I have heard about this thing called bitcoin mining and how you can make money from it, I was sceptical at first but have downloaded and was wondering if anyone had a getting started guide as the various websites I have looked at are very confusing. P.s. There is probably a bitcoin thread already so sorry for the repeat but a quick forum search revealed nothing.
I read some interesting articles on it a while back, it seems you have be running a supercomputer to get any actual currency and the way the exchange rate went at one point most of the wealth sits with the early adopters. Not worth the effort imo.
From what I understand, the amount of money that you get, is less than the value of your computer... so unless you already have a super computer or a crazy out of this world PC/server that you need in any case for other stuff, it's simply not worth it, you'll be loosing money.
Compare the real world value of bit coins computed in an hour vs the electricity cost for running your PC for an hour.
It's basically a pyramid scheme, isn't it? As units get progressively harder to generate, the "wealth" is concentrated with the early adopters, and those getting on board later on will struggle to ever generate sufficient units to cover the cost of generation. I was a little surprised that the article in this month's Custom PC didn't pick up on this aspect...
Its true. I tried to run a pool in my school, as at first it seems like a genuinely good scheme. However, by now, its so difficult to actually get a block of bitcoins. They do have value, but they can be lost by file corruption. And they're horribly prone to falling in value. I think they lost about 90% of their value once due to someone flooding the market with them on offer.
I did it for about a month got a little bit of money but nothing worth doing it again for and think i might have killed my 5850 doing it =(
It certainly was for the guys and girls who got on the act before bitcoins were worth anything, and quite quickly became rich.
