Bitcoin server farming , information , and expectations for 2015

OK , so I'm late getting into the game due to life and priorities.like most here, I have heard of bitcoin , but honestly I haven't put to much time to bring my self up to speed on it. Hence I never played with it or purchased coins.

So I'm looking for information or advice from those willing to give it as I slowly get started with it.

My thought was , since I know very little about it that I would not invest (ie: Purchase any coins) to get started. Secondly what better way to learn then to play with it which lead me back to my unwillingness to invest.

So What I would like to do is use my raspberry pi2 that I have laying around collecting dust and setup a raspberry pi bitcoin miner and join a mining pool .

I understand from what I read the mining coins is no longer worth the cost of investment. In my case I'm not looking to make this into a source of income but rather as a learning event . Although if it makes money or I see it has some potential to make money I wouldn't be opposed to making a server farm down the road when I become more knowledgeable on it.

The setup I'm thinking to make is with my raspberry pi utilizing my existing nas server, which I already keep running 24/7 as my media server. The rasp uses very little electricity and I'm even playing with the option of having it run of solar power. I'm also planning to use a mining pool as it appears virtually impossible to generate any bits by yourself unless you invest heavily on hardware.

SO my questions are:

1. Is bit mining worth doing anymore and at what levels?
2. What could I expect to earn or lose in using a single raspberrypi 2 as a miner?
3. My understanding the more miners the harder it becomes to mine and less payout, is that correct?
4. bitcoin has a limited amount of coins available, if I recall it was something along 21 Million? If so I assume the value of bitcoin goes up when its reached . but can other coins be used to overcome that limit? Hence reseting the value of the bitcoins? In other words do you think its worth the risk to buy coins today and sit on it till the max is exceeded?

5. What questions aren't I asking that I should be asking, lol?
6. Is their any monetary worth in buying bitcoin mining hardware like this?

BTW I did see that some here on ATS have done mining before from some of the threads here, but they were several years old and I started a new thread to see of any new updates for 2015.

Don't bother trying to mine anymore.
Unless you fork out for something in the 100's GH range then you're pissing in the wind.
Buying and selling coins is your best bet with the high fluctuations in price. (Although they seem to have levelled off for a while now).

The blockchain is now run by a few major server companies now so in essence they could fork the chain and people would be mining for nothing.

originally posted by: interupt42
SO my questions are:

1. Is bit mining worth doing anymore and at what levels?

Ballers and hx0rs only, best I can tell.

2. What could I expect to earn or lose in using a single raspberrypi 2 as a miner?

Pennies over a long period of time at best. CPU mining has been obsolete for years. Then we went to GPU, then dedicated ASIC processors. I was mining CPU only reiki coins with 16 hexacore xeons in a datacenter for funzies a couple months ago. It was so not worth it, that I decided to dedicate them to looking for little green men before yoinking them and cashing out.

3. My understanding the more miners the harder it becomes to mine and less payout, is that correct?

Not miners, but processing power within the newest cycle. After cycle completion difficulty is increased to compensate for rate of growth of the network. So for the same equipment, yes you will get less with each increase in difficulty.

4. bitcoin has a limited amount of coins available, if I recall it was something along 21 Million? If so I assume the value of bitcoin goes up when its reached . but can other coins be used to overcome that limit? Hence reseting the value of the bitcoins? In other words do you think its worth the risk to buy coins today and sit on it till the max is exceeded?

There's a lot of different coins out there. I'm not sure what you're asking. I think the time to buy bitcoins and mine them out was at least 2-3 years ago unless you've got deep pockets, and even then you're taking a risk.

5. What questions aren't I asking that I should be asking, lol?

How much do I pay for electricity? That makes all the difference.

6. Is their any monetary worth in buying bitcoin mining hardware like this?

What I recall when the ASIC miners were first rolling out was the way to bank was to have the latest information, and cash on hand to get preorders. It was such a leap that if you could be the first of a few thousand players within the next few cycles of increased difficulty you could more than pay for the equipment, then sell it off and invest that in another market else sit on the coins for a bit. I don't think it's worth it until a new generation of processing unit comes out.

As above.
If you can get hold of quantum computer you might have an advantage..

a reply to: pl3bscheese

Thanks you for the very informative feedback.

Kind of what I expected from the little I have researched I'm way to late into the game. Might still just try it on the raspberrypi for the fun of it and learning aspects.

I'm not sure what you're asking.

I'm not sure I know what I was asking, lol
I read that their is a CAP (21 Million) on the amount of bitcoins that can be generated . However, it looks like the cap won't be hit until 2140 , so my question becomes a moot point.

a reply to: interupt42

I had fun last year and the first half of this year setting up servers and services for people. After you get mining down there's really nothing left, might want to mess around with some nux server stacks, control panels (or not, I do everything raw), and learning to setup various services... that's if you have a lot of time to spare. It can be mighty frustrating just starting off.

originally posted by: UKWO1Phot
As above.
If you can get hold of quantum computer you might have an advantage..

Lol , newegg appears to be all out of them . I guess i will have to wait.

originally posted by: interupt42
OK , so I'm late getting into the game due to life and priorities.like most here, I have heard of bitcoin , but honestly I haven't put to much time to bring my self up to speed on it. Hence I never played with it or purchased coins.

So I'm looking for information or advice from those willing to give it as I slowly get started with it.

My thought was , since I know very little about it that I would not invest (ie: Purchase any coins) to get started. Secondly what better way to learn then to play with it which lead me back to my unwillingness to invest.

So What I would like to do is use my raspberry pi2 that I have laying around collecting dust and setup a raspberry pi bitcoin miner and join a mining pool .

I understand from what I read the mining coins is no longer worth the cost of investment. In my case I'm not looking to make this into a source of income but rather as a learning event . Although if it makes money or I see it has some potential to make money I wouldn't be opposed to making a server farm down the road when I become more knowledgeable on it.

The setup I'm thinking to make is with my raspberry pi utilizing my existing nas server, which I already keep running 24/7 as my media server. The rasp uses very little electricity and I'm even playing with the option of having it run of solar power. I'm also planning to use a mining pool as it appears virtually impossible to generate any bits by yourself unless you invest heavily on hardware.

SO my questions are:

1. Is bit mining worth doing anymore and at what levels?
2. What could I expect to earn or lose in using a single raspberrypi 2 as a miner?
3. My understanding the more miners the harder it becomes to mine and less payout, is that correct?
4. bitcoin has a limited amount of coins available, if I recall it was something along 21 Million? If so I assume the value of bitcoin goes up when its reached . but can other coins be used to overcome that limit? Hence reseting the value of the bitcoins? In other words do you think its worth the risk to buy coins today and sit on it till the max is exceeded?

5. What questions aren't I asking that I should be asking, lol?
6. Is their any monetary worth in buying bitcoin mining hardware like this?

BTW I did see that some here on ATS have done mining before from some of the threads here, but they were several years old and I started a new thread to see of any new updates for 2015.

Bitcoin mining is compute intensive. A Raspberry Pi just wouldn't have the grunt these days to produce any appreciable output.

Still nothing stopping you from trying.

Perhaps you could use the Raspberry Pi for something useful to you and that fits its specs.

a reply to: chr0naut

Perhaps you could use the Raspberry Pi for something useful to you and that fits its specs.

I already have it configured running as a media server client on a TV that I seldom use so its been sitting there. So I thought I would reuse it as a learning tool for bitcoin data mining.

While I'm not expert, I've also built a help site for cryptocurrency from the ground up and if you want, it's called Altcurrencyhelp.com I've currently revamping the whole site so mind the mess.


1. Is bit mining worth doing anymore and at what levels?

A- It's worth doing for educational purposes for yourself, also it's worth it if you want to learn how the altcoin exchanges work. If you want btc as investments, buy it and hold.

2. What could I expect to earn or lose in using a single raspberrypi 2 as a miner?

A- You'd have to factor in your electrical costs compared to the amount you'd mine, sad part is now, you'll need 100gigs or more of SHA hashing power to mine anything worth keeping your miners on for.

3. My understanding the more miners the harder it becomes to mine and less payout, is that correct?

A- Actually, think of it like a pizza you just got, the more people mining, the more fractional your pizza slice will be, also amount of hashing power ( so someone with 90% of hashing power can get a bigger slice than everyone else if they aren't hashing at a comparative speed. ) This is why mining in pools is better than solo mining.

4. bitcoin has a limited amount of coins available, if I recall it was something along 21 Million? If so I assume the value of bitcoin goes up when its reached . but can other coins be used to overcome that limit? Hence reseting the value of the bitcoins? In other words do you think its worth the risk to buy coins today and sit on it till the max is exceeded?

A- 21 million coins is the max that will ever be, so yes as long as the bitcoin network stays relevant, closer to the limit we get the more valuable btc will be. That limit will and can never be passed, it's part of the luster of cryptocurrency. I think it can't hurt, specially now, since btc is around 220 USD a coin, I've minded btc when 1 was worth 1500.00. I've also seen many altcoins crumble in price once their limit was reached. So it's very relative to the brand as well as the functionality.


5. What questions aren't I asking that I should be asking, lol?

A- A F.A.Q. I've made as well as aTutorial Links Page
What is the better hardware to use?
How to use the blockchain?
Where can I find a question generator?
Aas always, if you find anything you'd want added like a question you didn't see or typos please let me know, this is for everyone, I don't make money off it.

6. Is their any monetary worth in buying bitcoin mining hardware like this?

A- The little USB miners won't getcha much in the way of BTC, but will prove to be educational and frustrating, I have a few 336mhz sticks and a few 1.5ghz sticks I just don't use anymore due to their speed and power consumption, plus I've burnt my fingers a few times from em.

The bigger miners however like the 1.3 mhz scrypt miners can be resold for about 10 bucks cheaper than they are bought for. Only problem is the power bricks that they need, many don't last longer than 3 - 6 months adding to overhead and proving to not be worth the hassle at this time.

When btc was 1500 I did however buy those sticks and mine enough to buy biger units and so forth so everything was Returned of Investment ( ROI ), leading me to be happy but also lucky as well.


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if you just want to learn and mine a bit, I say go for a 40 dollar unit like a rockminer R-box or something like it, it'll teach you a bit about the whole process as well it can be fun.

Rather late in the game for mining. Best off playing the market, or other(buy and sell in BTC or do tasks for it). Also, don't even try to use the phone for mining as you need something more up to date, storage sure-but implore cold storage-, and/or for trading, etc.

If you want to try mining, buy a trusted miner. Suggest studying up on them, especially heed caution on a certain one heavily talked about that ripped people off. The one your asking about seems alright and likely it will resell if no longer needed. Maybe even try out Litecoin which many pcs/systems can handle the mining, then sell if for BTC.

a reply to: Tranceopticalinclined

Great thanks for the info

Interesting enough it looks like IBM is getting into the bitcoiin


www.reddit.com...

Tech giant developing its own version of blockchain technology, plans to release open source software within next few months

What will this do to the current value of bitcoin and will it extend the 21 Million dollar limit?

They are modifying the original bitcoin code to operate without currency, ensure that contract details remain private and make it easier for companies to embed business rules into their smart contracts—for example, automatically paying for a package upon delivery.

IBM says it is aware of the issue and is working on solutions. For example, the company could have its ledger managed by a consortium of businesses.

originally posted by: UKWO1Phot
As above.
If you can get hold of quantum computer you might have an advantage..

The biggest problem at this stage is they allow only so many bit coins and so as the number gets closer to the max it gets harder and harder to mine. It will reach a point that you would need the new 100 billion dollar NSA complex in Nevada to get one....

Good luck...