I'm seeing a lot of posts on the boards and chatter on IRC from people that just really don't understand what's going on with Bitcoins. While we don't mind helping folks out, after a while it get's to be a bit tedious to answer the same questions, over and over. Sorry to burst your bubble, but...
Bitcoins are not a 'Get rich quick' scheme - There was a short window a few months back where you could make a lot of money off of Bitcoins and payback times for hardware was in the month range, but that's long gone now and will likely never come back. Payback for hardware costs is probably now in the 4-6 month range and will continue to get worse. Can you still make money? Certainly, but you need to do some research and be smart about things.
AMD/Nvidia/[Insert Vendor Name Here] doesn't give a flying rat fart about the Bitcoin mining community - All these posts where people say, "I can't find any AMD card, AMD must know they're missing a huge opportunity and they'll make more cards!" are just silly. No, they won't make more cards and they don't care. We are small potatoes, a blip in their earnings. In Q1 of 2011 AMD sold 19 million cards, and in Q2 they sold another 16 million. Yes, we buy lot's of cards, but we're such a tiny part of their market that they're not going to change they way the operate because of us. As I'm writing this, the current network is clocking in at 11.13 TH. Just for arguments sake, let's assume that's all made up of GPU's with a conservative hashing rate of 200 MH/s. That's about 55,650 cards. (Someone correct my math if it's wrong, 11.13 TH / 220 MH | 11130000000000 / 200000000). IF my math isn't off, then yeah...they sell that many cards every 7 hours. We're a rounding error
Yes, someone knows what the answer to your problem is and it probably already been answered - Before you hit submit on that new post, did you take a few seconds to do some searches on the forums? How about and another few seconds to do a google on your problem? More often than not, you're not the first person that's run into the issue. You may notice a lot of the old timers don't respond to questions or come across snippy when they do. It's because after you answer the same question 20 times you just get sick of it. Spend half a minute searching before you post and you'll save countless hours of other people having to read a new post on a topic that's already been discussed.
No, you don't deserve technical support/updates for free software - People seem to get awfully upset that their favorite miner hasn't gotten some bug fix, feature or upgrade you want. Well, guess what, you get what you pay for. You are using free software that the developer has spent their free time developing with no expected payback. They've already given you something great for free and you should be appreciative of that. If you really want whatever change you wanted in the first place, you have a few options. Send the developer a decent donation (which you should do anyways if you use anything for more than a few weeks) and hope that motivates them. You could switch to a different piece of software. Or write one yourself (and prepare yourself for demanding users that want X, Y and Z now!). Posting a rant that something should be added is one sure fire way to actually motivate the developer to work on something else.
Just because something worked for one person, doesn't mean it will work for you - Every setup is different and no matter what you read in posts, you need to tweak and play around with your own system to find the optimal settings/setup for your mixture of hardware/software.
Free electricity isn't - Unless you have a solar farm or wind turbine in your back yard, there is no 'free' electricity. Someone is paying for it. Whether it's your parents, your workplace, or your school. Yeah, you can probably get away with a card or two without asking and noone notice, even though it's basically stealing. Anything more than that and someone going to notice the power bill going up. My electric bills have gone up about $100 for every 3 GH or so I'm running, and I have a great power rate of .08 cents/kwh. Don't be stupid, get permission or don't do it. It's not worth losing a job over a few extra bitcoins a month. Oh, and if you're trying to find software that will hide/obfuscate the miner process on any machines, then yeah, you already know what you're doing is wrong. Bitcoin already has enough PR problems, you guys need to stop crapping in the pool we all need to swim in.
And finally, don't trust or listen anyone on the boards, myself included - Listen, there's a _ton_ of information out there on Bitcoins in the way of wiki's, news posts/articles and these forums. Google 'bitcoin' and almost 16 million results come back. While there's no way to predict the future of bitcoins, there's just no excuse for you to lose money in your bitcoin endeavors because of poor decisions. Anyone that puts in a little bit of time and effort to do some research can make smart, informed decisions on whether they want to mine, buy BTC through exchanges, or just avoid the whole thing altogether. Bitcoins can be a fun, and maybe even profitable, learning experience. You'll be doing yourself (and your wallet) a favor for every minute you spend researching and learning about Bitcoins.
Anyone else have any other 'bubble bursters'?
Bitcoins are not a 'Get rich quick' scheme - There was a short window a few months back where you could make a lot of money off of Bitcoins and payback times for hardware was in the month range, but that's long gone now and will likely never come back. Payback for hardware costs is probably now in the 4-6 month range and will continue to get worse. Can you still make money? Certainly, but you need to do some research and be smart about things.
AMD/Nvidia/[Insert Vendor Name Here] doesn't give a flying rat fart about the Bitcoin mining community - All these posts where people say, "I can't find any AMD card, AMD must know they're missing a huge opportunity and they'll make more cards!" are just silly. No, they won't make more cards and they don't care. We are small potatoes, a blip in their earnings. In Q1 of 2011 AMD sold 19 million cards, and in Q2 they sold another 16 million. Yes, we buy lot's of cards, but we're such a tiny part of their market that they're not going to change they way the operate because of us. As I'm writing this, the current network is clocking in at 11.13 TH. Just for arguments sake, let's assume that's all made up of GPU's with a conservative hashing rate of 200 MH/s. That's about 55,650 cards. (Someone correct my math if it's wrong, 11.13 TH / 220 MH | 11130000000000 / 200000000). IF my math isn't off, then yeah...they sell that many cards every 7 hours. We're a rounding error
Yes, someone knows what the answer to your problem is and it probably already been answered - Before you hit submit on that new post, did you take a few seconds to do some searches on the forums? How about and another few seconds to do a google on your problem? More often than not, you're not the first person that's run into the issue. You may notice a lot of the old timers don't respond to questions or come across snippy when they do. It's because after you answer the same question 20 times you just get sick of it. Spend half a minute searching before you post and you'll save countless hours of other people having to read a new post on a topic that's already been discussed.
No, you don't deserve technical support/updates for free software - People seem to get awfully upset that their favorite miner hasn't gotten some bug fix, feature or upgrade you want. Well, guess what, you get what you pay for. You are using free software that the developer has spent their free time developing with no expected payback. They've already given you something great for free and you should be appreciative of that. If you really want whatever change you wanted in the first place, you have a few options. Send the developer a decent donation (which you should do anyways if you use anything for more than a few weeks) and hope that motivates them. You could switch to a different piece of software. Or write one yourself (and prepare yourself for demanding users that want X, Y and Z now!). Posting a rant that something should be added is one sure fire way to actually motivate the developer to work on something else.
Just because something worked for one person, doesn't mean it will work for you - Every setup is different and no matter what you read in posts, you need to tweak and play around with your own system to find the optimal settings/setup for your mixture of hardware/software.
Free electricity isn't - Unless you have a solar farm or wind turbine in your back yard, there is no 'free' electricity. Someone is paying for it. Whether it's your parents, your workplace, or your school. Yeah, you can probably get away with a card or two without asking and noone notice, even though it's basically stealing. Anything more than that and someone going to notice the power bill going up. My electric bills have gone up about $100 for every 3 GH or so I'm running, and I have a great power rate of .08 cents/kwh. Don't be stupid, get permission or don't do it. It's not worth losing a job over a few extra bitcoins a month. Oh, and if you're trying to find software that will hide/obfuscate the miner process on any machines, then yeah, you already know what you're doing is wrong. Bitcoin already has enough PR problems, you guys need to stop crapping in the pool we all need to swim in.
And finally, don't trust or listen anyone on the boards, myself included - Listen, there's a _ton_ of information out there on Bitcoins in the way of wiki's, news posts/articles and these forums. Google 'bitcoin' and almost 16 million results come back. While there's no way to predict the future of bitcoins, there's just no excuse for you to lose money in your bitcoin endeavors because of poor decisions. Anyone that puts in a little bit of time and effort to do some research can make smart, informed decisions on whether they want to mine, buy BTC through exchanges, or just avoid the whole thing altogether. Bitcoins can be a fun, and maybe even profitable, learning experience. You'll be doing yourself (and your wallet) a favor for every minute you spend researching and learning about Bitcoins.
Anyone else have any other 'bubble bursters'?