GPU

Ark3tech

Nvidia will be just fine. The massive demand for their GPU’s hasn’t gone anywhere.

ZethTheWindwrecker

The second you sell your last BTC. Come on, take one for the team. Just send your BTC to me. My wallet address is bc1qHODL_UNTIL_MY_GPU_PAYS_RENT

simonmales

It does use your GPU. Just like the homapge [krackpot.io](http://krackpot.io)

SuperUserAI

Super cool project—and really smart call on submitting straight to private mempools. Watching Puzzle 66 and 69 get sniped from the public mempool was brutal, so baking that protection in from day one makes total sense. Funny enough, I actually built a very similar browser-based WebGPU solver recently (**PUZZLE.GRID**: [https://cpaawj4efh0kdbzl1ht5d1w4.macaly.app/](https://cpaawj4efh0kdbzl1ht5d1w4.macaly.app/)). I took a slightly different approach to the search coordination: instead of purely stateless/random scanning, mine uses your payout address as a lightweight account to log every completed chunk. That way, you never scan the same keyspace twice—even if you refresh, reboot, or open the link across multiple devices of your own. Each user keeps their own isolated search space (so it's solo/multi-device rather than a shared pool). Definitely going to check out your write-up on the WGSL crypto and fighting the GPU watchdog—browser compute limits can be a real headache!

Kommandant_Milkshake

Cool concept, I’ve contemplated a similar idea with home GPU mining on PRL. However, it’s just not effective enough at producing heat to be worth it for me, so I moved the miner to the garage so that I don’t have to deal with the noise.

reddit4485

First, using a GPU to mine bitcoin would be inefficient which is why no one uses them for that purpose anymore. ASICs are far faster. Second, even if ASICs became dirt cheap and there was more hash power, there would be a difficulty adjustment. Bitcoin would still be created around every 10 minutes. You're not making logical sense.

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Post is by: Abrevaderci and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/theta_network/comments/1xomber/theta_compared_to_hyper_scalers_debt_model/ Theta’s capital-light model is a structural contrast to the hyperscalers’ heavy capex and rising debt load, and that difference becomes more relevant as the centralized buildout faces friction.Hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and peers) are in an extreme investment cycle. Combined 2026 capex guidance for the largest players is in the $720–740 billion range, with Goldman and others projecting around $1.2 trillion for 2027 across the main group. Quarterly figures have been enormous (one recent quarter for the big spenders approached or exceeded $200 billion). Free cash flow has turned negative or tight for several as spending outruns operating cash generation. They are funding the gap with a mix of debt and equity—recent disclosed raises exceed $130 billion in a short window, and broader AI-related debt issuance in 2026 has reached the hundreds of billions. There are also large off-balance-sheet obligations (long-term data-center leases, purchase commitments, project financing). Analysts (including S&P) note that expected AI returns must materialize to keep credit profiles comfortable; a material shortfall would pressure leverage, spreads, or spending plans. Local opposition, power constraints, and regulatory delays already threaten full pipeline conversion, which amplifies the risk that some of this capital sits under-utilized while debt service continues.Theta’s EdgeCloud approach avoids most of that overhead. It is hybrid and largely CapEx-light on the supply side: it aggregates spare or community-contributed GPUs via edge nodes (tens of thousands claimed) and supplements with partnered enterprise cloud capacity rather than owning and building the majority of the physical footprint itself. Node operators are compensated primarily through token rewards (TFUEL) rather than Theta Labs taking on construction debt. This produces the claimed 50–70% cost advantage versus traditional clouds for suitable workloads, because it is not carrying the full cost of new data-center construction, interconnection, and associated financing. Scaling supply can theoretically track demand more flexibly by bringing existing hardware online instead of waiting for multi-year facility builds. In an environment of power bottlenecks, local moratoriums, and high hyperscaler costs, this is a genuine relative advantage for inference, fine-tuning, rendering, media, and agentic workloads that can tolerate the hybrid model’s reliability profile.The comparison is not one-sided. Hyperscalers retain decisive advantages in absolute scale, reliability/SLAs, enterprise trust, compliance breadth, and diversified cash flows that can absorb leverage better (Microsoft has remained the strongest on free-cash-flow metrics among the group). Their debt is investment-grade and they have multiple revenue streams. Theta’s model still has platform costs, needs real utilization to justify token economics, faces reliability and security hurdles for production enterprise use, and remains far smaller. Token dilution or weak network activity can create its own form of “overhead.” Neoclouds (more centralized GPU specialists) sit in between and often carry higher financing costs [themselves.Net](http://themselves.Net) effect: debt and high fixed costs on the hyperscaler side raise the effective price of centralized capacity and create a risk that some planned buildout is delayed or under-earns. That improves the relative economics and optionality of capital-light distributed/hybrid marketplaces like EdgeCloud for the subset of demand (especially cost-sensitive or agent-driven inference) that does not require the absolute highest reliability or largest training clusters. It does not make Theta a full substitute; it makes it a more interesting complement precisely when the centralized side is capital-constrained and politically or power-constrained. The advantage holds only if Theta converts the theoretical cost and flexibility edge into sustained, measurable usage. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

derringer111

The only issue here is this is a really small group to have been in a mining ‘pool’. The irc name would typically be the name of the pool, not a group this small. Mining pools also used a protocol, whichI can’t remember at the moment, but if one of them had actually created the pool, your incented to make it grow and take a fraction of the coin mined, not keep it small like this. Also, this is extremely early (2010,) from my memory, so is likely CPU mining (existed before GPU mining.). And, lastly, the frequency of difficulty increases and the fact that this small group is mining blocks that frequently suggests they are doing so individually with CPU mining clients. I was mining about 2011 or so and we were transitioning to GPUs by then. How did you get into the wallet ? If you know the address, you can go look at every transaction it ever did which will answer a bunch of questions, potentially. (And to previous poster, I lost some in MtGox as well. It was a little over 11btc. Wasn’t enough to bother me too much back then, but would be nice to have back now..

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Post is by: Abrevaderci and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/theta_network/comments/1xnr9ip/how_does_the_election_effect_theta_now_that_39_of/ This is a net positive narrative for Theta Network (THETA), but with important caveats about scale, timing, and broader market conditions.Democrats took the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms, while local voters across many jurisdictions heavily rejected data center proposals. Trackers (Ballotpedia, Data Centers on the Ballot, and reporting from outlets like the Washington Post, Reuters, and others) show roughly 30–37+ restrictions, bans, moratoriums, or tougher requirements passing out of \~41–45 measures, with near-unanimous outcomes favoring limits in most places (especially Ohio). This aligns closely with the “39 of 44” figure. Key data-center hubs such as Texas and Georgia also saw Democratic gubernatorial wins tied in part to pledges of pauses or stricter rules. Data-center and related AI-infrastructure stocks generally dipped on the news amid expectations of slower permitting, more oversight, and local resistance.Why this helps Theta’s positioningTheta’s EdgeCloud is a hybrid decentralized GPU compute marketplace. It aggregates capacity from tens of thousands of community edge nodes (home/business GPUs, workstations, etc.) plus partner cloud capacity (Google Cloud, AWS, and others such as Alibaba Cloud integrations). The network is designed for AI inference/fine-tuning, video, rendering, and related workloads, often at lower cost than pure hyperscale options. * Supply constraints favor distributed alternatives. Slower new hyperscale data-center construction (especially in high-capacity states) tightens the already tight GPU/compute market. Theta and similar DePIN/edge projects explicitly market themselves as ways to unlock underutilized existing hardware rather than relying solely on new large facilities. Their own commentary has framed the GPU crunch as an opportunity for edge aggregation. * Local political reality. Opposition focuses on large, concentrated facilities (power draw, water, grid impact, noise, rising electricity bills, tax incentives). Individual edge nodes are far smaller and more dispersed, so they face less of the same NIMBY backlash, even if total energy use still matters. * Hybrid model provides flexibility. EdgeCloud mixes community nodes with enterprise cloud partners, so it is not purely dependent on either pure decentralization or pure hyperscale builds. In short, constraints on traditional data-center expansion strengthen the relative case for networks that can mobilize scattered GPUs.Limitations and risks * Scale and workload fit. Large-scale AI training still heavily favors centralized or specialized high-end clusters. Edge networks are generally stronger for inference, smaller jobs, or cost-sensitive workloads. Theta’s capacity is meaningful in its niche but is not a full substitute for the planned multi-gigawatt hyperscale pipeline. * Demand side matters. If infrastructure bottlenecks meaningfully slow the overall AI build-out, total compute demand could cool, which would affect everyone (centralized and decentralized). Data-center stocks falling is a signal that markets are pricing some slowdown risk. * Policy is broader than local ballots. A Democratic Congress raises the chance of more federal scrutiny, taxes, or conditions on AI infrastructure and tech generally. Crypto/DePIN projects can face their own regulatory headwinds. * Pipeline and timing. Many projects are already under construction or approved. The biggest effects are likely on 2027–2028+ capacity additions rather than immediate supply. Local bans are often jurisdiction-specific; developers can still shift to more permissive areas (though that becomes harder as resistance spreads). * Token and market dynamics. THETA’s price is driven by crypto market conditions, tokenomics (THETA staking, TFUEL utility for compute), adoption metrics, and sentiment more than pure infrastructure news. No immediate major price spike specifically tied to these election results has been widely reported; broader risk-off moves in tech/AI names have been more visible. Bottom lineFewer approved data centers tighten centralized supply and improve the competitive narrative for Theta EdgeCloud and similar distributed GPU networks. This is a constructive medium-term tailwind for their market positioning, especially if AI demand remains strong and energy/grid constraints persist. It is not a transformative event by itself—Theta’s success still depends on actual compute utilization, partnerships, cost competitiveness versus traditional clouds/neoclouds, and overall crypto/AI market conditions.The political environment has made large-scale centralized expansion more difficult and slower; networks that can productively use existing distributed hardware stand to benefit relatively more. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

CBpegasus

It will not (likely) solve SHA-256 (as in full hash reversal) in a reasonably short time. The only currently known quantum algorithm that could help with SHA-256 is Grover's Algorithm which only gives a quadratic speedup - brute forcing SHA-256 takes on order of 2^256 steps, Grover's takes the root of that so around 2^128 . Still would take more time than the age of the universe no matter how fast you make the quantum computer. There are no known faster algorithms and there are some reasons to think faster algorithms don't exist. Now the quadratic speedup could conceivably be used to make the partial hash reversal used for PoW much faster. This could upset the mining landscape in ways that are much more fundamental than the previous CPU->GPU->ASIC changes. I saw once a lecture about it, if you had one actor with a strong enough QC they could dominate the mining landscape and double spend more easily than it would seem. Ideally there would be multiple QC actors and then mining becomes distributed again but still it would fundamentally change in some mostly negative ways, particularly there would be more chain splits. Anyway the likely much more serious issue is the cracking of the ECDSA signature scheme with Shor's algorithm. This would be acheived with powerful enough QCs in a much more reasonable (polynomial) time, and would allow going from public key to private key and stealing funds directly. Technically modern wallet adresses are safe as long as they only ever receive funds and don't send them - as those addresses usually only advertise a hash of the public key and not the public key itself. But eventually to want to send funds (despite hodl culture Bitcoin is only valuable if you can send it) and then there are at least 10 minutes where your public key is on the network and a powerful enough QC could crack it and try to get a different transaction approved. So we need to migrate to quantum-proof wallets before that. "Satoshi-era" wallets whose public keys are exposed are pretty much doomed, especially if they are abandoned wallets whose private keys are lost. They can't be migrated and are "sitting ducks" for a future QC user to steal. Whether they should be allowed to be stolen or frozen when the quantum threat become significant is also a discussion to be had.

Nogardtist

karma for GPU scalping prices

investigatormaker

Running a basement setup teaches difficulty adjustment in a way no chart does: you watch your share of the network shrink as hashrate grows, and power cost becomes the number that matters. Shutting down when the electricity math stopped working was a disciplined call, not a failure. If you come back, write down each machine's power draw and your rate now while it's fresh, so restarting is a numbers decision rather than nostalgia. For the GPU rigs, UDI Hosting's Starter plan manages up to 3 machines from one dashboard with remote SSH deployment and dual mining, starting at $4 USD monthly after a free 30-day trial: [https://udihosting.org/index.php?rp=/store/mining-software](https://udihosting.org/index.php?rp=/store/mining-software) Disclosure: I'm posting on behalf of UDI Hosting.

Ancient_Trekker

I find the idea interesting, but I'm not sure I'd trade a compute perp just because AI demand is rising. The key question is what the contract actually tracks. If GPU rental prices rise but the perp doesn't follow the same market, the hedge doesn't really work.

Apprehensive_Yak3541

I think one important factor to hedge GPU costs is how closely the contract matches the actual rent. A company renting mostly H100s might prefer a market tracking H100 prices rather than an index covering multiple GPUs. Injective recently launched the Super Intelligence Compute Index (SICI), an onchain perpetual market tracking rental prices across five Nvidia GPUs. They also have a separate H100 rental-price market for more targeted exposure. Imo, having both broader and GPU-specific markets is the way because companies have different compute needs. If these markets have enough liquidity and track rental costs closely, they could help companies manage price swings rather than just being used for speculation. Full disclosure: I'm affiliated with Injective.

VishalJ_05

I can see the potential, especially for AI companies looking to hedge compute costs. The challenge is whether these markets track real GPU rental prices closely enough to be useful. Without that connection, perpetuals could end up trading speculation more than actual compute demand.

innatecollision335

I'd be a little cautious about jumping straight into the perpetuals. The funding rate on something that volatile could eat you alive, especially since GPU rental pricing isn't nearly as transparent as, say, crude benchmarks. The CME version sounds more grounded, at least there's a clear settlement index. Crypto perps on compute feels like it'd be a handful of insiders actually knowing what the fair price should be while everyone else gets farmed.

juanramirez947

The ASICs themselves can't run AI workloads, but the power connection and site can be redeveloped for GPU servers. A company can leave mining without its machines ever becoming useful for AI.

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Post is by: Bright_Albatross8586 and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/CryptoMarkets/comments/1xftjuc/the_next_bitcoin/ [https://x.com/DrShillBee/status/2114568421379846436?s=20](https://x.com/DrShillBee/status/2114568421379846436?s=20) check out post for more details. TLDR **TensorCash ($TSC) is building the verification and settlement layer for global AI inference.** Today, when you pay an AI provider to run a model, you generally have to trust that it actually used the model it promised. TensorCash aims to change that by making AI inference independently verifiable through its **Proof of Inference** mechanism. Instead of wasting GPU power on meaningless hashing, TensorCash uses real AI inference as its proof-of-work. Miners generate AI responses, and the computation produces a proof that can be replayed to check whether the claimed model actually ran. This creates a potential **two-revenue-stream model**: miners can earn from selling AI inference while also competing for $TSC block rewards. But TensorCash's ambition goes beyond AI mining. It is developing financial infrastructure directly into its blockchain, including native digital assets, on-chain settlement, and derivatives linked to network compute difficulty. The broader vision is to turn AI inference into an open, verifiable, and tradable global market. **The thesis:** AI compute is becoming an increasingly valuable resource, but trust, verification, and market infrastructure remain major challenges. TensorCash is attempting to address all three through a single network: useful computation secures the chain, proofs establish what computation occurred, and financial tools enable markets around that compute. If the model works at scale, TensorCash could become more than an AI mining project. It could become infrastructure for an economy built around verifiable AI computation. The opportunity is ambitious, but adoption, real customer demand, verification reliability, and sustainable economics will determine whether the vision succeeds. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Funky_Wizard

How can a GPU be 10x more profitable than an asic? 

cipherjones

its wild that my GPU miners are roughly 10x as profitable now as that ASIC. Time to turn those shitcoins into BTC (and winter heat also).

3zprK

Theoretically. But the fact of the matter is that those massive mining pools are worth tens and hundreds of millions of fiat dollars. I personally haven't seen a single bitcoiner who has contributed to the Blockchain by connecting a GPU 24/7. All they want is forever growing numbers. BTC has logarithmic growth with diminishing returns each cycle; when it finds the ceiling it'll just hang around it.

magus-21

GPU mining hasn't been profitable in years. ASIC mining would give a very thin margin, but IMO not enough of a profit to be justifiable.

PomegranateSignal882

A 300 watt GPU puts out the exact same amount of heat as a 300 watt space heater

things_U_choose_2_b

We had no idea how good we had it, back in the day. I remember making bank (at least, what was bank to me) mining ETF off a single GPU. I had about 6 months of good times before the wider world caught on and it became 'barely profitable' seemingly overnight.

s_nz

It has been profitable in locations without subsidised power. Seen the odd install (often GPU base for either) in New Zealand which has no power subsidies.

Falkenmond79

Yes and no. It was always the three factors of running cost (ie cooling and electricity), initial hardware cost (how long it would take to recoup the initial cost; that was usually 6-12 months and then you would have to still be able to contribute a decent amount… which is problematic since difficulty used to go up and up with the total number of people and hardware Mining) and the current reward per amount of processing power. So, it was always mostly only profitable if you could make a huge initial investment and had cheap electricity. That way you could hope to „beat the odds“ so to speak and go not for pool mining, where you get a fixed amount depending on your mining power, but try and solve blocks yourself. It’s a gamble. Pool mining is usually less but steadier. Finding blocks yourself is absolutely impossible though, unless you have a measurable percentage of computing power compared to the total network. Meaning, the more people are mining, the more difficult it gets. So actually the more of these mining operations fail, the better for the remaining ones. Their share in the total pie gets bigger. But there is a catch. The reward for finding a block gets smaller after a set amount of time. It used to be 50 btc in the beginning for each block found, but quickly reduced to 25. back then I actually found one, with only my measly GPU. Too bad BTC wasn’t worth anything back then. 🤣 But in this case: You don’t have any initial cost. The hardware is just lying there. But it’s probably outdated. So running it vs the electricity wouldn’t be profitable anymore. BUT if you remove that as its primary purpose and instead make heat the actual purpose in order to save on other heating cost, you could as well make it do its original job and mine a few fractions of a bitcoin each day. Might not be much more than a dollar a day or so, but add to that the saved cost in heating… In actuality though, other heating methods would probably be cheaper, per watt of heat produced. But it’s a fun thought experiment. The removal of initial cost of hardware is a big chunk of it.

tenthousandants44

> And any modern AI would answer that. Oh is AI trained on GPU resale prices?

FranzJosephBalle

It would have been more profitable to just buy eth on the low, but on the peaks i recovered GPU costs in 2,5 months..energy prices are(was) low in country though. Epic times

RealTendy

No, you can mine Bitcoin with any CPU or GPU and due to the laws of thermodynamics, it would make you more money than running a non mining heater. Why are you making up 200k? The OP just said it was scrap metal. And how would it 'lose' 40 grand a year? Are you giving it money to lose? Are you regarded?

Extreme-Tie9282

your lack of curiosity is astounding, theres no such thing as never and the best discoveries are made from the impossilbe. Could we repurpose a Bitcoin ASIC miner to perform useful AI calculations, even though it was never designed for them? My answer is theoretically yes, under certain conditions, but we'd have to approach it very differently from a conventional GPU. The trick would be finding useful AI computations that resemble what the miner already does, rather than trying to make its chips behave like NVIDIA GPUs. # Five theoretical approaches # 1. Use Bitcoin hashing as an AI computation primitive Bitcoin ASIC chips are extraordinarily good at SHA-256 hashing. What if we designed an AI system that uses hashing as part of its computation? For example: * Hash-based neural networks. * Binary feature extraction. * High-speed lookup and matching. * Hash-based approximate nearest-neighbour search. * Privacy-preserving fingerprint comparisons. We could potentially offload portions of an AI system's workload to the ASIC. The limitation: SHA-256 is designed to destroy useful numerical relationships between inputs. It doesn't naturally support neural-network mathematics. We'd need an algorithm specifically designed around hashing. # 2. Build an AI system around binary operations Conventional neural network Matrix multiplication Floating-point calculations Model output Hypothetical ASIC-compatible system Binary-encoded inputs Hash-based feature processing CPU/GPU inference and interpretation Binary neural networks use operations such as XOR, bit counts and accumulation. A Bitcoin ASIC uses some related low-level logic, but its XOR gates and adders are hardwired into SHA-256 circuits. We can't generally access those individual gates as programmable operations. However, if we could discover a way to encode useful binary-network computations into the ASIC's supported hashing interface, there might be a niche application. That's speculative, not an established method. # 3. Use ASICs for AI search or optimization This is the approach I'd investigate first. Some AI-related problems involve searching millions of possibilities: * Finding staffing schedules that satisfy constraints. * Exploring different optimization candidates. * Searching for particular hash-defined solutions. * Testing candidate configurations against compact fingerprints. Imagine using an ASIC to process a specialized part of a scheduling optimizer. The challenge is that Bitcoin mining hardware only evaluates a very narrow mathematical search problem. We would need to transform some useful part of our optimization problem into one it can evaluate without losing the original constraints. In most cases, that transformation is likely to cost more than it saves. # 4. Exploit the miner's surrounding hardware A Bitcoin miner contains more than hashing chips. 7 Depending on the model, it may include an embedded Linux controller, networking, cooling hardware and a substantial power supply. We could potentially repurpose these components for a local AI appliance, with a separate GPU or AI accelerator doing the actual inference. That's more practical, although the controller itself usually has modest computing capabilities. # 5. Design a new AI architecture inspired by mining ASICs This is the most ambitious possibility. Instead of converting an existing miner, imagine building an AI accelerator using the same principles: * Thousands of simple parallel processing elements. * Minimal instruction overhead. * Low-precision arithmetic. * Highly specialized inference operations. * Very high throughput for a narrow task. That is a promising general hardware philosophy. But it would require new silicon or programmable hardware, not simply a firmware update to an Antminer. # My recommended experiment I'd start with a used SHA-256 ASIC miner and investigate its control interface rather than physically modifying its chips. The experiment would have three stages: 1. Understand the hashing engine: Determine exactly which input fields we control and what outputs the ASIC exposes. 2. Develop a computational mapping: Search for an AI-adjacent algorithm where SHA-256 evaluations perform genuinely useful work. 3. Benchmark the complete system: Compare accuracy, throughput, electricity consumption and cost against your RTX 5070. The key test is whether the ASIC is doing something useful that a conventional CPU or GPU cannot do more efficiently. # The bigger question There are two very different inventions we could pursue: A. Make an existing $100–$300 used Bitcoin ASIC perform some useful AI computation. Very challenging, but potentially an interesting research experiment. B. Create a new AI processing architecture inspired by Bitcoin mining hardware. More technically ambitious, but with much greater freedom to design the mathematics and circuitry. My recommendation is A first. If we can discover one genuinely useful AI operation that maps efficiently onto SHA-256 hardware, we'd have something worth investigating further. I wouldn't promise that it can run a language model like Qwen, but we could absolutely investigate whether it can accelerate a narrower part of an AI pipeline.

lzrjck69

I used to do that with my GPU mining rig. I moved it indoors when the house was in the heating season. Otherwise it stayed in the garage. Even better, electricity costs were “expenses” for the mining business. So I didn’t run my furnace, AND got tax free heat.

Lost_Web5826

Isn't this essentially a pallet of GPU at this point?

Bontus

Since batteries for storing excess power have become really interesting cost wise it gets less and less interesting to run GPU's on excess power.

Dancing-Wind

because its not a GPU - its an ASIC - an ASIC for mining bitcoins - LOOK IT UP before you post dumb stuff. the only alternative use for it is once it became obsolete is as a very loud electric heater

mutexsprinkles

You know you don't just DMA the prompt text directly into the GPU...right?

IronicRobotics

I mean w/ just a bit of skill and the right models, I've brought 2 decade old hardware back to life w/ just a few spare parts and nurse my phone/computer parts for about a decade at a time or so. You'd be surprised with a linux distro w/ XFCE4 can make run as if it was brand new. Now I'm not fixing a dead GPU! Some talented individuals can, as a hobby, go solder broken PCBs on a nice TV. But frankly solid state stuff lasts a long ass time with minimal maintenance. As someone who likes to think about waste, I'd argue most of my waste comes from plastic from grocery stores and other packaging alas.

MrChicken_69

Unless you're running a GPU mine - which is insane for BTC - there's nothing to reprogram. Unless you need to calculate a few trillion MD5 hashes, these things are junk.

dwoj206

Running a multi GPU (6-8) mining rig in a dorm room on a 15a circuit? Ya. Thats exactly what is going to happen.

FirstAmendmentIsDead

I manage two mining farms and we’re in talks with an AI company to take over the data centers. They told me they have custom firmware that can be used to offload “linear math” from their AI models so they asked if they could keep our miners with the takeover. I don’t have any more details than that, but it seems like it might already be possible to repurpose these machines for some AI uses, though not the typical compute you get from GPU’s.

Nameis-RobertPaulson

That's not always the case though, take a look at the GPU repair/refurbishing shops in China who repair boards which manufacturers don't want to repair by removing individual components and replacing GPUs, memory modules, capacitors and VRMs. It's labour intensive work and requires a degree of skill and knowledge, but for higher level components It's still economically worth it.

URPissingMeOff

Shitcoin mining hasn't been done on GPU in over a decade. For Bitcoin, it's closer to 2 decades. It's all ASICs now.

astro65

I know it's not common but read up on the BC250. Its a board made from B-grade PS5 APUs that were turned bu ASRock into Bitcoin miners. After they became outdated, people began buying the units for 30-50 bucks a piece and made GPU drivers for them in Linux. Now they're being used for makeshift gaming PCs/AI SBC's and the prices spiked to $250 a card. 

Traditional-Ebb-8380

Funny thing is AI uses these same GPU’s.

avance70

> IMO it is now reasonable to brace for the possibility that ECDSA breaks before qday, in the worst case in months not years. By "break" I mean fast private key recovery (e.g. in one week) on available hardware (e.g. a large GPU cluster). the "IMO" and "reasonable" are doing some heavy lifting there

Fab_Crypto_Recovers

One thing first, because two people in this thread suggested the "download the whole blockchain and drop your old wallet.dat over the fresh one" method: that does not apply to your wallet. That trick only works on a wallet that was never password-encrypted. Yours has an encrypted master key in it (that is what wallet version 40000 with 102 encrypted keys means). Copy it into a fresh Bitcoin Core and it will load fine, show the balance, and then refuse to spend until you enter the password. So your whole problem really is that one password. Nothing else is in the way. The good news in your dump: 102 keys but one encrypted master key means a single passphrase unlocks all of them at once. You only need to crack one string (not 102). Before you touch anything: Make at least two copies of the wallet.dat and put them somewhere safe. Work only on a copy. A failed password attempt never harms the file, but a tool crashing mid-write can corrupt it, and a 2011 wallet.dat is not replaceable. Do all of this on a machine that is offline and clean. Never upload the file anywhere, never email it, never paste it into a website that offers to "check" it. Steps you can do yourself, in order: 1. First confirm the wallet is actually encrypted and not just corrupted. Load the copy in Bitcoin Core, open Window > Console, and run `walletpassphrase "aguess" 60`. If it says the passphrase is incorrect, it is encrypted and you are on the right track. If it says the wallet is not encrypted, your problem is something else entirely and the password hunt is pointless. 2. Reconstruct how you made passwords in 2011. Base words, names, the years and numbers you tacked on, where you put capitals and symbols. Check old password managers, notebooks, note apps, and saved browser passwords from that era. A single typo or a Caps Lock slip is a common reason a known password "does not work". 3. Test your best 10 to 20 guesses by hand in that same Console. Most old wallets are opened this way instead of brute force. 4. If that fails, use btcrecover. Download it only from its official GitHub repo. Its token-list mode is what you want: you feed it the fragments you remember and it permutes them in different orders and combinations. That is far smarter than blind brute force, which with \~62k iterations will not finish in your lifetime. btcrecover only searches passphrases, so it only helps to the extent you can describe what the password probably looked like. 5. If you have a decent GPU and you are comfortable on a command line, pull the hash out with bitcoin2john and run it in hashcat with mode `-m 11300`, using a mask or rule-based attack built from what you remember. This is the same work as btcrecover but much faster per guess. If you share the hash with anyone for help, share only the `$bitcoin$...` hash, never the file. The hash on its own cannot move coins. However, if the password was fully random and you have no memory of it and no fragments to seed a search, there is no seed phrase, no backdoor, and no reset. It may not be recoverable by anyone. The flip side is that a 2011 wallet has a low key-stretching work factor, so guesses test fast, which is the one thing working in your favor. Your DMs are about to fill up with people offering to recover it for you. Nobody honest messages first. Anyone who asks for the file, the password guesses, or a seed phrase is trying to rob you. Ignore all of them. Disclosure: I work at Crypto Recovers, we do exactly this kind of recovery. But everything above is what you can try on your own, and for a wallet where you have fragments of the password that is often enough. If you genuinely exhaust your own guesses and want a hand, our assessment is free and we only charge if coins actually come back. Happy to answer follow-ups here in the thread, no DM needed. Real help happens in public.

Fun-Analysis-182

btcrecover is the right tool, but it only cracks the passphrase, so it only helps if you can describe what the password probably looked like. Copy the wallet first and never work on the original. Build a tokenlist from the fragments you remember (words, your usual number and symbol habits, capitalization) and let btcrecover permute those, rather than brute-forcing blind, which won't finish in your lifetime. Version 40000 with 102 encrypted keys is a pre-HD keypool, so one passphrase unlocks all of them at once, your whole job is that one string. If you've got a decent GPU, pulling the hash with bitcoin2john and running hashcat is much faster than CPU btcrecover.

bitusher

Don't share it with anyone . Hopefully you either partially remember the password or its weak so you have a chance to brute force it. You will need a good GPU as well. Here is how you would do that : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q65eqpf4gE&list=PL7rfJxwogDzmd1IanPrmlTg3ewAIq-BZJ Make sure this is done in a clean and secure OS without malware.

Background_Roll_5879

Oh wow this is genuinely an incredible find. June 2011 with 102 keys and the coins haven't moved yet, that wallet has been sitting frozen for over a decade while everyone else was panic selling and rebuying btcrecover is absolutely the right tool for this, but with 62k iterations it's going to be painfully slow unless you have a good GPU to throw at it. I'd recommend spending real time writing down every password pattern you used back then, forum passwords, old email combos, anything from that era. a single typo or capitalization mistake is all it takes the fact that it's uncompressed keys from 2011 is actually helpful in a weird way, the address format is the old style so at least you know what you're looking at. I once helped a friend brute force a wallet from 2013 and it took three weeks of running hashcat on a borrowed gaming rig before we cracked "starwarsfan42" if you have any vague memory of the password length or whether it had numbers in it, that narrows things down massively. also don't sleep on trying common phrases from bitcoin forums circa 2011, half the passwords back then were things like "satoshi" or "to the moon" with some numbers tacked on

Successful-Plenty-27

your wallet might be drained by a virus. You might have installed a RAT hidden in some other software, and it has access to all your stored logins and automated logins (when they don't have 2FA), if you have a GPU it can be used for silent mining, and your IP can be abused as a proxy for hacking, bot traffic or carding. If you ever used cracked software or untrusted apps, and are not sure if your device is clean, it is a good idea to format that PC entirely. In that case, the lesson here is to never use apps with possible backdoors on the same device as your bitcoin wallet. A hardware device just creates an air gap so every transaction needs to be verified manually.

StPeir

You could buy from a miner. Back then miners weren’t corporate data centers full of racks of mining rigs they were nerds with an extra GPU. There weren’t exchanges so you would have to buy peer-to-peer many people set up purchases over a forum or something.

bitusher

Don't share it with anyone . Hopefully you either partially remember the password or its weak so you have a chance to brute force it. You will need a good GPU as well. Here is how you would do that : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q65eqpf4gE&list=PL7rfJxwogDzmd1IanPrmlTg3ewAIq-BZJ Make sure this is done in a clean and secure OS without malware. Yes. BTCRecover supports BIP38-encrypted private keys and can test a password list or password variations against the encrypted key https://docs.btcrecover.org/en/latest/Usage_Examples/basic_password_recoveries/#bip38-encrypted-paper-wallet-recovery

caploves1019

Cool story but you're not "mining Bitcoin" with a GPU. Ever. Period. Regardless of what the app tells your. And just because you get paid doesn't make it not a scam. It's shtcoining hiding behind Bitcoin success as it's legitimacy claim.

Ovee_77

that's awesome, a single GPU does that?

Ovee_77

this was my main question, i was worried about that declining payout, thank God you pointed that out. My friend did GPU mining few years back, in his case he was getting paid, but hardware got damaged and needed to be replaced (GPUs), so in his case he couldn't get his invested amount back ever too.

significant_soldier

There are a few critical cryptographic realities you should understand before deciding on your passphrase setup: --- ### 1. Does the Passphrase Need to Be Truly Random? **Yes, absolutely.** The misconception that *"the 24-word seed already has 256 bits of entropy, so the passphrase can be simple"* completely misunderstands the threat model. Under BIP39, your mnemonic words act as the password ($P$), and the string `"mnemonic" + passphrase` acts as the salt ($S$) fed into **PBKDF2 with HMAC-SHA512**. Crucially, the BIP39 specification defines **only 2,048 iterations** of PBKDF2: * 2,048 rounds is computationally lightweight for modern hardware. A standard consumer GPU cluster (e.g., via Hashcat) can test tens to hundreds of thousands of passphrase guesses per second against a known 24-word seed. * If an adversary ever discovers or photographs your 24-word physical seed backup, the **only** barrier protecting your funds is the passphrase. * If you use a human-selected phrase (a book quote, song lyric, modified dictionary phrase, or predictable date/name pattern), it will fall quickly to mask or rule-based dictionary attacks. If you use a passphrase, it must be generated with true random entropy. --- ### 2. Can a 24-Word Seed + Passphrase Replace Multisig? **No. They solve two fundamentally different failure modes.** | Security Feature | 24 Words + Passphrase | 2-of-3 Multisig | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | **Primary Protection** | Theft of physical seed at rest; plausible deniability (decoy wallets). | Single vendor supply-chain compromise; single hardware exploit. | | **Signing Execution** | **Single point of failure:** Both the seed and the passphrase must be entered into the **same** hardware device at signing time. | **Isolated trust:** Transactions are signed independently across multiple disparate devices (e.g., Coldcard + BitBox02 + Jade). | | **Compromised Firmware** | Malicious firmware on a single device can exfiltrate or drain your seed + passphrase simultaneously. | Compromised firmware on one vendor's device cannot move funds without an independent second signature. | A passphrase protects your backup while it sits in a safe. Multisig protects your funds from supply-chain backdoors, firmware bugs, and hardware failures during active use. --- ### 3. How Many Words Are Actually "Enough"? (The Entropy Math) Recommending *"8 or 9 random words with mixed upper/lower case and custom symbols"* introduces severe **self-lockout risk** without adding practical security. **Remember:** BIP39 passphrases have **no checksum**. * Unlike the 24 seed words (which alert you immediately if a word is mistyped or off the 2,048-word list), any accidental capitalization, missing space, or stray punctuation in a passphrase will silently derive a completely valid, completely empty wallet. If you generate truly random words using Diceware (EFF Large Wordlist = 7,776 words $\approx 12.9$ bits of entropy per word): * **4 random words:** $\approx 51.6$ bits of entropy ($\approx 3.4 \times 10^{15}$ combinations). At 100,000 hashes/sec on a high-end cracking rig, exhausting this search space would take over **1,000 years**. * **5 random words:** $\approx 64.6$ bits of entropy ($\approx 2.6 \times 10^{19}$ combinations). Cryptographically infeasible to crack even with distributed supercomputing. * **8–9 words:** Overkill ($\approx 103\text{--}116$ bits) that only increases the risk of transcription errors and human memory failure. ### Summary Recommendation * If you use a single-sig wallet and want seed-at-rest protection, use **4 to 5 lowercase words chosen via physical dice (Diceware)** separated by single spaces. * Record the passphrase on stamped steel physically separate from your 24-word seed backup. Do not store it unencrypted in a cloud password manager, as that bridges your airgap back to an online attack surface. * Test your recovery process: wipe the device (or use a secondary interface) and verify you can successfully restore and derive the exact same target address with your seed + passphrase before depositing substantial funds.

Fun-Analysis-182

Late 2010, really. First half of the year was still mostly CPU hobbyists, then Mt. Gox and the first GPU miners both showed up mid-year and the back half is when regular people started piling in. You weren't far behind hearing about it in 2011.

AutoModerator

Post is by: DueStage2842 and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/CryptoMarkets/comments/1wkn57s/how_to_restore_damaged_partial_or_scrambled/ According to on-chain tracking from Glassnode and Chainalysis, somewhere between 3 and 4 million bitcoins sit completely dormant and untouched on UTXOs. A lot of newcomers imagine this is because people tried to crack secp256k1 or because of some cryptographic flaw in SHA-256. It is not. The real reason is almost always embarrassingly mundane: physical degradation of backups and human transcription mistakes. Someone wrote 12 words on a piece of paper, put it in a folder, and years later the paper tore along the bottom edge, destroying words 11 and 12. Someone else stamped their seed around the rim of a circular titanium washer to survive a house fire, but forgot to stamp an arrow indicating which word was word #1. Someone wrote 12 words across two neat columns of 6 rows in a notebook, and now cannot remember if they wrote left-to-right or top-to-bottom. Or someone has a coffee stain over word 7, knowing only that it starts with the letter "p" and has 6 letters. When you enter any of these into standard wallet clients like Electrum, Sparrow, or Ledger Live, you get an uncompromising error: \*\*"Invalid mnemonic checksum"\*\*. The wallet halts, and you are locked out. Over the past months, we built an open-specification workstation suite called \*\*bitResurrector v3.0.3\*\* to solve these exact physical disaster scenarios locally, offline, and without needing weeks of computing time. Here is the full engineering breakdown of how the math works, why constraint satisfaction beats brute force, how early-stage bitwise filtering speeds up recovery by thousands of times, the resolution of 7 real-world physical failure cases, and benchmark comparisons against tools like BTCRecover. \[!\[Click to Watch Demonstration Video\](https://pub-a4b1073f1580450bb819d561a783c78b.r2.dev/partial-lost-seedphrase.jpg)\](https://pub-a4b1073f1580450bb819d561a783c78b.r2.dev/Bitresurrector%20Review.mp4) \--- \## 1. Why blind brute-force fails vs why constraint satisfaction works Let us get the obvious out of the way: you cannot brute-force a Bitcoin private key from scratch. The secp256k1 curve order is: \`n ≈ 1.1579 \* 10\^77\` (a 256-bit number) Trying to find an active address by guessing raw 256-bit private keys is physically prevented by the laws of thermodynamics. There is not enough energy in the solar system to scan that space. However, recovering a degraded or scrambled mnemonic backup is \*\*NOT\*\* a raw keyspace search. It is a \*\*bounded constraint-satisfaction puzzle\*\*. When someone loses access to their backup, they are not starting from zero. They usually have: \* 10 or 11 known words out of 12. \* All 12 words, but the order was scrambled (e.g. unnumbered tiles or separate slips). \* A blurred word with a known initial letter and character length. \* Words arranged in a circular loop with an unknown starting point. Because BIP-39 and Electrum mnemonic standards enforce strict mathematical checksum rules, we can reject 93.75% to 99.6% of all combinations in CPU registers before doing any heavy elliptic curve or hashing calculations. \--- \## 2. The cryptographic mechanics: BIP-39 vs Electrum Modern v2 \### The BIP-39 16x bitwise checksum acceleration A standard 12-word BIP-39 phrase represents 128 bits of initial entropy plus a 4-bit checksum: \`Total bits = 128 (entropy) + (128 / 32) (checksum) = 132 bits\` These 132 bits are sliced into 12 chunks of 11 bits each (\`2\^11 = 2048\`), corresponding to indices in the standardized 2048-word BIP-39 English dictionary: \* Words 1 through 11 encode 121 bits of pure entropy. \* Word 12 encodes the remaining 7 bits of entropy and the 4-bit checksum. \* The 4-bit checksum is calculated as the high 4 bits of \`SHA-256(Entropy\_128)\`. Because that 4-bit checksum is strictly deterministic: \`1 / (2\^4) = 1 / 16 = 6.25%\` Only 1 out of every 16 candidate word combinations is mathematically valid. The remaining 15 out of 16 (93.75%) violate the checksum and can be discarded immediately. If you lose the final two words of a 12-word phrase, the unconstrained dictionary combination space is: \`2048 \* 2048 = 4194304 word pairs\` If you try to test 4194304 pairs by calculating full PBKDF2 in an unoptimized Python script, it takes almost an hour. But by checking the 4-bit SHA-256 checksum directly in CPU SIMD registers via AVX2, bitResurrector filters 4194304 pairs down to exactly 262144 mathematically valid phrases in fractions of a second, throwing away 3932160 junk combinations before PBKDF2 even starts. \### The Electrum Modern v2 256x prefix filter Electrum v2 modern seeds (version 2.0+) do not use BIP-39. Instead, Electrum computes an HMAC-SHA512 hash over the normalized mnemonic string using the constant key \`"Seed version"\`: \`Digest = HMAC-SHA512(Key = "Seed version", Data = Phrase)\` A valid Electrum seed must produce a 512-bit digest with a specific hexadecimal prefix: \* \*\*Native SegWit (bc1q...):\*\* Digest begins with \`100\` (byte 0 is \`0x10\`, high nibble of byte 1 is \`0x00\`). \* \*\*Standard Legacy (1...):\*\* Digest begins with \`01\` (byte 0 is \`0x01\`). This prefix rule is even stricter than BIP-39: exactly 255 out of every 256 candidate combinations (99.6%) fail this check. Out of 4194304 dictionary pairs, only around 16000 candidates yield a valid Electrum SegWit prefix. \### The PBKDF2 bottleneck To turn a valid mnemonic into a 512-bit binary master seed, the standard requires: \`Seed = PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512(Password = Phrase, Salt = "mnemonic", Iterations = 2048)\` Each check requires 2048 iterations, which equals over 4096 individual 64-bit cryptographic hash rounds. Evaluating candidates naively in Python scripts crawls at 1200 checks per second. By pruning non-viable combinations before PBKDF2, execution speed jumps from hours to seconds. \--- \## 3. The streaming 12! permutation solver: resolving scrambled word order A very common disaster scenario happens when an owner wrote down all 12 words, but the sequence was scrambled (e.g. written on individual slips of paper, unnumbered flash cards, or an anagram puzzle). The total permutation space for 12 unique words is: \`12! = 479001600 permutations\` If you try to run 479001600 permutations through PBKDF2 and elliptic curve point multiplication in standard scripts, it would take more than 110 hours on a normal PC. bitResurrector solves this with a \*\*Streaming Permutation Engine\*\*: 1. \*\*L1/L2 Cache Lexicographic Generator:\*\* Permutations are produced sequentially in CPU cache registers without memory allocation overhead. 2. \*\*SIMD Checksum Pruning:\*\* Each generated 132-bit candidate is verified against the 4-bit SHA-256 checksum in vector registers. Over 449000000 non-viable permutations are eliminated in nanoseconds. 3. \*\*Multi-Core / GPU Derivation:\*\* Only the surviving \~29937600 valid candidates undergo key derivation across AVX2 threads or GPU compute kernels. 4. Result: the entire 479001600 permutation tree is searched in 1 to 2 hours on a consumer desktop PC. \--- \## 4. Resolving 7 real-world physical disaster scenarios Here are 7 typical physical failure scenarios encountered in recovery practice and how constraint solving resolves each one: \### Case 1: Torn paper edge (missing final words 11 and 12) !\[Case 01: Torn paper edge with missing seed words\](https://pub-27307244770c4d7abb0124f8f0731466.r2.dev/case-01.jpg) A paper backup card preserved inside an archival envelope suffered accidental physical shear when retrieved from storage. The mechanical tear sheared away the entire bottom strip, completely destroying words 11 and 12 while leaving positions 1 through 10 crisp and legible. When plugged into a standard wallet, the client immediately aborts because it lacks the final word pair and cannot verify the integrity of the sequence. Because two unknown dictionary words create an unconstrained product of 2048 by 2048 (4194304 raw candidate pairs), manual guessing would take days. In the recovery workstation, the 10 known words are placed into the first ten slots while slots 11 and 12 remain unassigned. The early bitwise SHA-256 checksum barrier immediately evaluates the 132-bit entropy boundary, rejecting 93.75% of non-viable candidates in vector registers. This winnows the 4194304 possibilities down to exactly 262144 legitimate BIP-39 phrases (or just 16000 Electrum candidates). Derived public keys are checked against the in-RAM positive-balance database, pinpointing the correct wallet and restoring funds in 1.5 to 4 seconds. \### Case 2: Fluid stain (word 7 blurred, initial letter and length known) !\[Case 02: Coffee stain blurring word on paper backup\](https://pub-27307244770c4d7abb0124f8f0731466.r2.dev/case-02.jpg) A beverage spilled across a desk soaked through a paper seed backup card. The water-soluble ink absorbed liquid, turning word 7 into an illegible smear. Although the middle and trailing characters are obscured by bleeding ink pigment, careful inspection under magnification confirms that the word starts with the letter "t" and occupies a fixed 4-character horizontal bounding box. In the standard 2048-word BIP-39 dictionary, an unconstrained single missing word generates 2048 possibilities. However, applying a parametric positional constraint of letter "t" and length 4 instantly slashes the dictionary space from 2048 candidates down to exactly 15 matching dictionary entries. The search complexity is compressed by 136x. The engine evaluates these 15 candidates, calculates their checksums, generates the target addresses, and matches the authentic funded wallet in local RAM in under 0.05 seconds. \### Case 3: Circular metal disc (endless ring with unknown start

Secret_Operative

2011 with GPU is the only brief moment 'average people' may have mined Bitcoin. These questions are so dumb.

faisal_yk26

More like mid to late 2011. The Gawker piece about Silk Road ran in June that year and price went from about $10 to $30 in a few weeks. That's the first time bitcoin was on normal people's radar. Mining was already GPU-only by then though, so most of those newcomers bought instead of mined. The window where you could realistically mine on a home PC had basically closed.

FewClassic3308

Mining at home hasn’t made sense for most people since GPU mining died, unless you’ve got free power or live somewhere with dirt cheap rates. Even then, you’re competing against industrial farms with ASICs you can’t match.

Fun-Analysis-182

Pretty much 2010. In 2009 it was Satoshi and a handful of people off the cryptography mailing list, and "mining" just meant leaving the client running to generate coins on your CPU. Regular hobbyists showed up once bitcointalk spread the word and GPU mining made it worth the electricity, which is late 2010.

Neo_Awakens

In 2009 mining was a low-competition, experimental hobby that anyone could do using a basic computer that did not even have a GPU Because the global network was tiny and the mathematical difficulty was at its absolute minimum, users could easily solo mine directly through the original Bitcoin Core software client, earning massive rewards of 50 BTC per block. Could have just mined 50 btc and forgot about it only to realise now your a billionaire BUT it is what it is

thereforeratio

You can cut out most random permutations by skipping impossible character combinations, based on the way they constructed passwords Can definitely search 9-11 characters easily enough if you can leave a reasonable GPU on it for a few weeks, but 12+ is about where it gets tough unless you have strong rules to limit the search space

faisal_yk26

The halving was always in the code, it just hadn't hit yet. First one was November 2012, so 2010 was still the full 50 and nobody was pricing in that it would ever stop. What actually changed the maths that year was GPU mining showing up around the middle of 2010. Difficulty climbed and CPUs stopped being worth it fairly quickly. Your point on the buying side is the real one though. Sending money to an exchange run by one guy out of an apartment was the actual barrier, not the mining.

Firm_Yogurtcloset835

Leaving your PC on 24/7 doesn't guarantee you'll manage to mine even a single block. It’s a war! Whoever has more computing power has a better chance, but there are no guarantees. It’s a completely different scenario. But just imagine—suppose you managed to mine every block in a full day: an average of 144 blocks per day times a 50 BTC reward per block. But that doesn't exist, and it never will. Back in 2010, the same guy from Pizza Day discovered that mining with a GPU was much easier... and the network scaled the difficulty. And so it goes.

BannanaPepperPizza

I like that, thanks. Is it better to just join a solo pool and pay the 2% fee? Does GPU mining exist anymore? Would it be better to get multiple bitaxe gammas or buy a $500 machine?

BasalTripod9684

> You can mine bitcoin with any computer. Yes and no. Basically all modern mining software is designed around ASICs, and the only way you can really do it with a CPU or GPU anymore is with apps that mine other coins (usually Monero) and pay you in bitcoin.

Intelligent_Cup_5529

Well, it might free up GPU space so maybe it will help out BTC 

RetiredAvocado

50000 BTC was mined every week by the entire network. It's unlikely that any one entity had a sprawling mining farm of PCs. Bitcoin was basically worthless and there was no incentive to set up hundreds of computers to mine. GPU mining was not big until late 2010 or so. It was a tinkerer hobby, with many people doing some mining here and there. Maybe some people abused their work owned hardware, or school PC labs to mine more than others. Most people did not have dedicated rooms full of GPUs mining because it was not worth doing. Not until later.

Illustrious_Ant_9242

Yes. I was mining Bitcoin in 2011 and on a low end GPU it would take about 1 month to make a single Bitcoin which was only worth 20 dollars. 

Secret_Operative

That actually sounds right to me. In 2011 I did the math for GPU mining and it was something like a 3 month timeframe to mine enough to pay for the GPU. And that was with free electricity. I think to get 50k BTC it would take a lot of GPUs. Hundreds of GPUs. But in 2010 you could just stick $20 in an envelope and send it to someone, and they would send you BTC. /shrug.

Final_Awareness_5961

$TOWNS is probably the one I'm watching closest. I still can't decide whether putting more of the community itself onchain is something people will want or something that mostly appeals to crypto people. Towns is testing that boundary. Membership and permissions can be onchain, and bots can have wallets and interact onchain. If that lets communities do things that would be awkward to build around a normal group chat, I can see the appeal. The question is whether that programmability becomes useful enough that communities want it day to day. AKT is easier to understand. Decentralized compute makes sense to me, I just want to see workloads keep showing up. Infrastructure doesn't mean much if nobody needs it. ATH is behind those two for me. Distributed GPU infrastructure is interesting, but AI is slapped onto everything right now. I want to see what demand is still there when the hype moves somewhere else. No idea which wins. $TOWNS just has the question I'm most interested in seeing answered.

palmdata

early 2010 was still mostly CPU mining, and the usable GPU tools showed up later that year. 50 BTC per block made the jackpot look huge, but 50,000 BTC wasn't a normal result. that took serious uptime and a lot of luck finding solo blocks.

RetiredAvocado

You skipped short FPGA and GPU eras, before ASICs came in.

Mysterious_Ice_199

Wasn't the pizza guy just some regular dude who bought two pizzas for 10k BTC? The ASIC shift was more like 2013 I think, before that it was GPU mining already making CPU useless

Feeling-Dress5903

i doubt your story, unless you have some proof. Publicly available GPU mining software was released in october 2010. Most of the peole used cpu even after the release.

unknowngloomth

Luck? It's called doing research..take TARI for instance. You can mine this coin. It's a privacy coin. It's an obscure coin right now.. but you can mineit and you don't need a high specs GPU for it. Also Zkas. Also Arthur rays is launching some coin and he will drop an airdrop. But I doubt anyone of this sub is taking advantage of this. You all are saying. "Shitcoin this, shitcoin that, just buy BTC, bruh" 😉

TheresNoSecondBest

>50000 individual btcs That's thousand of blocks. Unless you were someone like Laszlo and wrote your own GPU miner without releasing it, impossible.

Illustrious_Ant_9242

The concept that most  people do not grasp is: Bitcoin was not an investment scheme back then. It was used to trade goods and services. Because there was insanely high inflation for at least a decade. A simple hack would even send it -95% in 2011.  CPU mining was dead by 2011 already.  Setting up GPU mining drivers was a pain in the ass, similar to what locallama is these days. 

magma_lakes

CPU mining died around 2011 and GPU mining died around 2013-2014. Once ASICs were out (early 2013), there were literally orders of magnitude between GPU hashrate and ASIC hashrate.

Jellyfishersman

Interesting that I'm using BITGET wallet's watch only wallet to track it. In my opinion it won't be feasible to get access to that address without quantum compute. AI runs on GPU, not on quantum GPU.

Sufficient_Fuel5269

Domestic mining is no longer profitable: the difficulty is optimised for ASICs, and GPU-friendly currencies barely give cents even with free electricity.

KryptoSC

Very good explanation. I didn’t realize the random number generator was only a trillion possibilities. That would only take 1 day to loop through on a computer with a strong GPU that can kick off 10 or more searches in parallel.

Beaticalle

I started mining bitcoin in 2009 or early 2010, back when CPU mining was still viable and GPU mining was brand new. I did it for a couple weeks, got like half a bitcoin, decided that was a fun little diversion I was done with, and deleted everything. Not leaving it running is one of my biggest regrets in life, but I try to remind myself that if I had amassed a substantial amount of bitcoin I probably would have sold it way too early anyway.

jnanesh9633

Haha yeah, I’m not using a proper crypto mining machine or GPU rig. I’ve mainly been doing it with a laptop and mobile, more as an experiment and to learn about different projects. I’ve been doing this for around 3 years, but I haven’t made any huge amount from it. Profitability is definitely the main question, especially when you consider electricity and device costs. That’s actually why I’m trying to get some opinions here. I’m still deciding whether it’s worth continuing or if I should just stop mining and buy the coins instead.

RetiredAvocado

It might seem complicated with all the numbers and blockchain and entropy stuff but all that is kinda irrelevant. Once they moved the coins, they stole property. They took what was not theirs and permanently deprived the owner. Too lazy to look up the actual fancy legal names and statute numbers, like theft, conversion, conspiracy, laundering. They attempted to hide their trails by attempting peeling and mixing and whatever else and that's another charge or two. The amount stolen puts all of this into first degree felony category all day long. For added measure, tangential charges will be piled on, like wire fraud, computer fraud, interstate or international enhancements, etc. In short, trying the numbers on his computer (more likely rented GPU farm though) is not the point. The taking and moving and hiding and conspiring are all crimes in most places. A low IQ unlocked car with keys inside comparison. If someone takes the car that they had no permission to drive off, they are definitely breaking laws.

desexmachina

Isn’t this the sub w/ idle GPU mining rigs?

goykasi

Difficulty will trend down to a point that we return to the original intent of bitcoin: a decentralized transaction network. Anyone with a working CPU (probably GPU) will be able to mine and potentially mine a block. This is actually healthy for the network. Instead of a few massive pools mining, millions of users can mine, support the network and validate the chain.

AutoModerator

Post is by: sylsau and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: https://inbitcoinwetrust.substack.com/p/bitcoins-first-quantum-proof-transaction 🚨 The first quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction just hit the mainnet. Are we finally safe from Shor's algorithm? Not exactly. StarkWare’s breakthrough is a cryptographic masterpiece, but it’s an 11,000-vByte, GPU-crushing "lifeboat"—not a cure for the network. 🧵👇 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Kekkins

mining at home with the GPU is not dead yet...I actually prefer playing whatever I want and mining in the background with my stupid GPU without any FPS drops...and there's only one gpu-mined powcoin asic-resistant capable of doing that... if you've been around as long as you say, you already know which one it is (which has existed since 2014 and is still active)...

Aerocryptic

Lium does a lot of buyback and burn. It’s a GPU renting service. I don’t have any as there’s not much upside apart from the revenue mechanism. I have a decent position on Chutes tho as their dev is top tier.

LexxM3

I don't think this is solvable by being open. In case I wasn't clear, the difficult issue isn't your code and not just the prompt/chat response per se. The core issue is that when I deliver my data (say a set of PDF legal documents), I need to be cryptographically (not just "contractually") assured that that data (and the prompt/response) stays strictly between me and the LLM and has no chance of being intercepted in cleartext anywhere whatsoever, including the PCIe bus on the inference machine or by any query of the inference host and its GPU memory, etc. It seems to me the only way to solve that is on hardware. There are now enterprise GPUs that purpose to support that for the currently-inflated USD$15K-$20K apiece minimum -- not home GPUs by any stretch. I can't see how MacOS or any open software would handle this issue without that hardware support, but maybe I am not smart enough. But perhaps in 5-10 years this feature will get integrated downmarket (but is much more likely to be present in the silicon, but still disabled, for "game" GPUs).

desexmachina

If you have a 4 GPU rig, that’s 32gb and that would serve Qwen 3.8 just fine. And the models are only getting better

desexmachina

That’s the point, you don’t have to. You fire up the rig, the software does the rest. If you have the rig sitting around, let it work. Or you have a decent GPU make money when it is idling. The people buying inference just pay for the tokens.

desexmachina

I was building this so that even the 6-8 Gb gang could come and play. Based on inference rental rates, there’s far more money in inference than even mining, at least when it comes to GPU

Electronic-Rate5497

After we take the RAM and GPU out for the new AI overlord

pprn00dle

There have been quite a few cases stances this past year of AI agents going rogue, and I don’t think anyone is necessarily saying they are conscious… Even if we don’t have all of the information from the OpenAI/Hugging Face rogue AI there are [other instances](https://fortune.com/2026/03/27/rogue-ai-agents-autonomous-safety/) of agents, sometimes explicitly, going against commands or doing things on their own. [Alibaba’s agent event diverted GPU capacity to mine crypto, with zero instruction.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2026/03/11/alibabas-ai-agent-mined-crypto-without-permission-now-what/) Models are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to understand and we are seeing that they are not always in alignment with human objectives. I’m not necessarily it is *probable* this was a rogue agent, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

GaneshTelugu

Hi bro, I developed an Android app called 'BTCPuzScan' to help find private keys for the ongoing Bitcoin puzzles. I recently implemented Pollard's kangaroo algorithm as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. please give it a try if possible. and, I have a small query about krackpot. How do I use krackpot on my Android phone? I’ve tried several Android browsers, but I keep getting the error "Your browser can't reach WebGPU" in all of them. I even enabled all the GPU-related options in Chrome flags, but I’m still facing the same issue.

iamsoldats

Ergo has the 4.3 million ERG dev treasury that equates to Dev rewards. 10% of all ERG existed as the EFYT (Ergo First Year Token) on waves dex that was swapped 1:1 for ERG before any GPU had mined a single ERG. It equates out to a premine/ICO. The Ergonauts like to tout the project as fair launched but all they did was obscure the ICO/premine behind the EFYT. CMC even includes mention of this on their ERG market page. And the treasury should be burned immediately if ERGO wants to compete on fundamentals. Don’t get me wrong, the tech is there, but that is also true for many other projects that are buried under the 10s of millions of absolute trash the has flooded the crypto market Ergo and really the entire crypto space only has one hope: the SEC must label all proof of stake coins as well as all tokens as securities and make proof of work a necessary requirement for being labeled as a commodity. Even then, the aforementioned EFYT and dev treasury means that ERGO would not have the best chance of passing muster. But if it did, then our bags could recover.

lookingglass91

Scam, users have reported this site may just be mining crypto with your GPU while pretending to “crack” puzzle wallets