a nice idea, but came at least one year too late. Just yesterday, I ran miner through the www.bitcoinplus.com website, and on my regular PC machine it generated 0.002 BTC in 24 hours.&lt;p&gt;I am afraid the bitcoin mining is practically over, and the much more interesting question is - should I really invest my real money to buy some bitcoins? (current rate is about 7 USD). I am curious to learn what other HN-ers think of all this stuff.</text></item><item><author>cookiecaper</author><text>And I should add that the prospects of finding any meaningful amount of shares, while much better than finding a block, are still quite low. My GPU can find a couple of shares per minute in a good minute, but it operates at 55.5Mhash, over 10x faster than my CPU (i7-2600K). Consider that most are going to have really slow CPUs and share the processor power with other heavy applications (Flash games), and you might get one share from the best computers in an average 10-20 minute visit if you&apos;re lucky. Shares are worth increasingly little and it depends on how you calculate what each share is worth (since btc generation is really totally based on blocks and each pool decides the value / share on its own, etc.), but I really doubt this is a viable replacement for advertisements or any other money-making endeavor for anyone, even the largest websites where people spend lots of time (Facebook, gmail).</text></item><item><author>cookiecaper</author><text>It is bad to use a bunch of the user&apos;s CPU without any notice. They will probably notice that your site makes their computer slow and never come back again. Also, once they find out you&apos;ve been using their CPU power/electricity/battery life surreptitiously for private, unshared gain, you will probably have some angry customers.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, does this automatically hook in to slush&apos;s pool or something? Bitcoin mining is practically useless on CPU; even the fastest CPUs out get way, way less than 10mhash. The average length of time to find a block at 9999khash and current difficulty is 1200+ days, so even that estimate is over-optimistic, so this isn&apos;t worth anything if your users don&apos;t sit on your site for 5 years+, unless it&apos;s hooked into a pool or some other contraption to pay on shares instead of blocks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>greyman</author><text>Even if he is right and bitcoin shouldn&apos;t be considered a &quot;currency&quot;, but rather an asset or a scam to enrich the early adopters, I think there is still a question I wrote above, namely, if it is worth to buy bitcoins for money now.</text></comment>