Re:Venezuela arrests 4 bitcoin miners as trading highs continue
by rtkwe on Thursday January 26, 2017 @10:19AM
(#13492008)
Isn't the main reason that they become 'obsolete' is because their cost to run (pretty much just electricity and per unit cost of the miners themselves) exceeds the expected pay out (their relative hash rate). So by running where electricity is much cheaper older machines that have been discarded can still make sense to run.
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Re:Venezuela arrests 4 bitcoin miners as trading highs continue
by rudolf0 on Thursday January 26, 2017 @10:27AM
(#13492076)
Really depends. CPU mining is like trying to mine a diamond with a toothpick and will only get worse. If your machine isn't above at least some threshold (unless you have a massive farm of them), you're really just wasting CPU cycles and heat.
Re:Venezuela arrests 4 bitcoin miners as trading highs continue
by rtkwe on Thursday January 26, 2017 @11:26AM
(#13492681)
Yeah it doesn't magically make _any_ mining technique profitable again but it does shift the math back towards slower/less efficient ASICs being viable to use instead of just being a waste of money. From the article it sounds like they're using 300 of the Antminer so they're not trying to run CPU or GPU mining not sure where it falls on the current profitability range, I'm not that deep into BTC.