Who wants to Learn about Cryptocurrencies First Hand?

[Thermal]

This thread is an opportunity to learn how crypto works first hand. For those that wish to participate you will learn how to: 1. Download and Install a wallet. 2. How to mine new coins with your wallet. 3. How to stake coins with your new wallet. 4. Receive a deposit of free coins to get you started.
How can I help you? Is there a certain wallet you wish to download other than the ROI? Just let me know what you're interested in and I'll be glad to help.

How about starting with the most elementary basics of getting into crypto? How do you vett a likely winner, how do you know if you can trust the flagged wallet, what kind of equipment should you have at your disposal before even thinking about downloading anything? What kind of time and effort will be needed once the wallet is installed? What kind of power usage and heat generation can you expect? You know, the most ELI5 stuff you would want to know before downloading anything.

Eta: and thanks. Don't mean to get all cynical but I've been interested for a long time but without trusted Intel on the matter

 

[p0lka]

Something like that. For those looking to make money from it, most of the actual processing is likely be performed in the Graphics Processer not the CPU.

This may seem a little strange, computer graphics are actually just one example of a huge class of problems that can be solved using 3x3 matrix math. The idea is that you take a huge algebraic problem express it as a spare matrix which can be solved using a bunch of 3x3 matrix calculations. The advantage is that the individual matrix calculations are independent so that can all be done in parallel even to the point of doing them on completely different machines. The Most of worlds supercomputers work this way.




The computer is solving mathematical problems for the sake of proving it has solved them. This "proof of work" serves as the justification for awarding new bitcoin. This is *supposed* to be a solution to the "problem" of governments being able to produce new money at will. I guess the idea is that money shouldn't be created from nothing, there should be some work involved, even if it's just pointless busy work that doesn't actually produce or achieve anything.

In the real world a central bank that can expand or contract the money supply in response to economic conditions is a huge benefit, so the underlying concept is flawed. Not only is there no problem that needed fixing, the "solution" would break key aspects of the economy and makes bitcoin altogether unsuitable for use as a currency.

I thought the whole crypto coin purpose was about cutting out the middle-man; banks and such, to avoid the fees?

The ability to buy stuff that doesn't show up in the family joint bank account was an incidental feature apparently.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

You mean we can't learn that firsthand?

Sure you can, if you wish to download a wallet and mine with, be my guest.

If you want to learn how to mine a different particular cpu based coin, name it and we'll go from there.

 

[Belz...]

Sure you can, if you wish to download a wallet and mine with, be my guest.

And why the hell would I want that? So far you've given no reason why I should bother with it.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

How about starting with the most elementary basics of getting into crypto? How do you vett a likely winner, how do you know if you can trust the flagged wallet, what kind of equipment should you have at your disposal before even thinking about downloading anything? What kind of time and effort will be needed once the wallet is installed? What kind of power usage and heat generation can you expect? You know, the most ELI5 stuff you would want to know before downloading anything.

Eta: and thanks. Don't mean to get all cynical but I've been interested for a long time but without trusted Intel on the matter

In my case, I joined a forum several years ago called Bitcointalk to learn about Cryptocurrency and mining. There was and is a section there with new Alt coin announcements. I used to mine every coin at launch. That's when difficulty in mining is extremely low and block rewards are extremely high. It's never too late to begin.

As far as picking a winner, the only thing I can suggest is to study the fundamentals of each coin. How is this coin better than others? What are the block times are they 60 seconds or 10 minutes? What is the total supply to be mined? Is the coin minable? Proof of Work or is it Proof of Stake? Was there a premine by the founders of the coin? If so, how many coins did they get?

It's a long list of considerations to compare and contrast. And in the end, the coin you thought was a winner may end up as nothing while another coin that started as a joke (Dogecoin) races to $1.00 (I mined that at startup too) My philosophy was to mine everything new at startup in case there is a winner in the bunch. (It worked.)

How can you trust a flagged wallet? All wallets will be flagged. You can run a virus scan on the wallet to check for normal things and hidden things. Run thru the results and determine a case by case basis for each result. One of the most common results flagged will be the miner portion, if the wallet stakes or mines coins it will show up as malware usually "minerd". If this was an email you received, I wouldn't open it, but since it's a Crypto wallet with a mining function built in, of course it's gonna be there, it's supposed to be. You have to keep in mind the goal of the Cryptocurrency. The founders of a particular coin stand to make a lot of money if the coin works out and catches on. They couldn't hope to earn much by attempting to hack people to view their browser history.

I use old equipment on a day to day basis. Not because I'm afraid something may happen because I have a wallet installed, it's simply because I'm frugal. I would suggest if you are concerned something may happen you should use something you're not too concerned with. And that would apply for any program or app you may install not limited to Crypto.

As far as power usage from just running a wallet, it's extremely low. No more than any other app and likely much less than an internet browser. However if you enable mining your cpu will run 100%, because mining is a cpu intense operation. If you're just using the wallet to send or receive coins, power usage is minimal. There's no need to enable mining if you don't want to mine new coins.


Added info: I just checked and the entire network for ROI coin is running at 584 H/s (hashes per second) to better give you an idea of how little power it takes to run the entire network, 106 H/s of that amount is being done by my antique i-7 desktop......Now that's efficient.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

And why the hell would I want that? So far you've given no reason why I should bother with it.

I'm here to help those who have a passing interest in Cryptocurrency to get started and learn first hand how to do it.

I'm not here to sell anyone on Cryptocurrency. It's not for everyone obviously.


Is there something I can help you with?

 

[Thermal]

In my case, I joined a forum several years ago called Bitcointalk to learn about Cryptocurrency and mining. There was and is a section there with new Alt coin announcements. I used to mine every coin at launch. That's when difficulty in mining is extremely low and block rewards are extremely high. It's never too late to begin.

As far as picking a winner, the only thing I can suggest is to study the fundamentals of each coin. How is this coin better than others? What are the block times are they 60 seconds or 10 minutes? What is the total supply to be mined? Is the coin minable? Proof of Work or is it Proof of Stake? Was there a premine by the founders of the coin? If so, how many coins did they get?

It's a long list of considerations to compare and contrast. And in the end, the coin you thought was a winner may end up as nothing while another coin that started as a joke (Dogecoin) races to $1.00 (I mined that at startup too) My philosophy was to mine everything new at startup in case there is a winner in the bunch. (It worked.)

How can you trust a flagged wallet? All wallets will be flagged. You can run a virus scan on the wallet to check for normal things and hidden things. Run thru the results and determine a case by case basis for each result. One of the most common results flagged will be the miner portion, if the wallet stakes or mines coins it will show up as malware usually "minerd". If this was an email you received, I wouldn't open it, but since it's a Crypto wallet with a mining function built in, of course it's gonna be there, it's supposed to be. You have to keep in mind the goal of the Cryptocurrency. The founders of a particular coin stand to make a lot of money if the coin works out and catches on. They couldn't hope to earn much by attempting to hack people to view their browser history.

I use old equipment on a day to day basis. Not because I'm afraid something may happen because I have a wallet installed, it's simply because I'm frugal. I would suggest if you are concerned something may happen you should use something you're not too concerned with. And that would apply for any program or app you may install not limited to Crypto.

As far as power usage from just running a wallet, it's extremely low. No more than any other app and likely much less than an internet browser. However if you enable mining your cpu will run 100%, because mining is a cpu intense operation. If you're just using the wallet to send or receive coins, power usage is minimal. There's no need to enable mining if you don't want to mine new coins.

Excellent man, thanks much. One peripheral I'm not clear on: I understand that the machine works to solve complex math equations. Who is paying for their solution and why wouldn't they do it themselves?

I had a Bitcoin wallet mining thingy on one of my old laptops from years ago, but didn't know in advance about how much use it would generate, so didn't get far. First time I read about Dogecoin, I marked that for a short term surge moneymaker, butt didn't buy, just watched it. Up something like 2000% right now I think, but I expect redditors to drop it abruptly and take a dive. Fickle little bastards.

Eta: I'm guessing the Gamestop success has them fired up, hence the surge.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

Excellent man, thanks much. One peripheral I'm not clear on: I understand that the machine works to solve complex math equations. Who is paying for their solution and why wouldn't they do it themselves?
I had a Bitcoin wallet mining thingy on one of my old laptops from years ago, but didn't know in advance about how much use it would generate, so didn't get far. First time I read about Dogecoin, I marked that for a short term surge moneymaker, butt didn't buy, just watched it. Up something like 2000% right now I think, but I expect redditors to drop it abruptly and take a dive. Fickle little bastards.

Eta: I'm guessing the Gamestop success has them fired up, hence the surge.

It's called a "Block Reward" and it's built into the blockchain. This encourages users to mine blocks from around the World decentralizing the blockchain. For every block solved, that block pays the miner(s) a set reward.

There are some coin founders that do a pre-mine, to receive coins before the coin goes live. But once the coin goes live they must compete with everyone else to find and solve blocks. Normally mining pools spring up so multiple miners can join together to have a better chance at finding blocks. The creators of a coin have the same chance of finding blocks as everyone else.

It's a pretty fair way of encouraging decentralization.

 

[psionl0]

I understand that the machine works to solve complex math equations. Who is paying for their solution and why wouldn't they do it themselves?

It's not so much complex math equations as "guess the nonce?". You just keep incrementing the nonce counter until the block has a small enough "hash".

This YouTube shows how it works if you code it in Python.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhnJ1bkIWWk&ab_channel=codebasics

As for who pays for it, the miner does through hardware purchases and electricity bills. He hopes that the block reward will make this profitable.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

It's not so much complex math equations as "guess the nonce?". You just keep incrementing the nonce counter until the block has a small enough "hash".

This YouTube shows how it works if you code it in Python.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhnJ1bkIWWk&ab_channel=codebasics

As for who pays for it, the miner does through hardware purchases and electricity bills. He hopes that the block reward will make this profitable.

I watched some of the video. It's very informative but it's also like pulling teeth. I suppose coders can get quite a bit out of it. It does make me realize why I cannot do that. I think I'd die of boredom.


Agreed that the miner will pay for his coins mined in electricity bills, especially when it's not profitable to mine. There are benefits though, mining creates a lot of heat and most ASIC mining equipment actually works great for supplementing heat for your home in the Winter. Summer is a very different story though, in Summer you're AC works overtime to get rid of that heat.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

A QUICK NOTE FOR ANYONE MINING OR ANYONE WISHING TO ADD SOME SOLAR PANELS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.

There's a place in Arizona called SanTan solar. They have a bunch of new and used solar panels.

I recently purchased some used 240 watt panels from them at $35 a panel. They arrived the other day and all check out as good panels. No broken glass or cells and the output is near the same as when they were brand new. The aluminum frames have a few scuff marks from handling but nothing too ugly.

If you've been thinking about mining or just adding some solar to help the environment it can be done on the cheap. I just noticed they have some 270 watt used panels for $35, dang, missed that.

This is not an advertisement for those guys and I'm not an affiliate as I don't do that, but I bought some from them recently and they seem to be a good deal so I thought I'd share that info with anyone interested.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

thanks for the transfer.

I mined something like 3,000 myself on a pretty old intel machine in 5 hours.

interesting experiment all in all.

 

[Belz...]

I'm here to help those who have a passing interest in Cryptocurrency to get started and learn first hand how to do it.

I'm not here to sell anyone on Cryptocurrency. It's not for everyone obviously.


Is there something I can help you with?

You seem to be selling something.

 

[Chanakya]

You don't have to mine. The block reward is 120 coins and takes 360 confirmations. I do but it's mainly to help the network along, a few hundred coins a day is hardly worth the effort ...

Help the network how? How/why would you mining coin help anyone other than yourself?

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

thanks for the transfer.

I mined something like 3,000 myself on a pretty old intel machine in 5 hours.

interesting experiment all in all.

It's fun to do but I wouldn't recommend too much effort on mining ROI coin as it's not being traded at this time. But now you know that you can if you want to. Knowledge is power!

You seem to be selling something.

If I am selling something I must be terrible at it.

Help the network how? How/why would you mining coin help anyone other than yourself?

The network blockchain moves by mining. At this moment the entire network for ROI coin is being run at 546 Hashes per second. To give you an idea of how small of a footprint that is, my antique i-7 desktop is providing 106 of those hashes. Likely there's only a few computers mining ROI coin. That's why it's easy to find blocks, the difficulty is low when there are fewer miners.

Why would I be mining ROI coin? For now it's only to help the network during this experiment. I have no intention of continuing to mine ROI coin as it's not profitable at this time. But while we are experimenting with syncing wallets, transferring coins etc, mining helps move those transactions along faster as the confirmations require less time to complete.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

For anyone that wants to play/experiment with the console in the wallet:

Click on "Help" from the top menu.

Select "Debug window" and the console window will open. For a list of commands, type in "help" and press enter. This will display the available commands you can use.

For example: I recently checked the speed of the network by typing in "getnetworkhashps" and pressing enter.

It's ok to play around with the console. I don't think you'll wreck anything.

 

[Belz...]

If I am selling something I must be terrible at it.

Oh, agreed.

 

[psionl0]

I watched some of the video. It's very informative but it's also like pulling teeth. I suppose coders can get quite a bit out of it. It does make me realize why I cannot do that. I think I'd die of boredom.

The first half of the video gave a good description of the blockchain and the role of the nonce in the blocks. I put the video up because everybody is told that computers solve "complex" maths problems. They don't. It is nothing more than "guess and check".

 

[Chanakya]

... The network blockchain moves by mining. At this moment the entire network for ROI coin is being run at 546 Hashes per second. To give you an idea of how small of a footprint that is, my antique i-7 desktop is providing 106 of those hashes. Likely there's only a few computers mining ROI coin. That's why it's easy to find blocks, the difficulty is low when there are fewer miners.

Why would I be mining ROI coin? For now it's only to help the network during this experiment. I have no intention of continuing to mine ROI coin as it's not profitable at this time. But while we are experimenting with syncing wallets, transferring coins etc, mining helps move those transactions along faster as the confirmations require less time to complete.

No, but I don't get why your mining helps the network along, as you'd said.

If anything, as the blockchain moves on, mining becomes progressively harder, so that, if anything, mining does the opposite of helping the network, right?

Of course, for a coin which does not make mining progressively more difficult, the difficulty level stays the same. Either case, how would your mining actually help?

(Just trying to understand this. If your use of the word "help" was just a ...I don't know, if you didn't mean it in the sense of what the word means, just something you'd said without meaning it --- as one does at times --- then no big deal.)

 

[Chanakya]

The first half of the video gave a good description of the blockchain and the role of the nonce in the blocks. I put the video up because everybody is told that computers solve "complex" maths problems. They don't. It is nothing more than "guess and check".

Thanks for posting that.

I haven't seen the video, perhaps I will, perhaps not, but what you've pointed out here is good to know. Absolutely, that is the general impression most people have, that mining involves solving intricate mathematical problems. That's the impression I myself had.

Yeah, I know, the video probably explains it, but still: is that how it is with all cryptos? Or are there some that do solve those complex problems that people talk about, while others don't?

And why does mining get progressively more difficult, then? Because the numbers of the hits get progressively smaller, lesser in number, is that all there is to it, not so much increasing complexity of the operations?