CPU

SirArthurPT

I'd been trying to say that all this time. Also he seems to totally underestimated RandomX. The best you can achieve is about 200 kH/s in an AMD Epyc 9xxx series. This CPU cost about as much as a small car, $20.000. So to achieve his desired hashrate, ~5 GH/s, he needs about 25.000 of these CPUs. This means at least 12500 dual CPU servers, lets assume Gigabyte MZ72-HB0, brand new goes to around $5000 each. So CPUs alone we are talking about 500 million USD, motherboards 62.5 million USD, adding for small components such as RAM, we have over 600 million USD, then we need a massive amount of powerful PSUs and probably a nuclear power station nearby to feed all this datacenter. To this we need to add the setup of those 12.500 machines, eventual hardware failure and management, $1 billion wouldn't be enough. Whereas the Qubic marketcap is at about 250 million USD, not enough to buy even the CPUs. He probably thought to rent servers, however datacenters with these CPUs have AUP terms, so while he was calculating to have those machines mining XMR, the datacenter most likely disconnects them as AUP violation as CPU usage is way too high.

Desperate-Barnacle-4

Seems like a less secure version of a hot wallet? Private keys visible to CPU and clipboard etc on pc? Whatever you do don't use bitaddress. You can download https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ and run it offline. Suggest electrum if you want hot. Backup the seed in your brain or on steel. Simple. Or get a trezor and steel for colder.

CBpegasus

To the best of our knowledge and expectations, quantum computers won't "crack" SHA-256 at all. That doesn't mean the quantum threat does not exist - the main issue is ECDSA. The scenario grok refers to as "cracking" SHA-256 is being able to run Grover's search on it, which gives a quadratic advantage in search. That means that to fully reverse a hash (find a preimage that hash to a specific hash) you need to do around 2^128 steps instead of 2^256 - but that is still unfeasible to do, will take more than the age of the universe even if we assume the QC is as fast as the fastest processors today. The problem of finding collisions (two preimages that hash to the same thing) is a bit easier, takes 2^128 steps classically and 2^64 with Grover's search - that is still mostly unfeasible, but not quite "age of the universe" level and could maybe be done if we get quantum computers *very* fast. But even in this case, it's easy to just move to SHA-512. The issue which is unique to Bitcoin is mining. In mining the miners do a partial reversal of SHA-256 (trying to hit a range of preimages) which is just hard enough for the whole network to do it in 10 minutes. A quantum computer gets a quadratic advantage on that partial reversal too, and since mining is competetive it won't need to be extremely powerful to dominate. Still you would need a much more powerful quantum computer than we currently have or expect to have in the coming decades, and you can't even effectively "join forces" from several quantum computers because Grover's search doesn't parallelize well. So it looks like this isn't a concern for a while, but when it is it looks like it would change the landscape of mining significantly (much more than the CPU->GPU->ASIC transition), mostly for the worse it seems for decentralization and robustness. It's unclear if any kind of proof-of-work we know can work well with quantum. Anyway the real problem which is more pressing is the ECDSA signature scheme, which is what is used in Bitcoin to sign transactions using a private key, such that they can be verified with the public key. This signature scheme is thought to be possible to crack with quantum computers - going from public key to private key. Now there are modern algorithms which are thought to be quantum resistant, but there are some issues with moving Bitcoin to use them - you need people to willingly migrate to a quantum resistant wallet, as they need a new private key from the new algorithm. It's of course tough to rally everyone and for some it would not even be possible as they lost access to their keys. Quite a few of the early wallets whose public key is exposed would become "quantum loot" and there is some discussion over whether to let it be stolen or freeze those finds. Another issue is that the signatures in quantum resistant algorithms are much larger, and that's an issue with block space already being a premium.

CBpegasus

SHA-256 is not an encryption but a hash function, and it already is something that quantum computers cannot crack (to the best of our knowledge and expectations). The scenario grok refers to as "cracking" SHA-256 is being able to run Grover's search on it, which gives a quadratic advantage in search. That means that to fully reverse a hash (find a preimage that hash to a specific hash) you need to do around 2^128 steps instead of 2^256 - but that is still unfeasible to do, will take more than the age of the universe even if we assume the QC is as fast as the fastest processors today. The problem of finding collisions (two preimages that hash to the same thing) is a bit easier, takes 2^128 steps classically and 2^64 with Grover's search - that is still mostly unfeasible, but not quite "age of the universe" level and could maybe be done if we get quantum computers *very* fast. But even in this case, it's easy to just move to SHA-512. The issue which is unique to Bitcoin is mining. In mining the miners do a partial reversal of SHA-256 (trying to hit a range of preimages) which is just hard enough for the whole network to do it in 10 minutes. A quantum computer gets a quadratic advantage on that partial reversal too, and since mining is competetive it won't need to be extremely powerful to dominate. Still you would need a much more powerful quantum computer than we currently have or expect to have in the coming decades, and you can't even effectively "join forces" from several quantum computers because Grover's search doesn't parallelize well. So it looks like this isn't a concern for a while, but when it is it looks like it would change the landscape of mining significantly (much more than the CPU->GPU->ASIC transition), mostly for the worse it seems for decentralization and robustness. It's unclear if any kind of proof-of-work we know can work well with quantum. Anyway the real problem which is more pressing is the ECDSA signature scheme, which is what is used in Bitcoin to sign transactions using a private key, such that they can be verified with the public key. This signature scheme is thought to be possible to crack with quantum computers - going from public key to private key. Now there are modern algorithms which are thought to be quantum resistant, but there are some issues with moving Bitcoin to use them - you need people to willingly migrate to a quantum resistant wallet, as they need a new private key from the new algorithm. It's of course tough to rally everyone and for some it would not even be possible as they lost access to their keys. Quite a few of the early wallets whose public key is exposed would become "quantum loot" and there is some discussion over whether to let it be stolen or freeze those finds. Another issue is that the signatures in quantum resistant algorithms are much larger, and that's an issue with block space already being a premium.

arthurwolf

That's wrong though... The quantities are impressive, but not **that** impressive... 333k BTC is an **insane** number... I mined Bitcoin in the very early days of the project (like a few days after it first got around the nerd media circles like hackernews etc), and at the rate I mined at the time it would have taken me **a VERY long time** to get to 333k BTC... The 10 largest 2010-era wallets: | Rank | Address | BTC balance (unspent) | First-ever “In” | Last activity | Quick note | | ---- | ---------------------------------- | --------------------- | --------------- | ------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 1 | 12ib7dApVFvg82TXKycWBNpN8kFyiAN1dr | 31 000 BTC | 13 May 2010 | 24 Jul 2010 (last out); dormant since | Also known as **“Wallet 967.”** The biggest single early-miner hoard ([BitInfoCharts][1]) | | 2 | 12tkqA9xSoowkzoERHMWNKsTey55YEBqkv | 28 151 BTC | 5 Apr 2010 | Never spent | Never sent a single satoshi out ([BitInfoCharts][2]) | | 3 | 1PeizMg76Cf96nUQrYg8xuoZWLQozU5zGW | 19 414 BTC | 24 Jul 2010 | Dormant | Typical “one-way” consolidation of block rewards ([BitInfoCharts][3]) | | 4 | 1HLvaTs3zR3oev9ya7Pzp3GB9Gqfg6XYJT | 9 260 BTC | 18 Mar 2010 | Dormant | Nine thousand BTC mined in the spring of 2010 ([BitInfoCharts][4]) | | 5 | 167ZWTT8n6s4ya8cGjqNNQjDwDGY31vmHg | 8 999 BTC | 9 Aug 2010 | Dormant | Final large deposit came only two weeks after GPUs appeared ([BitInfoCharts][5]) | | 6 | 198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5qkfy4g3Hi | 8 000 BTC | 22 Feb 2009 | Dormant | Technically an even *earlier* CPU-mined stash from Bitcoin’s first month ([BitInfoCharts][6]) | | 7 | 15Z5YJaaNSxeynvr6uW6jQZLwq3n1Hu6RX | 7 941 BTC | 10 Apr 2010 | Last spent Oct 2010 | Only small change was ever moved ([BitInfoCharts][7]) | | 8 | 1FJuzzQFVMbiMGw6JtcXefdD64amy7mSCF | 6 999 BTC | 8 Nov 2010 | Dormant | Likely pooled rewards from late-2010 solo mining ([BitInfoCharts][8]) | | 9 | 1ALXLVNj7yKRU2Yki3K3yQGB5TBPof7jyo | 4 000 BTC | 24 Jul 2010 | Dormant | A neat 4 000 BTC collected in one afternoon of block hunting ([BitInfoCharts][9]) | | 10 | 1FvUkW8thcqG6HP7gAvAjcR52fR7CYodBx | 3 350 BTC | 7 Aug 2010 | Minimal outs in 2011 | One of the few early whales that *has* moved small amounts ([BitInfoCharts][10]) | Sources: [1]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/12ib7dApVFvg82TXKycWBNpN8kFyiAN1dr?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 12ib7dApVFvg82TXKycWBNpN8kFyiAN1dr" [2]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/12tkqA9xSoowkzoERHMWNKsTey55YEBqkv?utm_source=chatgpt.com "12tkqA9xSoowkzoERHMWNKsT..." [3]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1PeizMg76Cf96nUQrYg8xuoZWLQozU5zGW?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 1PeizMg76Cf96nUQrYg8xuoZWLQozU5zGW" [4]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1HLvaTs3zR3oev9ya7Pzp3GB9Gqfg6XYJT?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 1HLvaTs3zR3oev9ya7Pzp3GB9Gqfg6XYJT" [5]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/167ZWTT8n6s4ya8cGjqNNQjDwDGY31vmHg?utm_source=chatgpt.com "167ZWTT8n6s4ya8cGjqNNQjDw..." [6]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5qkfy4g3Hi?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5qkfy4g3Hi" [7]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/15Z5YJaaNSxeynvr6uW6jQZLwq3n1Hu6RX?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 15Z5YJaaNSxeynvr6uW6jQZLwq3n1Hu6RX" [8]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1FJuzzQFVMbiMGw6JtcXefdD64amy7mSCF?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 1FJuzzQFVMbiMGw6JtcXefdD64amy7mSCF" [9]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1ALXLVNj7yKRU2Yki3K3yQGB5TBPof7jyo?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 1ALXLVNj7yKRU2Yki3K3yQGB5TBPof7jyo" [10]: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1FvUkW8thcqG6HP7gAvAjcR52fR7CYodBx?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bitcoin Address 1FvUkW8thcqG6HP7gAvAjcR52fR7CYodBx"

Top_Mind9514

Technology is a “physical” thing/force/process, see CPU’s, GPU’s Motherboards, Servers, etc etc. BTC is a Digital Token, and Tokens, have been integrated into how “we” exist, how we function now and in the future, in conjunction WITH technology. Every single time that you login to a website, part of the authentication process is, issuing you a Token after your Identity has been verified. Tokens are not going away. They are an essential part of technology, now, and in the foreseeable future. BTC will NEVER Die or disappear, and if it does, so will WE ALL

mcgravier

Renting hardware was always issue when it comes to CPU mining. CPU coins were advertised as more decentralised ect. But the truth is that it just makes attack easier due to hardware universal - unlike ASICS it can be rented and sold after successful attack. IMO Monero should switch to ETH style PoS and be done with mining

5lipperySausage

Yeah, only CPU based mining orgs could do a 51%. Not sure if any of those he mentioned really have enough CPU hash, they mostly ASICs

ContentBlackberry0

What did satoshi mean by this in the white paper? “The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.” So if all the governments had attacker nodes the system is no longer secure?

trimalcus

just run your CPU

trimalcus

Some real data here : [https://gist.github.com/Rucknium/0873b10b6d36ff6c9d6f8f54107d16f7](https://gist.github.com/Rucknium/0873b10b6d36ff6c9d6f8f54107d16f7) They are most likely renting CPU hashrate and they have enough money to do so Furthermore they cannot reach more than 20% of the 24h mean global hashrate at the moment. There are only spikes during 1hour time frame

Hoserposerbro

Bitcoin uses ASICs. What made this possible was CPU mining.

Arbiter_89

I also like the tech and dislike shills. I tried mining BTC in 2011. People who were into it then had to at least partially be interested in the tech. (My mining didn't get very far. I was mining with a CPU just before CPU mining was becomming unprofitable.) I think there are more elements of Bitcoin that are offered fundamentally, but I think your example is a good reason to include it in a portfolio.

Particular-Honey-487

I met a dude once that sold bitcoin in person for cash. He said that he had been doing it for a long time so I asked him how much he bought for and he said $10. He could see that I was immediately star struck and in awe. Then he followed with the statement, “Ya, when it hit $20 I had doubled my money so I sold it all” i’m not sure how much he bought but I would guess in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. I agree with OP, nobody knew what this was going to turn into. The first price I ever remember was $2. I used to mine about .1 BTC and merge mine Namecoin. At the same time, my CPU was mining Litecoin. I lost it all to donations and Satoshi dice and butterfly labs. When I hit $99 I felt like I had missed the boat so I threw in the towel and bought 1 BTC and left the space. When it hits $700 my ex hit me up and asked me if I still had the bitcoin that I had mind when we were together because she wanted to split it because she needed money. I sold it and sent her $350, and spent my half. I don’t start buying again until it was running up to $20k. No matter what, it’s probably always too early to sell but we all do what we’ve got to do.

PoisonWaffle3

And to think, I profitably mined BTC on the CPU and a pair of GPUs in a gaming PC back in 2011 😅

xnergy5

Privacy-focused Monero is facing what appears to be an attempted network takeover by former top mining pool Qubic, prompting community backlash and concerns over hashrate centralization. As of Monday, Qubic had fallen from the top spot on the Monero XMR $246.33 mining pool rankings to seventh, according to MiningPoolStats data. After the community noticed the pool looked to be openly performing a network takeover, the pool’s hashrate plummeted until it fell into its current position as the seventh-largest XMR mining pool. In a June 30 blog post, Qubic revealed that it had begun incentivizing Monero CPU mining via its own network. The mined XMR would then be used to fund buybacks and token burns for the Qubic ecosystem. “QUBIC miners now perform real-world tasks (Monero mining) that generate real market value, which in turn strengthens the QUBIC economy,” the post stated. Sergey Ivancheglo, founder of crypto projects Qubic, NXT and Iota, has admitted that his Qubic network was staging a takeover of the Monero network. In a recent X post, he said that after getting control of most of the network’s hashrate, Qubic would reject the blocks mined by other pools.

coinfeeds-bot

tldr; Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, is facing an attempted network takeover by Qubic, a former top mining pool. Qubic incentivized Monero CPU mining to fund its ecosystem, with founder Sergey Ivancheglo admitting plans to control most of Monero's hashrate and reject blocks from other pools. This raised concerns over centralization and network security. However, Qubic's hashrate has since dropped significantly. Ivancheglo claims the attack is a test for countermeasures against future threats, but critics warn of risks to Monero's decentralization and integrity. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.

Charming-Designer944

I see no real story other than the BTC value. Then gained value is beyond where they need to care any more and they have no meaningful reason to stay in btc. It makes no real difference to them if BTC sees another 10x run, or if it falls back to 1/3 of its current value. Most of the early Bitcoiners were geeks,.playing around with this new "digital gold" which you could mine almost for free using spare CPU cycles on your computer and send to other geeks. It is not like.they consciously invested in something they expected to grow by 25000000% in 15 years. At the time it was a fun gimmick, worth nothing. Over the years those geeks have grown up. A couple of them have become bitcoiners and are running Bitcoin related businesses, many starting with mining and then expanding into Blockchain ventures. But many are likely much the same geeks they were but now with a family. And priorities in life shifts. Most of those who became bitcoiners have invested their coins with the hope to.generate more coins. Some quite successfully so, others losing most of their coins. Some selling parts of their coins living of Bitcoin while still getting richer in fiat terms. But I think you will find a significant amount of whales who have simply been "sleeping". Involved with Bitcoin in the early days, got burnt a couple of times, and lost interest. Built a life doing something fun. Keeping most of their Bitcoin as a memory, and possibly even scared by the increase in value not daring to touch them. And now realizing they do not need to care about money ever again.

StackingFiat

Pretty sure this convo is the reason for the post. Talking with an alter ego about how he can magically recover coins that can’t exist in hope that other people contact him. The whole story is BS. Buying BTC in 2009? BS -> you could easily CPU mine and get hundreds if not thousands of coins in days/weeks. There also was no market, no price. That is why Pizza Day was so monumental -> first time BTC had real confirmed value. There just was no seed phrase in 2009. The idea wasn’t just in anybody’s head. Even after it was introduced people were careful. People talk about custom wallets in electrum. What electrum? Electrum was first released in 2011 as there was no infrastructure and absolutely no need to not use anything else than Bitcoin Core. Downloading the blockchain took a couple of minutes and if you wanted to mine which was standard back in the day you didn’t have a choice (I am not really sure if there was anything else come to think of it). PLEASE do not contact anybody in this conversation if you are having problems with your wallet. Post a Reddit thread.

OneFormal4075

It's not strangely common at all, thousands and thousands of people mined or used BTC back then, some of held some have been in prison, some locked it away in ways where they can't even access their keys for X amount of years, smart. Some people find old devices or come across old emails etc where they suddenly remember passwords to old devices. People inherit or find old devices from dead relatives and family members etc. There's loads and loads of reasons, nothing strange going on at all. Yes 2000 BTC sounds like a lot now, but back then when it was <$2 we would often send an extra 10 BTC to make sure the receiver received enough lol. $1m-$2m tips. 🤣🤣🤣 Remember in the early early CPU days top end CPUs was getting you 200+ BTC per hour lol Good luck you're still early. Dca and hold.

Interesting_Loss_907

Nice post. I think a lot of of us have similar regrets about decisions we made related to BTC. Have to correct 1 point though OP: In 2015 there was no way that he was using laptops to mine BTC. By 2015 all mining was from ASICs. In fact, CPU mining was already dead by 2011.

coinfeeds-bot

tldr; Hackers have infected over 3,500 websites with cryptojacking malware that uses visitors' browsers to mine Monero without consent. The campaign, uncovered by cybersecurity firm c/side, employs stealthy techniques like throttling CPU usage and hiding traffic in WebSocket streams to avoid detection. This resurgence of cryptojacking focuses on long-term access and passive income, repurposing old infrastructure from past Magecart campaigns. The malware targets server and web app owners rather than directly stealing crypto wallets. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.

BruceAENZ

Whilst this is a core feature of Bitcoin, I had no idea it was the case when I set up ky first node, mined Bitcoin on mu CPU, deleted everything to save storage space, brought BTC at the peak in 2017, tried to trade it, got wrecked, then - finally - learned that BTC has a fixed supply. It took until the 2021 peak - when I brought back in again - to realise there was a halving cycle LOL.

slash_networkboy

I sold at $100 "because it's gonna pop and I'm getting mine while I can" (I had been burned by eGold in the dot com bubble). Still have the truck I bought (used) with the 150 BTC I didn't even pay for: CPU mined back at a former employer's lab... machines were on 24/7 but the lab was an 8-5 lab so I just set them up to mine overnight to a wallet on a shared drive.

Radiokot1

1. Your smartphone has various interfaces, radio and physical, through which it can be hacked 2. It is never offline. It is connected to cell towers even without a SIM card 3. You can't neither control nor verify the software running on your smartphone. Beside the main OS, it has proprietary closed-source code running in radio chips 4. If it is an old smartphone never connected to the Internet, it doesn't have the latest security updates for the operating system and could probably be hacked in 0 clicks by simply connecting it to a computer 5. All the cryptographic operations are done in a general purpose CPU On the other hand: 1. Hardware wallet is a bare minimum device designed specifically for signing transactions, it doesn't have unnecessary unsafe interfaces 2. You can verify the software running on it 3. A hardware wallet uses a dedicated secure chip to store the keys and do the signing

Defiant_disco_4062

I think we are saying the same thing, brother/sister. You're right, in 100 years a very hardworking person will never get close to what the CPU guy mined in 2010. Same applies to most people today, esp those who haven't seen the need to start stacking. But you know what 100 year guy stands a better chance of having with bitcoin? Fair value for his hardwork, in his time 100 years from now, whatever that looks like.

Grand-Button5819

>In an (or maybe I should say 'my') "ideal" world, the amount of value a person has or controls should be roughly equal to the amount of work they've put in, in whatever form - physically, mentally, creatively, etc. While I agree with your sentiment and I'm very much pro-Bitcoin, I don't think Bitcoin fits your worldview too well. If Bitcoin succeeds, in 100 years you could be the hardest working, most creative person to ever have lived and you'll never get even close to what some random dude pulled CPU mining back in 2010 if he managed to hold on to it. You wouldn't even get close to the guy who put $120k today and got a whole coin for it. I think you vastly underestimate the luck factor (right place, right time, right mindset) in the wealth game.

Money-Society3148

Old heads are making the money moves. It's just a fact. When I say "old heads" I just mean age. There are plenty of older people who are intelligent enough to understand tech because sometimes they were part of it's development. I mean how far deep do you want to go down the roots of tech. The transistor? The CPU? The Internet? Ethernet? SHA-256? A lot of tech was created by older engineers. Now, I do agree with what you said about old folk not so quick to accept new technology. That caution is because of experience where an unproven tech has cost millions of dollars. Most of the time the stubbornness from old folk comes from the financial side. A lot of old people worked very hard for their money to just toss it out on an unproven technology. The dotcom bubble siphoned out a lot of older people's money and that experience made them cautiously skeptical. It's just the experience talking really - don't take it personal.

MandelbrotFace

"mined on CPU" 😁 ... Oh to have caught that wave

UtahJohnnyMontana

You are assuming, based on present knowledge, that you would have gone big into Bitcoin 8 years ago, but most people didn't do that. Odds are, you would have done something else. I knew about Bitcoin in 2010, when I could have still done CPU mining and I didn't do anything more than read the whitepaper. I watched it for six more years after that and didn't buy any. And then I started to buy it very slowly at a time when I still could have afforded to go big. You know about it know and it is still likely to be one of the best performing assets for quite a while. All that you have to do is work hard and lock away those savings.

SpaceFaceMistake

Nope. Why? It won’t ever happen and even if it does as an example from today $123k so far ATH. Drops in a week or month rather down to say 90k in a week then $30k by 1 month. And sits stable. That’s not a ISSUE for companies especially those for long term or mooong companies it’s not ever about the now. I mean the only thing about Now is “DO WE BUY MORE” or “DO WE ADD MORE MINING RIGS KOW FOR $USD” pay that off and earn more $btc that overshadows $USD value since one is inherently stable yet has no supply cap. Cash can be printed and Bitcoin cannot and it’s a VOLATILE market but it’s a very rigid supply of exactly what there is to be mined which ends or will be all mined around 2146 or something. Even if humans aren’t here or we are Smart Humans rigged with AI or it’s just a CPU world it will be mined. Then when it’s all mined $BTC owners and big companies will have massive leverage on the market due to early inception like us now. Don’t miss it but when it drops when there is FEAR that it won’t go back up.  Listen I’ve been here from the $1 stage I saw it go to $100 and back to $20 then up to $500 back to $80 then up to 6k down to $600 then up to $20k down to $3k then up to $69k down to $17k up to $123k Today.  Look at and follow the 200W or D MA that’s on ugh Blockchain the chart section when on $BTC. Shows how we are only half way to peak of this cycle. Anticipate this in October. GL all! 

metinota

If I remember this right, 2011 was back in the era when you would mine bitcoin using your computer's CPU with what is now called the **Bitcoin Core** client. There should be a file called **wallet.dat** on that hard drive that contains the private keys needed to "move" or transfer the bitcoin. If you lose that file, you lose access to the bitcoin. Bitcoin Core from that era did *not* encrypt the wallet.dat file, but your friend's father may have encrypted it some other way to keep it safe. See if you can find the wallet.dat file by mounting the hard drive to a computer not connected to the internet. Better if it's a freshly installed OS that has never been connected to the internet. You don't want malware stealing a copy of that file. In parallel to this, install Bitcoin Core on your computer and it will set up a new, empty wallet. Learn how to buy bitcoin on an exchange and move the bitcoin into and out of this wallet. This becomes your learning platform where you can make mistakes and not lose big. When you've learned enough, you can then start working with the really valuable ancient wallet.dat file (on a fresh computer). When you open Bitcoin Core and have it use this file, it will show you the transaction history and bitcoin balance that it holds. Good luck and be patient!

314stache_nathy

Monero is PoW and only-CPU

jabootiemon

Genuinely shocking. Bitcoin highlights the lack of knowledge in people in terms of CPU’s and money.

420osrs

You can't mind Bitcoin on a phone at a speed that would generate any money whatsoever. You can mine a CPU coin on the phone and specifically I did this at one point to pay for my VPN but the phone only made $5 in 30 days. If you try to install a product that  "shares bandwidth" What you are actually running is something that lets other people use your connection for at best click fraud / ai scraping and at worst unlawful content. This can get you blocked by Cloudflare and a bunch of other CDNs when you start sending out a bunch of bullshit traffic. Do not install this. It can have legal consequences for you. Do not install this. So anyway, the overall thing is if you have an old pixel you can make two dollars a month, mining a CPU coin, and then swap it to Bitcoin, which honestly will not even cover the five or so Watts the phone uses. And even if it did, it's $2. Lmao. 

HodlVitality

Personally I think dca (bit by bit) might be a safer play while Bitcoin is near all time high. Although since the projected end game is Bitcoin price far surpassing 100k, it doesn’t matter too much. Strike is good. Just make sure your id is verified and you’re able to withdraw. A cold wallet is the only way to go for long term storage. I use Jade in stateless mode, much like a seedsigner hardware wallet. Mining is now primarily run on specialized ASIC hardware, not CPU or GPU in your computer. And you’d need a lot of asic and near free electricity to see any profitability, but something like bitaxe is a fun lottery miner.

gundamxxg

I lost a hard drive with a wallet that had roughly 150BTC on it that I mined in the beginning with a CPU, back when that was still a thing. Have no clue where that drive ended up, but it’s likely with all the other stuff I lost in like 2013 :/

kipha01

Choosing to do SETI @ HOME over Bitcoin back when you could run it off a CPU/GPU.

Cassiopee38

With a spare CPU xD

armaver

2008. I could have fucking mined with my CPU if I just read a few more sentences before clicking away.

ArthurBurtonMorgan

What you’re seeing is front running bots. 1/2 the cause of all the rug pulls you guys suffer from trying to trade shit coins. When you’re ready to get in on the ground floor of a real project, PM me. It’s live, it’s CPU mineable, and it’s built on proven technology. No bullshit involved. Mine it right now on a dusty old laptop and hit blocks. Isn’t even exchange listed yet.

314stache_nathy

If Monero be illegal, I will be a criminal heh  Monero is descentralized and Open-source, nah, they don't can destroy Monero, Monero is anti-fragibility.  How buy Monero: Use Retoswap.com, Cyphergoat, Trocador.app and Serai.excharge in future. How mine Monero: Use your CPU + P2Pool or solo mining (or creat your mining pool, all there opcional turns Monero more descenfralized). How store Monero: Use Monerujo or Feather Wallet + Sidekick or Anonero.  (And have wallets that use a Pen-drive with TailsOS).  see more in r/Monero and Monero.eco

314stache_nathy

Buy Monero in DEXs like Retoswap.com or mine with your CPU with P2Pool. And have Cyphergoat and Trocador.app 

Head_Performance2432

Excuse me for being ignorant, I just made a suggestion with Stratum V2, I didn't mean to be an ass either. So take this below with a GRAIN OF SALT. I am focusing on the hash rate part All I know, is Stratum V2 is going to reshape the way it works with choosing a pool, as a noob I could be wrong though...that's why I did not go further into details. I am not here to mislead someone... Tbh, and I don't think an AI will help about what you're asking as to "Why do people keep mining in those gigantic pools?" As a general rule : People don't like to be the first mover, and they do not want to take risk of being separated from the mass but once it has started, domino effect will come into play...if you ask me... My personal research leads me to THINK : A pool holds many individual miners that are free to unplug, so how could they gather to rewrite the blockchain, as you suggest ? So I personally will not worry, since energy is well distributed on the planet, there will always be miners of last resort, (be an individual, another pool of miners, countries). The way I see mining is more a moving game theory, and even pools could fail if they do not manage correctly their activity. Why not imaging States mining in the future competing with each other (rendering today's pools obsolete ?) Even considering this : if Moore's law hits a limit, the deflationary aspect of the economy might make profitable for the pleb to mine on their own (cheaper Asics) as it was intended from the start (CPU) and leading to more decentralization. Unpopular Opinion : I am not an AI fan for doing research, I prefer spending time to "understand" topics and fill in the blanks if needed, it is very time intensive though ! TL, DR : I am not an AI fan and I don't know if I can help you further

PoisonWaffle3

I mined 5 BTC with my gaming PC in 2011, when BTC was $2-3 USD/BTC. I mined on the Core2 Quad CPU itself, and both GPUs (a Radeon HD 6870 and a Radeon HD 4670), and was part of a mining pool that took 2% off the top and paid out the rest a few times a day. I thought that BTC was going nowhere and sold what I had in my Mt God account for about $10 in November 2011, right before I went to prison for six years. When I got out of prison in 2017 I found that I still had 1.15 BTC left in my wallet.dat on the PC. I moved it to a more modern wallet and sold some of it (at about $10k USD/BTC to help pay fines/debts. I sold some more about five years later at around $60k USD/BTC to help build a house. I still have 0.1 BTC left in that wallet that I don't think I'll ever sell. At the end of 2022 when BTC crashed down to $15k I bought a whole coin and change and have that in another wallet. We're doing pretty great overall, but I really regret selling that BTC at under $3 in 2011 😅

eharmanli

You're absolutely right — realistically, scanning such huge ranges on a phone isn't practical. Mobile apps like mine are more for learning, experimentation, and exploring how keyhunt-style scanning works. In real-world puzzle-solving, tools like KeyHunt (CPU-based) or BitCrack (CUDA/GPU-based) on desktops are statistically far more capable. **For example:** 📱 Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite → \~100 keys/second 📱 Poco X3 Pro → around 3–4× faster than that (\~300–400 keys/second) On a modern PC with proper GPU support, you can easily reach millions of keys per second. So yeah — the mobile version isn’t for serious cracking, but it helps visualize and test ideas while on the go But hey — maybe you're just *really* lucky 🍀 Might be worth a try, right?

314stache_nathy

I would say that Monero (XMR) is necessary so that you can protect yourself from a possible authoritarian government and to save your finances for the future, Monero is untraceable and fungible, I recommend that you take a look at the website Getmonero. org to find out more about Monero, some methods of acquiring it are: CPU mining (Monero is easy to CPU mine thanks to its algorithm, I recommend you use P2Pool), buying through DEXs such as RetoSwap, Basicswap, UnstoppableSwap (and in the future through Serai.excharge), you can also sell things for Monero through XMRBaazar for example, plus there's TradeOgre (all these methods are non-KYC). Call me if you have any questions!

sgrinavi

Some friends and I have a small CPU farm, RN we're on TIG - it's paying the bills, but not much more. You have to scan daily to keep up - try to find something that's about to launch, prepare, follow and mine the hell out of it for a couple of days. You might get lucky and make bank. I made $20k off octa in two days of mining and about the same from IXI over a longer period. Be prepared to HODL. Shit is out there, you have be patient and willing to hodl.

Amber_Sam

>GTA 7 In 2040? You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. On a serious note, I believe the size will eventually get bigger. Not sure when though. Many people including myself have PTSD from [the Blocksize War](https://youtu.be/6YtS5ZNuuTw) and it'll take a lot of effort to do it right but it eventually gets done. Now, it isn't only about the cost of a drive, bigger blocks will need more CPU, RAM and faster internet connection. So the cost of running a node will get higher. But once we see the ability to run a node on cheap android (or hopefully Linux) phones, the size increase will make much more sense. Note to the bcash shills reading this, thinking why not using their shitty fork instead. Because the vast majority of the network will have to agree on the increase. Not a scammer Roger posting a tweet about the hardfork. That's not how decentralized system works. And yes, your dying shitcoin will be obsolete.

lohmatij

There are smart ways to implement it. Currently there are around 170 million UTXO. If you use hash map with a relatively short hashes (RipeMD160/sha256) you can achieve around 5-10 billion checks a second on a modern 32 core CPU (AMD EPYC). Hash map will occupy around 20GB of memory.

Severe-Masterpiece61

That post is extremely misleading Super-computer are general-purpose CPU/GPU that can do many kind of theoretical calculation while the BTC network is only composed of rig incapable of doing anything besides computing the SHA256 hash of a string Your chart compares two completely different things

Extra-Virus9958

Full bullshit Bitcoin ASICs are ultra-specialized chips that ONLY do SHA-256 hashing. That’s it. They can’t do addition, multiplication, handle RAM, or literally anything else. It’s like comparing an electric can opener to a Swiss Army knife and saying “look, the can opener is 1000x faster at opening cans!” Yeah, but that’s all it does. A modern supercomputer can execute billions of different instructions per second, run complex scientific calculations, physics simulations, machine learning… The entire Bitcoin network wouldn’t even be able to properly emulate a single CPU core due to network latency. So yeah, technically the Bitcoin network processes more TeraFLOPS… but for ONE cryptographic operation only. It’s like saying a factory that only makes bottle caps is “more productive” than a car factory because it outputs more units per hour. This impressive-looking metric means absolutely nothing in practice. It’s just basic crypto marketing to impress people who don’t understand the tech. This comparison is completely bogus IMO.

Desperate-Low5201

That dude developed GPU mining of Bitcoin and did the 10,000 thing many times over... Around 70,000 Bitcoin... He had mined so much Bitcoin that Satoshi was bothered about it and as such Laszlo did some heavy spending... Redistribution so to speak...  Pizza guy was on a very short list of top Bitcoin people back then.  He knew the significance and documented it.  He certainly didn't realize the future value significance!   He is largely credited for having started some frame of reference of value for Bitcoin!  Beyond expanding from CPU mining.

Original-Assistant-8

The one that is titled "A Peer to Peer electronic cash system ?" It was not intended to be like gold. But I'd be curious where in the white paper you are confidently referring. Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

Familiar_Drawer6125

I cant find any tool that can check passwords with GPU. I use btcrecover but it use CPU and its very slow 1000 p/s. The GPU option in btcrecover doesnt work for me/my wallet. Any suggestion for gpu tool besides hashcat?

asakura67

100% CPU means 100% fans. I tried this back in 2010 and this was a fucking boing screaming in my chamber.

ArthurBurtonMorgan

Imagine a desktop tower PC from 2008-2009 or so running 100% across both CPU cores 24/7. Fans screaming at full speed incessantly. That’s not tolerable for most people, as most people expect their machines to be whisper quiet the majority of the time.

jeffbeck67

How fake can that be ? MIning was done on CPU back then.

ostracize

First heard about it on Slashdot in 2011. Didn't give it much attention because: 1. Eats up CPU cycles with unlikely benefits (at least protein folding seemed more useful) 2. P2P. Didn't like the idea of randos connecting to me and eating up my precious bandwidth 3. The blockchain was already eating up a fair bit of disk space. Didn't want to give up my hard drive for that 4. It seemed like a more complicated version of a service Paypal was already offering Kept tabs on it over the next few years. I started to recognize the value but Mt. Gox was sketchy AF. Silk Road held appeal to me and didn't seem likely to ever be of use. I was right on both fronts there.

927xks

Check out the original white paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Original website: https://web.archive.org/web/20090131115053/http://bitcoin.org/ "Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without the burdens of going through financial institutions. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as honest nodes control the most CPU power on the network, they can generate the longest chain and outpace any attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcasted on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone." -bitcoin.org, 2009

trimalcus

You can find this post to help on how to get XMR https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/s/nTOOin13JR Also it is easy to mine XMR with a CPU running in the background

daynomate

I needed 1BTC to pay for membership to a newzbin search service. It was $10 ! Naaah I thought. Can’t be assed. Would have taken a month to mine on my CPU (!!) at the time.

Charming-Designer944

Solo mining is not really helping the network, or yourself. The chances of ever hitting a block is far too small on the thinnest edge of nonexistant. Better to join a pool that i ethically in line with your goals so you have a chance of getting your voice heard and helping diversifying the mining and direction of the network. The network needs - transparency in transactions policies - transparency in miner voting procedures - miners taking part in the voting - well connected bitcoin nodes with sufficient RAM and CPU for relaying transactions and blocks - well connected Bitcoin nodes with storage for whole Blockchain to seed new nodes joining the network - public electrum servers - more users running their own electrum servers shielding their wallet privacy It is quite sad that then Bitcoin Core have killed the idea of SPV. While I understand the reasoning, SPV Bloom filters have great potential compared to.Electrum. I much rather had seen the above list include the option to run a SPV enabled node (bloom filters + txindex) but today that is not a viable option for BTC.

Exotic_Jaguar7626

#SickandBullish Come and check out our cult and fun vibe in the Tg channel. Fully transparent and doxxed dev (Josh) almost never sleeps. Some say that when he sleeps, his hands are still writing code and that the CPU of his desktop is cooled by the tears of a Sick Buffalo.

ardyes

The CPU compute can be used for anything really. At one stage it was estimated that QUBIC had more compute than el Capitan the fastest super computer in the world. With that kind of compute it can be outsourced to companies to do whatever work they want. 

snoretech

That is the whole idea. You can't train an AI with ASICs. The purpose is to collect most CPU compute and use it to train QUBIC's own AI and not rely on Nvidia GPUs supply bottlenecks. Everyone can mine with a CPU.

i_be_jeffers

Is it cool to mine Monero on free CPU time? Think it’s posible to take over the network?

Unique_Astronaut_567

Vitalik has already gone against Trumps views multiple times and wants nothing to do with him or his party. Now lets be honest, nobody here is for the tech and were all here to make money. Solana or any other chain will jump to kiss the ring and get the mega pump that Eth should receive. Vitalik is to autistic to play ball and needs to get better at public affairs. BTC has Sailor and Eth needs someone to push the narrative forward. The 5k/10k narrative can be real, but Eth really needs someone that can push that narrative to the public. right now "BTC is digital gold" is the easiest sell. For Eth to hit 5k/10k you need to be able to sell it without explaining blockchains and layer2 solutions to the masses. People invest heavily in Nvidia but can not explain what a GPU does or how it differs from a CPU.

Unique_Astronaut_567

Vitalik has already gone against Trumps views multiple times and wants nothing to do with him or his party. Now lets be honest, nobody here is for the tech and were all here to make money. Solana or any other chain will jump to kiss the ring and get the mega pump that Eth should receive. Vitalik is to autistic to play ball and needs to get better at public affairs. BTC has Sailor and Eth needs someone to push the narrative forward. The 5k/10k narrative can be real, but Eth really needs someone that can push that narrative to the public. right now "BTC is digital gold" is the easiest sell. For Eth to hit 5k/10k you need to be able to sell it without explaining blockchains and layer2 solutions to the masses. People invest heavily in Nvidia but can not explain what a GPU does or how it differs from a CPU.

easily_erased

A) due to its restrictions it doesn't have the kind of futures/derivatives markets of other bluechip alts which tend to lead to manipulation/trend reversion properties B) it is more quantum resistant than other cryptos (even if the threat is overstated). the devs also have a culture of innovation/regular hard forks which could adapt to potential crisis C) mining is much more democratized due to an ASIC-resistant mining algo--anybody can still mine XMR with an average CPU. this relieves some sell pressure as big players aren't selling to fund huge energy intensive operations D) many people see the writing on the wall when it comes to censorship in the West. other cryptos have reasonable privacy features (LTC with MWEB) but Monero is the gold standard. Many bright devs made their way over to XMR from BTC and it fulfills BTC's original ethos in many ways go ahead, buy some XMR 😎 cake wallet makes it super easy to swap from LTC or whatever, no exchange necessary

xnergy5

Exactly. The fact that they’re still far from maxing out CPU utilization shows how much untapped potential there is. Once full utilization kicks in — not even counting future CPU inflow or algo tweaks — 500–800 MH/s is absolutely within reach. Add Tari merge mining and potential GPU deployment, and it's clear this could easily go over 50% of Monero's hashrate. It’s not just about mining rewards anymore. At that scale, the influence extends to consensus and long-term network dynamics. Don’t sleep on this.

nstratz

Is it far fetched? Just make sure you give miners highest revenue versus others. In Qubic this is possible because PoW for the network itself is not needed for its security directly. Qubic is interested in both CPU and GPU computing power. ASICs make no sense because algorithm will change very often. Regular hardwire will win, see it as BOINC but with profits. Anyone can now mine with your (idle) home computer and get some profit.

Strong_Camp2695

Looking at the Qubic discord it seems they chose to mine XMR because its was one of the most complex to try and mine via POW and CfB stated if it was successful they would be able to mine any coin and also because it's heavily CPU mining.  Apprantly there's a planned algorithm change in a month which will significant increase hashrate in favour of CPU mining rather than GPU.  I've seen on X multiple posts over the last week where the hashrate has increased from 40mhs to now 150mhs. Its impressive to say the least and is looking more profitable than mining any other coins. 

arjum-mandal

Using idle CPU time to mine Monero can be seen as efficient resource use but it risks breaching user trust if not transparently disclosed. Even small deviations from a platforms original mission can hurt its credibility. Reaching 51% hash rate on Monero is highly unlikely without massive coordinated infrastructure.

John_Tuba

The man that bought the pizza was Laszlo Hanyecz. Most people today, even Bitcoiners, don’t know that name, but he was the first miner to use a GPU (rather than a CPU).

Bubble_2009C

This man is famous for those two pizza, but this man wrote the first code to mine btc with GPU instead CPU. Good pizza day to everyone

digital__bits

Why is it not decentralized? I can run a mining node from my computer and it doesn't require an ASIC or powerful GPU, just my CPU and I'm contributing to the network. It is cash because it is fungible and works like paper money. No one is going to know my transactions history or any other information.

trimalcus

It can only be mined with CPU. RandomX is Asics resistant and quantum proof in some aspects

PoisonWaffle3

I started mining BTC on my gaming PC (with a mining pool) in 2011. It was profitable to mine on the CPU and on both GPUs, and over a period of about 6 months I had mined about 5 BTC, worth about $2-3 each. Everyone I talked to about it at the time was interested in the blockchain tech itself, and about how it could disrupt the entire finance industry. Sure we were making some money with our gaming PCs, but it was small change and we had no idea how valuable it would become. I ended up spending 6 years in prison (late 2011 to late 2017) so I was forced to HODL for that time. In 2020-2021 I sold a good chunk of my BTC ($30k-60k range) and put it toward building a house. It's crazy that we're in the $110k range now, but it looks like we still have a long ways to go before we hit the top. I wish I'd mined or bought more BTC way back then, but I'm still grateful that I've done as well as I have with it. I'm still a whole coiner 😎

nutinknow

The timing is really good actually. Akash does CPU compute, some others & Nvidia ofc doing GPU compute, so I could see Acurast could pick up a monopoly on mobile compute. Big for local AI inference, key to privacy, also on trend.

ItsAllAMissdirection

It won't be much, the oc will be loud and hot if you do. CPU mining is monero, you could use other coins but that would be the best overall imo GPU, Fark not much there and not for your situation. The PC will be slower to use if you mine and dual mine. Not worth it tbh.

Objective_Hawk_2721

I heard about the wear on Hardware, but isnt it pretty much Limited to the GPU ? Thought thw CPU would be much more resistent to wear Like that

RefrigeratorLow1259

Check out : https://bitvmx.org/ BitVMX is a protocol designed for trustless, bridgeless interactions on the Bitcoin network. It enables a virtual CPU to optimistically execute arbitrary programs, which can be used to facilitate various functionalities, including trustless bridges. Here's a breakdown of how BitVMX relates to trustless bridgeless transfers: * Trustless Bridges: BitVMX is designed to build trust-minimized and permissionless bridges, as seen with the UNION bridge connecting Bitcoin and Rootstock. These bridges aim to eliminate the need for central authorities or intermediaries by using cryptographic proofs and dispute-resolution mechanisms inherent in the BitVMX protocol. * Bridgeless Interactions: The core concept of BitVMX is to enable complex computations and verifications directly on the Bitcoin layer without requiring assets to be moved to another chain. This suggests the possibility of "bridgeless" interactions in the sense that you're not necessarily transferring assets to a separate blockchain to engage in different functionalities. Instead, the logic and verification happen within the Bitcoin ecosystem itself. * How it Works: BitVMX uses a challenge-response system where a "prover" executes a program, and "verifiers" can challenge the result if they suspect it's incorrect. The protocol uses hash chains of program traces to simplify the verification process. In case of a dispute, a specific part of the computation can be checked on-chain. * UNION Bridge Example: The UNION bridge between Bitcoin and Rootstock leverages BitVMX's dispute-resolution model. Users can lock BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain, and an equivalent amount of RBTC (on Rootstock) is released. This allows users to interact with DeFi applications on Rootstock using their Bitcoin, with the process secured by the trustless mechanisms of BitVMX. In summary, BitVMX is a technology that enables the creation of trustless bridges and facilitates trustless interactions within the Bitcoin ecosystem, potentially leading to "bridgeless" functionalities where the need to move assets to other chains is minimized or eliminated for certain use cases. The development and adoption of BitVMX are ongoing, with initiatives like BitVMX FORCE aiming to standardize and enhance its capabilities for the Bitcoin network.

polymath_uk

The first disruptive thing I'd do with a sufficiently powerful quantum CPU is destroy the entire financial system by stealing every penny from everyone's bank account. I'd lose interest in crypto at that point.

ArticMine

>Its not about the bandwidth , more about the blockchain size. keeping decentralization gets difficult with extreme blocksizes. have to balance the trilemma. what say you monerofolk Actually bandwidth is the greatest limitation to scaling extreme blocksizes because unlike flash memory and CPU processing power it is not simple for consumers and small business to purchase additional bandwidth.

castorfromtheva

Setup Umbrel as a dedicated Bitcoin Server with Bitcoin/Lightning only stuff. Don't mix it up with other home server things, but use a different machine for these things. Security-wise it's better to reduce the attack surface, that's why. Other than that Umbrel works quite well and it's really stable. Go with a 2Tbyte SSD for the bitcoin things though. Make sure to have at least 8 gigs of RAM, 16 still better. Also make sure your CPU is at least a generation 6. CPU. I am testing different Bitcoin node suites for some years already. If you have further questions feel free to head back here.

Decent-Vermicelli232

Bitcoin's network will become insecure within 20 years because of it's failed security budget. Transaction fees will not provide enough financial incentive to continue mining and securing the network. Monero on the other hand, with it's energy efficient CPU mining and tail emission, will continue the provide the financial incentive required to secure it's network indefinitely.

johanngr

I can explain it very easily. It is all built on the innovation to control a computer platform by majority vote. Just like your country is controlled by majority vote. "Crypto currency" is only hard to understand because people misrepresent it. In your country, you elect a government that is the central authority for a "block" of 4 years (the alternative is to always have the same central authority, i.e., a king or dictator). In "blockchain", a "central authority" is elected each "block" of N units of time (10 minutes in Bitcoin). The alternative there too is to *always have the same central authority* and this is how all computer platforms so far have worked, i.e., they are equivalent to a "king" or "dictator" in terms of control. The election of the central authority is by a sort of "indirect majority vote", based on how many "votes" you have (how much CPU power in Bitcoin or how much coins in Ethereum, and in the future, how many people-votes you have) you have a probability of being elected the next "block". In nation-state, it is instead the one with the most votes always, but in "blockchain" you instead have a chance of being "elected" even if you just have a small number of all "votes" but it is less likely.

hopefully_human

Monero is a great CPU minable coin but, isn't usually profitable unless u have free electricity. But It is the cheapest way to buy monero and the best way to support the network. Also if ur looking to build a rig for it yesteryears epyc cpus can be gotten for pretty cheap on ebay and for a few hundred dollars u can get a pretty good hash rate.

castorfromtheva

That's a generation 4 CPU. Don't go with that one. It's too slow and too energy hungry.

not420guilty

Monero is mined by CPU so you don’t need any special hardware, any pc will work!

castorfromtheva

Get a used Lenovo Tiny or a Dell Optiplex Micro with a CPU at least generation 6. CPU (smallest would be 6100t), 8 Gigs of RAM, better 16 but not necessary, and a 2 TB SSD. This will make you future proof for at least 5 years and will cost you just around 200 bucks. Umbrel will run very well on this machine, no matter which Bitcoin services (Lightning, Electrum Server, LNbits, own mempool.space, BTCPayServer, or anything else) on top.

achow101

> That’s the slowdown I mean—spam pushes out normal transactions. Ok, that's not the definition of "slowdown" that the developers think of. Instead, we consider "slowdown" to be actual impact on CPU and memory usage that exceeds the average usage of a typical transaction. What you're describing is that the "spam" causes a high fee market, and that's definitely a concern. However, high fee markets, as we have seen with ordinals and many many times long past, resolve themselves eventually when those "spammers" run out of money. Furthermore, if those people want to make their transactions, they can and do directly submit their transcations to miners, bypassing mempools. This is trivially easy to do with things like MARA's Slipstream. When they do this, it actually makes it worse for everyone since direct submission removes information from fee estimation algorithms. Now, instead of being able to see the mempool and see that feerates are high, what you end up doing is making a transaction with a fee that you think is enough, and then finding out when a block is found that it actually wasn't. Lastly, Bitcoin is going to need a fee market eventually. Eventually, the block subsidy is going to be negligible, and miners will have to be sustained by fees. Any way you slice it, there has to be some point in time where the mempool is consistently full and fees generally increase as otherwise mining will stop being profitable and the security of the network goes down. > Without the OP_RETURN limit, a bad actor (say the CIA or someone with money to burn) could put illegal stuff, like child pornography, into the blockchain Even with the OP_RETURN limit, a bad actor can already do this. They can already do this with the inscriptions script construction, and that allows putting up to 4 MB into the blockchain whereas OP_RETURN would be limited to 1 MB. Furthermore, even without inscriptions, it's still possible to do it by creating outputs with fake hashes or fake pubkeys that actually encode the data. > They’re ignoring people who disagree (Samson Mow said there’s “no consensus”) Can you clarify what has actually been done that you think is "ignoring people who disagree"? Having read through the entire mailing list discussion and all of the comments on both PRs, I really don't think that's the case. Certainly there is no consensus, but there's been lively debate and discussion, and no action has actually been taken. Furthermore, several comments stated that they think the options should be preserved, and another PR was opened that does exactly that. That does not seem like ignoring people who disagree. > silencing critics Some of the biggest critics are wizkid057 and luke-jr. Their comments are still visible and readable, and in fact, many people have (tried to) engage them in discussion. And not just them, there's tons of comments in both PRs with debate going back and forth, each side trying to refute the other. I would not say that this is silencing critics. While several comments in the PR were hidden, these were hidden because they do not add to the converstion. Many of these are simply "Concept ACK" or "Concept NACK", which ultimately is not all that useful to the discussion and mainly ends up making it harder to read. Several comments were also hidden because they are off topic or abusive. However, I do not think any comments which left novel criticisms of the PR were actually hidden. > (Giacomo Zucco’s comments got deleted) There have not been many deleted comments. I count 4 deleted comments, and none of them appear to be from him. While I don't have a record of what the comments were, 3 of the comments were from accounts that look like spammers. 1 of the comments was actually from a regular contributor. None of the accounts look like Giacomo's. In fact, I don't think he has participated in the PR discussions at all, unless his Github name is not giacomozucco. > some devs have financial ties to projects with conflicts of interests. Can you cite any evidence for that? AFAIK, this claim seems to stem from the fact that Jameson Lopp is an investor in Citrea, a company that would benefit from this change, but are already planning on deploying their product without it. Jameson commented on the PR, but he is neither the person who opened it, nor the person who started the discussion. He's not even a Core Dev as he doesn't regularly participate in code review or submit PRs. From the perspective of the project, he's just another rando coming by to give their opinion. > They downplay risks (like past spam from Veriblock) I don't recall anyone referring to Veriblock or anyone citing risks from past spam. > and take away our choices (they removed a setting to force us to accept this) You write this as if a decision has been made and the PR merged. But no PR related to OP_RETURN has been merged. Neither Peter Todd's original PR that removes the option, nor Greg Sanders' alternate PR that leaves the option have been merged. In fact, of these 2 PRs, I think the one that's more likely to be merged is the second which leaves the option in, but of course no such merge decision has been made yet. > That's my POV. Tthe main point here is *how* this change is being implemented when it's deeply controversial. My POV is that this has been severely overblown and there's a ton of misinformation going around about what's actually happened. It seems like there's a bunch of influencers going around screaming as if the world is ending who also are getting their information second or third-hand rather than having actually participated in the discussions and reporting what they observed.

Numerous_Ruin_4947

PoS still requires work - just not brute-force hashing. Ethereum validators use electricity and computing resources (CPU, RAM, network bandwidth) to perform cryptographic operations, validate blocks, and maintain uptime - so energy is consumed, and technically, some physical "work" is done. Whether you walk 10 miles or drive 10 miles, you still accomplish the same task: getting from point A to point B. Walking takes much more physical effort, while driving is far more efficient. Similarly, both Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake aim to securely validate transactions and reach consensus - but PoW consumes far more energy to do so, while PoS achieves the same result with significantly less physical effort.

cosmicnag

It was still actually mined using CPU by satoshi and some others, not technically premined like your shitcoin. It was open for anyone else to join in the mining as well, but because the whole thing was new and no premined marketing budget by some shitcoin foundation, most people did not know about it. Its not an emotional reaction out of nowhere, its years of being annoyed by shitcoiners who think their going to zero against bitcoin shitcoin is actually better than the real thing.

Desperate-Barnacle-4

In 2010 the main wallet was bitcoin core. This was also a full node with built-in CPU mining. It created a file called wallet.dat with each address private key. Buy the IDE adapter to usb and make an image of the entire disk. If anything goes wrong seek profession hard disk recovery help. 15-years is a long time and mechanical disks are fragile. [https://www.amazon.co.uk/FIDECO-Adapter-External-Converter-inches-Black/dp/B0919SF9CP](https://www.amazon.co.uk/FIDECO-Adapter-External-Converter-inches-Black/dp/B0919SF9CP) Once you've got the image you could mount it (read-only) on Linux and search for the wallet.dat file. Once you have that file accessing the Bitcoin should be trivial. Add the wallet.dat to a live bitcoin core [https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/](https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/) so it can check the live balance and you can send without messing with private keys. Once the original wallet is empty you could look at the forks. There is like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold etc I don't know about those I guess they have near zero value.

HodlVitality

I got you on a ChatGPT answer if you want. This was good for me too, lots to learn. Public Electrum servers are able to return your balance in milliseconds because they don’t rescan every block on-demand like a vanilla Bitcoin Core wallet does. Instead, they maintain a continuously-updated, pre-built index of every UTXO and transaction history, stored in a high-performance database on fast hardware with tuned caches. Here are the key factors: ⸻ 1. Specialized indexing software • ElectrumX, Esplora/Electrs, and Fulcrum each build and maintain a full “address → UTXO/tx history” index as new blocks arrive. Your wallet’s balance lookup then becomes a simple database query—no full-chain scan needed.  • By contrast, when you point a wallet at a bare Bitcoin Core node (even with txindex=1), the wallet’s RPC rescan must walk every block output and check each script against your keys, which is inherently O(chain-size) and slow. ⸻ 2. High-I/O, low-latency storage • Public servers run on SSDs or NVMe drives (often in RAID), delivering thousands of IOPS so their indexer can write new blocks and serve random reads at lightning speed. Even a modest ElectrumX instance “is I/O-bound … SSD’s are definitely recommended” —and enterprise hosts use NVMe for even higher throughput. • Example (AWS testbed): • Data disk: 1 TB gp2 (3,000 IOPS) for the Electrum index • Bitcoin data: 600 GB gp2 (1,800 IOPS) for bitcoind’s block files • Result: balance queries over a cold cache complete in under 50 ms  ⸻ 3. Sufficient RAM for caching • ElectrumX is typically run with 2 GB+ of cache (CACHE_MB = 2048), and LevelDB’s own block cache (DB_CACHE ≈ 1,200–1,800 MB), so most lookups hit memory rather than disk.   • Even a single-user Electrs instance recommends 16 GB RAM to keep its embedded database hot.  ⸻ 4. Tuned software settings • ElectrumX config tweaks commonly used on public servers: COST_SOFT_LIMIT = 0 COST_HARD_LIMIT = 0 CACHE_MB = 2048 This disables internal rate-limiting and maximizes in-memory caching.  • Fulcrum sets txhash_cache=2000 to keep recent transaction lookups in RAM.  • Esplora (Blockstream’s server) uses a “constant-time caching” schema so addresses above a threshold get fully cached.  ⸻ 5. CPU and concurrency • Indexing a new block is parallelized, and query handling is asynchronous. Single-core speeds matter less once the index is built, but public hosts often use multi-core Xeons or equivalent to absorb spikes in demand.  • Your gaming-PC CPU may be fast, but if it’s paired with a spinning disk or limited DB cache, your wallet’s RPC rescan still bottlenecks on I/O and single-threaded script-matching. ⸻ How to speed up your local setup 1. Use an Electrum-style indexer locally (e.g. run ElectrumX, Electrs or Fulcrum against your node) instead of pointing Electrum directly at bitcoind. 2. Move your data directory to an SSD/NVMe, and give your indexer its own fast volume. 3. Increase DB cache in your server config (CACHE_MB, DB_CACHE) to keep more of the index in RAM. 4. Ensure your Bitcoin Core is started with -txindex=1 (if using ElectrumX/Fulcrum) or -blockfilterindex=1 (with descriptor wallets) so the indexer can pull historic data without re-scanning blocks itself. By adopting the same hardware profile (SSD + ≥16 GB RAM + decent single-core CPU) and software tuning that public hosts use, your local Electrum server will likewise return balance and history queries in milliseconds instead of minutes.

Decent-Vermicelli232

This is false. You are correct that most cryptos, and Bitcoin especially, would become useless, but energy efficient CPU mining would continue off grid. Phones and the wallet software could easily be charged by solar. There are certainty small scale monero miners and node operators that can can continue to function in grid down situations. I am one of them! In a grid down situation, my node and most efficient miner automatically switch over to battery back up power which is supplied by a solar array. My networking equipment is also on battery backup and my internet continues to function. In case my local ISP has a failure, internet connectivity continues with starlink! As for bitcoin being functional for any substantial grid down situation, good luck with that.

devCheckingIn

Does anybody know why the Coinbase Advanced spot trading page frequently (read: daily) does not display properly? At least once a day it will just have the header and the side bar with no chart, no orders section, and no way to buy and sell. Everything is blank except the header and sidebar. And the CPU will be pegged at 100%. Even closing the tab will not fix it, and the CPU will run at 100% forever until the browser is completely closed. This has been going on for months. The DevTools says 429 Too Many Requests, but what does having the tab open looking at the chart from time to time have anything to do with Too Many Requests? You're not allowed to do that? And why the hell is my CPU running at 100%.

trimalcus

FCMP+ update will bring privacy to next level And one of the last pow chain where anyone can mine with its CPU (gupax, P2Pool,...)