The ASIC Race to Release

in #bitcoin5 years ago

From a meeting some six years ago

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There was the first ever bitcoin magazine. I grabbed a copy. The novelty of the coin and now a magazine named after it.

I am anxious to get back to fun photos of my kids and crazy other things, but I will finish running through my experience as a miner first.

I had paid for and ordered a couple ASIC miner from Butterfly Labs. These little black boxes used a low voltage power supply and two of them would equal the power of all three miners that I had been running.

During the year long wait to receive my ASICs, the mining difficulty had more than doubled. By the time they arrived I had already resolved to stop mining. Several other companies had come out with ASIC mining equipment and they were actually delivering them to customers.

I ran my ASICs along side my GPU miners for a few weeks and then hung it up. There was no more real crypto coming in from the mining pools. The expense and hype did not result in any profits at all. They have been sitting in their boxes for six years now.

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The bitcoin blockchain is amazing in that the difficulty level adjusts itself higher as more miners come on line. It would also become lower if, let's say, an entire country lost power and their miners went off-line suddenly. The objective is so that a block is produced (ideally) every 10 minutes or so. Most who have used the coin know that it takes an hour or so to receive six confirmations on a transaction. If you have six confirmation, then your transaction is considered to be a done deal.

The reason, each confirmation means that your transaction has been included in a block, and blocks are built one on top of the other. It is like having six different accountants looking at your books and all six agree that your check has cleared. When the seventh or eighth accountant reviews things, they will likely agree on that same transaction.

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Before writing this post

I pulled out the old magazine that I got years ago. It is still in pristine condition as are my ASIC miners. I grabbed a beer, duff is my brand, and decided to snap some pictures of this paraphernalia to round out my series on mining.

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I have never opened the magazine wide enough to crease the binding, never really throttled the miners to the max, but I have had many a beer.

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One day, I will auction off the magazine and the miners to see how much they bring in. As for duff beer, I can ship those anytime. The local FuWang has them in the cooler.

Everything written herein is hypothetical and for entertainment purposes only. Please do not contact me in order to extract a percentage of non-dollar earnings alleged here.

Open to offers or questions in the comments.

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Much Appreciated!

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Excelent miner job my friend!

What a dedication your work, thank you for sharing because we also learn, what time you dedicate to all that.
Because to help with your children, the house, your partner, and dedicate yourself to steemit and associates also requires your time.
There was something that caught my attention and made me laugh about the DUFF beer, which is the favorite of Homer Simpson ha ha ha ha.

Hi @sponge-bob
have never mined with equipment. only here in steemit, now in Venezuela especially in the city where I live have told me that there are houses where all the rooms are dedicated to the mining of BTC. Due to the electric power that is practically free, that encourages the mining in this country to be very profitable.

I also know that the same government uses mining equipment.

I have never seen or touched a mining equipment, but I do not rule out any power to do so and even have several to mine.

A recommendation to all should read the small letters. HAHA

If I were to mine again, I would choose a smaller coin that is less popular. If you were to mine a lesser known coin, you could probably earn 2 to 4 coins per day and then sell those to buy bitcoin if you must have that particular coin. I am sure you could make many more dollars worth per day in that way.

It is crazy to mine bitcoin when so many others are available to mine. Example: When Etherium first came out, I mined it with only two video cards and earned 45 ETH in a month. The price was not good so I quit before I had the chance to burn any wiring. My point is that new coins are much more profitable. Less miners to divide rewards with.

Greetings @sponge-bob a pleasure to continue reading about your history in the mining, I admit that it took a little while to follow the thread, but I was somewhat busy with some business😅.

Starting with the genius of the boxes you show, literally that could be the origin of the mini pc you see today, wow who would think 6 years ago would be there 😱.

I suppose that for those then they were affectionate of price (making reference to that sure they were expensive), sees the good side maybe in the future they have great historical value (and more than as you comment that they were not even used).

The magazine of 10 points, looks like new, another jewel, I was unaware of such magazines (of course also may be that the kiosks I visited in my childhood more than anything had automotive magazines and not technology :v ).

And I resolved a doubt, the difficulty of mining ("The bitcoin blockchain is amazing in that the difficulty level adjusts itself higher as more miners come on line"), was not so wrong at all, thank you for that.

Just add thanks for reading my comment and I don't say goodbye without wishing you a good day, evening or night.

Thanks for returning. I was busy too.

The ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is just a chip on a board that is programmed to do only one thing. It is plugged in by USB and hashes on the bitcoin blockchain. There is no functionality for running windows or linux.

GPU's are made to hash pixels and graphic rendering - using them to mine does not take advantage of what they were designed to do. It was a first step in mining though.

Thank you for clarifying the Asic, I suppose if as you say were the forerunners of many of the technologies in mining that we know today.👍

Certainly, not all the things are useful when we undertake a project, and more when they arrive at untimely, the important thing is that you continued applying the same interest towards the main objective that was to mine without waiting this equipment, on the other hand, is notable the capacity to take care of the things, that magazine looks intact, like new, congratulations for that. I accompany you with a Duff for the heat.

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Cheers till then ;)

I see that you are still a patron of the local FuWang. Good to know that hasn't changed 😂

I have never had this mining, I do not think that my team would endure that work, besides the power failures, the internet here has become constant, so hours without electricity should cause much disgust if it happened to me. Although the light is very economical here, because of the disaster the government has @sponge-bob

Nunca he tenido esto de mineria, no creo que mi equipo aguantaria ese trabajon, ademas las fallas de luz, internet aqui se han vuelto constantes, asi que horas sin electricidad deben causar mucho disgusto si me pasara. Aunque aqui es muy economica la luz, por el desastre que tiene el gobierno

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