Any form of money / currency is only as good as the entity that is behind it and vouches for it. Since the invention of the concept of currency, there has been a sovereign entity behind each currency.

This part is very subjective, each entity that issues money, we have had MANY of them here in the US alone over our short few hundred years, is dependent on it's own values as to whether the money is any good or not. During our own Civil War both sides issued money, after it was over the losing sides money was declared null and void and anyone holding it was FLAT BROKE! People lose MILLIONS of dollars overnight, just because they supported the 'wrong' Government. In the beginning of our history each State issued its own currency, it them becoming null and void as they joined a National Government. The US Government itself has issued currency over the years, ie Silver Certificates, that are now worthless except to collectors. All of this means that having a Government standing behind a currency is not ALWAYS a good thing. What happens in Europe if some of the countries now using the Euro go back to the old ways? Some ARE considering it, whether it will happen or not I have no idea, but if they dump the Euro you may have to travel to be able to spend what you have.
In addition over the years MANY Governments have devalued their currency, meaning what you have is now worth a very small portion of what it was worth just yesterday!!

I am NOT saying bitcoins are the be all end all of money, or that they will outlast anything, but they are worth something right now and that is why people are collecting and spending them.

This thread is not about BitCoin itself, but I have to clarify some misunderstandings.
I'm not against changing the world. BitCoin (and the other crypto currencies) is about changing the the basis of the economy of the whole world (that is the monetary system). I think that it can't be done against the will of the participants of the economy. If the powers of the monetary system wanted to change the basis of the economy all of us living in, it could have been done long ago. The so called socialism (or communism) - beside many things - was (or at least it was intended to be) an attempt to do that. This attempt has been failed, not just because the "communist" block was preparing for WW3 all the time of its existence (I lived in it for 20 years, so I know it from the inside), as the other block did the same. I think that the change the crypto currencies bring to the current monetary system are against the interest of the powers of the monetary system, as it would diminish (or even end) their influence on the source of their power. This power comes from the fact that they can change (usually lower) the value of the money by issuing more of it than needed. This is not a bad thing while it has a fairly low rate, because no one wants to keep the money in the long term, because it will devaluate over time. So one could either spend it, or invest it, or put it in a Bank (and they will invest it), which will result in a growing economy. The point of modern (so called fiat) money is that it's an infinite resource, therefore it could finance the growth of the economy for all eternity :). But the powers controlling the flow and creation of fiat money have to be very aware of how the others spend/invest this money, because there are some monetary entities, which has only one purpose: to grow as big as they can by exploiting the infinity of fiat money. On the other hand, if money would became more valuable over time, it would decrease the flow of itself, result in a decaying economy which would lead to mass loss of jobs (which is pretty bad).

This discussion and the concept of Bitcoin itself is meaningless..

The discussion of any subject is always useful: it could make the ignorant learn something about the subject.
About the meaning of BitCoin: "everything has a purpose, if nothing else it could serve as deterrent"

Bitcoin reads "fraud, thieves, you will lose your money!" all over it.

The powers of the current monetary system makes you believe it, partly because the powers pushed out of the monetary system (that is criminals) have to use alternative currencies.

Any form of money / currency is only as good as the entity that is behind it and vouches for it.

While the "good" sound familiar, its quite incomprehensible when talking about complex entities who have many faces, beside issuing money.

Since the invention of the concept of currency, there has been a sovereign entity behind each currency. This is what creates the faith in party A that the money it has taken from party B for providing some service or good will in actual fact carry its value in the foreseeable future.

This is the part of the monetary system based on fiat money what the common people perceive. But it's much more than that.

Where is that entity behind Bitcoin?

Nowhere. There is no entity behind it, only the users of it ("the network"). That's why it's revolutionary. That's why nobody knows how it's gonna work out. If there's big enough crowd behind it, it could work. But only if the current powers of the current monetary system will resign their powers.

I hear people crying out "the Network", well let me ask "the Network" to vouch for the value of my Bitcoins and guess what "the Network's" response will be. The picture of a slowly rising middle finger forms in my mind!

The problem with "the network" is that the economy cannot work without a power who throws out those who seek deals where they win by the other party's loss.

It is either that, or exchanging gold / silver / diamonds / some other valuable material, like corn for example. "Value" means it can be used by people to some end. Silver, gold and platinum (and other precious metals) have extremely good physical / chemical / electrical / thermal / etc properties, which make them suitable for many uses, including making long-lasting ornaments. Corn makes bread, the basis of human diet.

Is there so much corn in the world which can be exchanged for a fusion power plant?
The gold became the carrier of value because at that time it couldn't be used to make anything useful (as a tool or weapon), as it is soft (when pure) and dense (heavy), while it don't corrode on air.

In contrast, what can one do with Bitcoin? Can one eat it, make a tool out of it, create a long-lasting (practically invulnerable to nature) item from it?

Can you eat a dollar bill, or a plastic credit/debit card, or gold? These things only work while the economy is working as it is working now. When something would hit the economy hard (like a war), the people would receive bread for tickets, not for money. While this sounds odd, they will be happy because they lived.

No. People give it value because it is practically finite. Well, so are prime numbers, should we start trading in primes?

While the known prime numbers are finite, there are infinite prime numbers exists. However they become more sparse as they become larger.
When the basis of the monetary system was gold (a finite resource), it has limited the growth of the whole economy, as there wasn't enough gold in the system to support its growth. The modern economy passed over this phase, that's why we live in better circumstances than ever before. There is a finite number of BitCoins, however it can be split infinitely (as far as I know). This is quite the opposite of fiat money.

MJH,
Why not resurrect Donate@home, and allow us to use our ASIC miners to find cash for gpugrid like we use to with our GPU's? Right now all my miners are crunching for milkyway@home via Bitcoin Utopia, but I'd love to switch some over to you. BTW Bitcoin Utopia has wu's for: ASIC miners only, cpu only, AND GPU only. if they think it's worthwhile, maybe you should reconsider. Just a thought.
Regards,
Col. Rick A. Sponholz

Could someone from GPUGRID respond to the post above? Several people have posted their opinion on the credability of bitcoins, but GPUGRID used them in the past (earned via Donate@home). I'm going to mine for some project, wish it could be for GPUGRID.
Thanks in advance for your consideration & response.
Col. Rick A. Sponholz

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Rick,

Donate@Home was a success for us because we had access to a lot of (AMD) GPU that we weren't using for anything else, at a time before ASICs when it was still possible mine Bitcoins usiing normal hardware.

We saw the effect of the introduction of ASICs almost immediately (indeed long before most of the customers actually received theirs, why that was is left as an exercise for the reader) and our return dropped to almost nothing very quickly.

Shortly after that happened we stopped the project as the human effort to run it couldn't be justified in the absence of any return. We're still accepting Bitcoin donations via direct transfer however.

I understand that some of you have ASICs now but, frankly, I doubt there'll be enough to make a worthwhile mining pool. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to make a straw poll of crunchers to see.

Right now, however, if you do have ASIC mining hardware and want to generate Bitcoins for GPUGRID, firstly: thank you! and secondly: the best I can suggest is you subscribe to one of the large mining pools and reap a share of their activity, then xfer that to us.

Cheers,

Matt

Thats rediculess! Past by a user with a 232M Today BitCoin Utopia.. Lost place on place on the Worldlist. My no so far away finish to 99,99% is surely over now and never reachable, that sucks :(

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DSKAG Austria: http://www.dskag.at

...I understand that some of you have ASICs now but, frankly, I doubt there'll be enough to make a worthwhile mining pool. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to make a straw poll of crunchers to see.

If you resurrect Donate@home with ASIC computing capabilities similar to what BU has done...we will come. Plus GPUGRID.net will have the added benefit of stating all bitcoins generated will go towards GPUGRID.net without I believe the current 12% cut going towards the project administrators to cover overhead with the remaining amount being given to a charitable enterprise many are probably not familiar, with the exception being Milkyway@home. Donate@home could be an effective counter weight against BU since they will no longer be "the only game in town" for this type of crunching activity. Using cgminer should aid this process since that is what BU uses, and it is always best to attract a currently installed user base.

If you build it...we will come. That is my forecast, however whether or not is is worthwhile for GPUGRID.net to build and support this infrastructure with respect to the cost/benefit analysis is something only GPUGRID.net can answer. The BU WEB site does state the generated bitcoin amounts for each campaign which could be a useful guide to help with that analysis.

If you resurrect Donate@home with ASIC computing capabilities similar to what BU has done...we will come

Right, I would be 1 of the 1'st to throw my ASIC's on the GPU Grid Project which I consider to be a much more worthy Project than Bitcoin Utopia, but for now I'll run BitCoin so I don't get Stampeded by the Credit Seekers.

I'm not really happy about the Bitcoin Project myself & the amount of Credit they give out, I've even expressed that in my Teams Forum. I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain. I'd rather get on Board with the ASIC's & lead rather than follow much like I did when the GPU's 1'st came out ... ;)

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If you resurrect Donate@home with ASIC computing capabilities similar to what BU has done...we will come

Right, I would be 1 of the 1'st to throw my ASIC's on the GPU Grid Project which I consider to be a much more worthy Project than Bitcoin Utopia, but for now I'll run BitCoin so I don't get Stampeded by the Credit Seekers.

I'm not really happy about the Bitcoin Project myself & the amount of Credit they give out, I've even expressed that in my Teams Forum. I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain. I'd rather get on Board with the ASIC's & lead rather than follow much like I did when the GPU's 1'st came out ... ;)

I completely agree. ASICs are here to stay and the only questions are:

1. When will other projects follow?
2. Will they offer similar credits to BU?

I had mustered 43m cr in 2 years on my motley fleet. I'm now approaching 1/2 billion in the last month and it cost me $75. My amazing super-cruncher is awaiting a CPU and now my decision is buy that $300 AMD toy or buy 4 R-BOX miners. It's a game changer alright...

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I'm not really happy about the Bitcoin Project myself & the amount of Credit they give out, I've even expressed that in my Teams Forum.

It's quite comforting that I'm not the only one.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

I'd rather get on Board with the ASIC's & lead rather than follow much like I did when the GPU's 1'st came out ... ;)

That is a quite logical move from your side, and quite predictable from BU's side.



While the credit awarded by BU is only 1.57% bigger on today's chart than on the previous one I've posted, still this means that BU has awarded 7.5 times more credit today than the other projects together (the previous ratio was 6.5). This ratio is steadily growing, as more and more crunchers attracted like you. This undue amount of the awarded credits by BU, and the predictable actions it has called forth reminds me the way politicians manipulate people to provoke the action they wanted to achieve (however it was the same when GPU crunching became available).
This story is different though, as high-end GPUs are usually more expensive to buy and to run than CPUs, but these ASICs are very cheap to buy and to run yet they earn astronomical amount of credits.
In the short term the other projects won't suffer significant loss of crunchers, as these ASICs won't take the place of CPUs and GPUs. However in the long term it will make significantly harder for the old projects to attract new crunchers, when someone could make 100 times more credits with much cheaper hardware.

Rick,

Donate@Home was a success for us because we had access to a lot of (AMD) GPU that we weren't using for anything else, at a time before ASICs when it was still possible mine Bitcoins usiing normal hardware.

We saw the effect of the introduction of ASICs almost immediately (indeed long before most of the customers actually received theirs, why that was is left as an exercise for the reader) and our return dropped to almost nothing very quickly.

Shortly after that happened we stopped the project as the human effort to run it couldn't be justified in the absence of any return. We're still accepting Bitcoin donations via direct transfer however.

I understand that some of you have ASICs now but, frankly, I doubt there'll be enough to make a worthwhile mining pool. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to make a straw poll of crunchers to see.

Right now, however, if you do have ASIC mining hardware and want to generate Bitcoins for GPUGRID, firstly: thank you! and secondly: the best I can suggest is you subscribe to one of the large mining pools and reap a share of their activity, then xfer that to us.

Cheers,

Matt

Thanks for the reply Matt. I believe if you build it, we will come. In any case, thanks for your consideration of the idea. Regards, Rick

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I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

???

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STE\/E

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

???

I thought exactly the same thing...WHAT? People said EXACTLY the same thing when gpu's came out and people started wiping the floor of the stats of people who had used only cpu's for YEARS!! Every new technology gives a bump up in both the ability to do it faster and getting more credits for it.

I personally don't have any problem with BU using credits to attract people to their project, I think alot of projects do that in one way or another. Some keep the credits low so only a few dedicated people will stay, giving the project more stability and less need to grow their infrastructure. Some, like BU and DistRTgen use credits to attract people to their project, and have the resulting infrastructure growing pains to show for it.

The problem has ALWAYS been when people start comparing the credits earned at on project to another project, that is where it becomes unfair. Unfair to both the users and to the projects. You can't compare the credits earned at GpuGrid with the credits earned at MilkyWay or Einstein, why compare them to BU? As for overall credits they are just that...lifetime stats like a baseball player that has played for a dozen teams. Fairly meaningless today, but good for getting into the Hall of Fame.

My Seti stats are like that, ALL earned pre gpu times, and not one credit earned since March 2007 when I left! BUT they are still listed in my overall stats, and on the Seti page so are my pre-Boinc numbers. They are meaningless to what I have done lately at the different projects, but still recorded in the digital history books of Boinc. Word is that Bitcoin mining has a limited life span, and when it is done there are no more, meaning BU will be another defunct project that ceases to exist and the numbers will then be recorded someplace in our stats as we move on to other places to crunch.

I thought exactly the same thing...WHAT? People said EXACTLY the same thing when gpu's came out and people started wiping the floor of the stats of people who had used only cpu's for YEARS!! Every new technology gives a bump up in both the ability to do it faster and getting more credits for it.

There's a big difference. GPUs crunch scientific WUs. They are simply a faster way to process the same WUs that CPUs were running. ASICS only generate revenue, they can't do science. You could similarly say that people should be given huge credits for donating money or equipment to projects, or shoes to the needy for that matter. On top of that BU in particular looks like a personal money making scheme if they're raking off 12%. That's a lot of money.

The solution? Don't compare stats crossproject. It's that simple.

Like mikey said, it only makes sense to compare stats within each project, even if we didn't have those ASICs and only CPUS vs GPUs. It has never been fair in BOINC, since some people can afford more PCs than others and so be it. That's just how that is.

That aside, it IS pretty insane to achieve 1/2 billion points in one day, which takes several years even on GPUs.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

???

Sorry for I wasn't clear. Not your reaction is the bad message, but the fact that the impact of this project on science is way below its impact on the balance of the credits (while the impact of the GPUs in scientific use is nearly in direct ratio of credit difference between GPUs and CPUs). I think BU's impact on the BOINC community (science - if you like) could be even adverse in the long term, despite the profitability in the short term if they keep on awarding this amount of credits (that is the present projects cannot substitute the crunchers they will possibly loose in the future from the funding they receive in the present - there is only one such project at the moment).
However ASICs' impact on science could be as big as the GPUs impact if they'd be used directly for research. I think that the algorithm Collatz and DistRTG is using can be put more easily on ASICs, than GPUGrid's or MilkyWay's or PrimeGrid's. Furthermore I think that an advanced ASIC could do the same reverse engineering as rainbow tables are used for, making the whole DirstRTgen project obsolete. Still, in my opinion, they won't have such a device, as there's no one who would finance its development. The only reason for the existence of the BitCoin miner ASICs is that their development was financed by the present use of them.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

???

Sorry for I wasn't clear. Not your reaction is the bad message, but the fact that the impact of this project on science is way below its impact on the balance of the credits (while the impact of the GPUs in scientific use is nearly in direct ratio of credit difference between GPUs and CPUs). I think BU's impact on the BOINC community (science - if you like) could be even adverse in the long term, despite the profitability in the short term if they keep on awarding this amount of credits (that is the present projects cannot substitute the crunchers they will possibly loose in the future from the funding they receive in the present - there is only one such project at the moment).

However ASICs' impact on science could be as big as the GPUs impact if they'd be used directly for research. I think that the algorithm Collatz and DistRTG is using can be put more easily on ASICs, than GPUGrid's or MilkyWay's or PrimeGrid's. Furthermore I think that an advanced ASIC could do the same reverse engineering as rainbow tables are used for, making the whole DirstRTgen project obsolete. Still, in my opinion, they won't have such a device, as there's no one who would finance its development. The only reason for the existence of the BitCoin miner ASICs is that their development was financed by the present use of them.

I knew what you meant Zoltan, however this isn't just a tetchy subject, it's a defining one for Boinc and those associated with it (which especially means high end crunchers), so if you say anything that could be misinterpreted it will be latched onto - the crowds are amassing...

To clarify, and in my opinion, you were saying that crunchers who have been around for many years, who purchased high end products, upgraded and ran expensive hardware for many years are being replaced by noobs with USB sticks who get crazy credits for unworthy BitCoin mining, and that is a bad message to send out to long-standing crunchers.

If ASIC's actually cost less (TCO) than they generated I would be all for them, but they don't. At best you're buying into a bubble and we all know what happens to bubbles.

While I'm all for ingenuity, creative thinking, trailblazing, entrepreneurialism and self-funding research, the reality is that ASIC's represent a controlled market and those who buy into them are the product!

GPU's were and are primarily designed for gaming. When they were viably used for mining, they represented a regulating factor; they were designed for another purpose and controlled by parties with no ties to BitCoin mining.
This outside factor has now been acquired by ASIC developers. So, regulation is now owned by the ASIC developers. Forget any nonsense about needing 50% of the global pool to control the markets, it's already controlled!

The only way Boinc credits can be regulated is by dismissing all mining project credits or awarding credit per actual cost...

In my opinion, and I agree with Zoltans analysis on this, people are being over-rewarded for mining and are now purposely buying mining equipment rather that crunching equipment for scientific purposes or making donations.
What is the true value of a mining project, if it rewards more than it's worth?

If you spend £1000/year on IT equipment to crunch for worthy causes and someone with a couple of USB sticks (£10 to buy and £10 to run per year) replaces you on the credit leader-board then the credit system is flawed.
The chances of the slowest (330MHz) USB stick finding a BitCoin are infidecimally small, yet the Boinc credit system accepts that because it can do one useless thing extremely fast that it's fine to reward stupid-credits - seriously >1M Boinc credits/day for a USB stick?!?

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I entirely agree with Retvari Zoltan* and skgiven, however the one point I have trouble understanding is I always thought BOINC was not supposed to be for a commercial enterprise/platform especially since BOINC has received funding from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), yet BU clearly states on the front WEB page, first sentence "Bitcoin Utopia is a commercial platform... . What am I missing?

Another 2.68% rise in BU's share of the total credits awarded. This small rise in the percentage means that BU awarded a little over 10 times more credits than all other projects combined. BU has 352 active users today, they have 207 more users since this started (19 June 2014), which is ~50% rise (5.3 new users per day regarding this period), so this is only the beginning. How will this chart look like, when there will be 10000 active BU users? By looking at the present chart I'm sure they will allure that many users by the end of this year. I think that BU will completely overtake the credit pie above. Is there any authority who can audit their credit policy? Do they think that they need to reduce their credits?

Is there any authority who can audit their credit policy? Do they think that they need to reduce their credits?

There have been people who have called for a Credit Reduction but they get shot down pretty quickly. The Admin of BU has also stated that he will not Reduce the Credits either, about the only way they get Reduced now a little is the difficulty increases every 2 weeks. Larger difficulty = slower mining = slightly less Credit's.

There have been several of us bumping against the 1 Billion Per Day Wall, several (not me) will start going over it today & some more in a few day's ... Really Ridiculous, it's like an Arm's Race, so & so got this Miner so they use that as an excuse that they have to keep up & get 2 more of them them selve's, then the other guy gets 2 more himself & so on. I'm seriously thinking about putting my ASIC's up for sale on E-bay & just go back to crunching CPU work which I enjoy much more than this Arm's Race going on now ...

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How happy and proud i was with the fact i will join an exclusive club by getting my first billion credits this Year with science only! Thats more then much who crunch nonsense distrgen and so on. Now every noob can get a billion in some days. Thats a hard kick in my ass even when i dont crunch for credits, but it was something parallel to the publications i was proud of and calculated on boinc and not folding :(

Like another mentioned, over 1M with a 330M usb stick. Lol so i could get additional >20M/day only change the asics to boinc. When this would work out, i would get a second hub with some asic monster only to reach 100M per day because this would make adicted because it is sooo unbelievable cheap to buy and to run them.....im sure much credits seeker out ther sell all of there distr/collaz gpus to get a tons of BU ascis.

1,5kw energy for my 1,4M per day against 2,5watt for a single low end asic. I have no problem with the fact it supports projects, thats a really good thing and idea, but not with this amount of credits. Im so shocked about the chart, soon it will destroy that pie before the year end because there are enough people out there like me who didnt get it to work immediatly on the first try (only wanted to look how much some rare workunits would bring to get a calculation about the possible amount per ghash per day) so they will join later.

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DSKAG Austria: http://www.dskag.at