Posted on 01/27/2022 7:06:07 AM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
One miner just earned over $215,000
Most ordinary people haven't been able to mine Bitcoin at a profit for years. As the difficulty of mining the cryptocurrency has increased, most rewards have gone to massive operations that rely on a bunch of incredibly powerful machines. But solo miners with relatively weak setups have found success in recent weeks using USB-based mining rigs.
The most recent example comes from a solo USB miner participating in "solo.ckpool.org," which purportedly offers "no frills, no fuss 2% fee anonymous solo bitcoin mining for everyone." The miner solved a block with a rig that had a hashrate of approximately 8.3 terahashes per second (TH/s) and earned more than $215,000 worth of BTC. The types of USB miners used are available from retailers like Amazon and Bitcoin Merch (when you can find them in stock).
[more at link, if interested]
“One miner just earned over $215,000”
200,000 miners lost $200 each.
“Depends on how you liquidate”
For your example; transfer to checking account.
One guy did. I am not sure if another found a block, but last I heard it was one guy.
With the problems in Kahzakstan (or however it is spelled) last month, small operators had a short period when their rigs took up some slack.
I would not be running out to spend $5k on an antminer (or however much they cost. I am sure my electric bill could not survive that!)
Dr Phil is not really the person to educate you on tech stuff. LOL.
The thing about bitcoin that people miss is that it is not necessarily used to buy a cup of coffee at the local store. It is used for the transfer of value; and store of value. I am not crazy about the term digital gold—but it comes close.
During periods of inflation or instability you want to own something that will retain some value and would allow you to convert to fiat to buy those local items.
It also allows you to move money in and out of countries that are restricting the flow of capital. That is the main reason you see countries like Russia and China trying to ban it.
Chinese capitalists were buying bitcoin and sending it to their kids here in the US. It would be converted to dollars and invested here. China could not afford to lose that hard currency.
Russia is trying to do a similar thing right before the recent events. They don’t want their available capital leaving the country without putting their grubby fingers on it.
I could literally walk across a border with almost a million dollars (or more) locked up in my head.
Bitcoin is very early in its growth. The general population doesn’t really understand it yet. And certainly, you see this on the business channels and shows like Dr Phil. It is a significant “thought change” and that is difficult for people to comprehend en masse. But its changing a little every day.
While you never see them, there are transaction fees on every credit card or debit card transactions. Your bank collects the fees for debit cards from the vendor. Your vendor is also paying Visa (and the others) a fee for every transaction. Its built into the price of the product/transaction.
Bitcoin or Crypto transaction fees are usually lower.
Last year I moved more than six figures of bitcoin halfway around the world for $12. You are not going to get the speed and tranx cost for that kind of move from a bank.
I’m thinking OK I can get started with something around the price of a Rasberry Pi but when you read on you see the rig starts out at an estimated 10 grand. Bummer.
Thanks for jumping in to answer
For your example; transfer to checking account.
Yep. The system works.
I am stone age stupid about bit coins.
What exactly is it that is ‘mined’ with these massive arrays of superfast computers? Why are they needed?
Who benefits at the front end and to what purpose?
3x5 card worth of info is all I ask.
From bitcoin exchange?
It works like a stock exchange. You pay to convert your stock to dollars.
The transfer fee (or network fee) is paid when you move your bitcoin from one location to another. For example I have whats called a “cold wallet.” It is not on an exchange and its only on line when I want to move bitcoin out of it.
When I transfer from my wallet to Coinbase, I pay a network transfer fee. As is true for many things in life—it you want it fast, you pay more. To use my previous example, I moved well into six figures using a high transfer fee...and it cost $12. I do that kind of thing maybe once a year. Honestly, I look at it as a banking fee. Its less than the maintenance fee I pay my bank every year.
Once it is on Coinbase, it is transacted like a stock sale. I pay the commission to exchange it (usually a % based on my trade history and size/type of sale.)
I know there are free commission stock places—but like credit cards—the fees associated with sending it to the book maker are covered in the price. You could get better prices on large stock transactions using a direct broker. But I digress.
I can then transfer up to $250k to my checking account using a standard, free ACH fee.
I bought into bitcoin in 2013. The average CAGR is about 98%. Yeah, it goes up and down like crazy. We are in a pretty significant down side market right now.
If this stuff interests you (and you have to be prepared for crazy swings and the potential loss of a lot of your money) there are many places on line where a person can learn about how it works and what people are writing about it for the future.
It is not for everyone. But its real. Its here and the spending on the infrastructure for it is growing like crazy. When the Fedelity Basic Fund invest 2% into Bitcoin...you know they might be onto something.
“Fedelity Basic Fund”
?
Say you are trading baseball cards at a table.
You decide to trade your Mickey Mantle for a Willie Mays with me.
But in order for everyone to know that the trade has been made we both hold up our cards for the rest of the table to see. By holding them up, we prove we own them—and we state that we are trading cards.
The rest of the table needs to agree that the trade is happening. And then confirm to everyone else that the property exchange has taken place.
The crypto currencies are the baseball cards.
The individual addresses are the people who own the cards.
The miners are the ones who confirm ownership, the trade, and the new ownership for everyone to see.
All of the trades are lumped into blocks. Each block contains many trades. The first miner to confirm that all of the trades are legit, gets a reward from the system—and everyone doing the trades.
Every few years the amount of awards that the system provides is cut in half. Eventually it will stop altogether. At that time, it will be complegtely based on transaction fees. That is called “halvening” which means the reward is cut in half.
There are a lot more intricacies with the process. But the important thing to remember is that the total number of coins ever to be mined is 21 million. And 19 million have already been produced. So, as time goes by the increased transactions AND the stable supply will cause smaller and smaller fractions of bitcoins to be used—and the overall price will go up.
Bitcoins are divisible to 8 decimals (As in 8 bytes in a Bit). So the basic unit of a bitcoin right now is less than a penny. So, they are still “affordable” and will be for a long time to come.
Fidelity Balanced Fund
Sounds as if you saying that all that computing power is for the sole purpose of transaction processing.
...so who determined the finite quantity of notional currency?
What stops NSA computers gaming all this?
The anonymous developers set the limit. It would require a significant changin coding to increase it. And doing so would destroy the whole thing.
Would the NSA impact it? It’s an international network, so I am sure they could play around with it, but if it tries to make fake transaction, the rest of the network would reject them.
There are a million “what ifs” out there. I wish people spent as much time punching holes into the current system.
And the power use is to confirm the transactions. I made it sound simple, but it’s much more complicated. I was trying to make the concept easier.
I’ve never gotten a coherent answer to that question.
Near as I can tell it’s electronic three-card-monte, or digging a digital hole and filling it back in, and it’s somehow given some kind of intrinsic value.
No thanks.
Same here....
It’s ironic - one of crypto’s draws is for people who want to get away from government issued (fiat) currency yet it is valued in dollars. The promoters of crypto- should value it in say something not issued by givernment ... like sheep? This reminds me of the dot-commers in the late 1990s (just before the Y2K hoax) who had high business valuations without ever producing a product/service. Then one day - poof!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.