Topic: How did you get in to bitcoin/altcoin mining? - page 2. (Read 3963 times)
I found out when torrentleech site started accepting bitcoins as payment then I did some research and once the ASICMINER usbs came out got into bitcoin mining as a hobby.
SecurityNow's comprehensive episode on Bitcoin. I didn't listen to it when it aired unfortunately, I heard it around March 2011. Early enough to get in before the 2011 bubble, but I can't imagine how much would've been different if I had gotten in just a few months earlier with all the GPUs I initially fired up.
I had heard about Bitcoin from a few online articles and stories, and thought it was cool, but never really got into it. Months later, I read a Gizmodo article back in 2011 about how Bitcoin was dying because the price had dropped from $31 to like $2. Well I then got into googling a bit more, and found some really cool stories of people running a 5970 for a month and making $900. Now I knew I'd never be making that much, esp since the price had already crashed, but I decided to give it a try.
I downloaded Phoenix Miner 1.5 or something like that, and got it mining on Deepbit using my brother's Nvidia GTX 9800. It took some tweaking, but I got it up over 30MH/s. WOOHOO WE'RE COOKING NOW!
It was more just to figure out how mining worked before I bought my first GPU, which was about 2 weeks later. Got one of those Sapphire 5830 Extremes off Newegg for $130. I went from 30MH/s to 300MH/s, and thought it was the coolest thing ever!
Thus continued the mining fever. Buying more GPUs. Switching from Phoenix to CGMiner. Switching from Windows to Gentoo and back to Windows. Researching everything that I could. Figuring out that if I undervolted, I could keep the temps down and CGMiner's auto-gpu function would keep them at a higher clock and mine faster. Buying BFL FPGA Singles. Selling GPUs. Buying BFL ASICs. Etc.
I downloaded Phoenix Miner 1.5 or something like that, and got it mining on Deepbit using my brother's Nvidia GTX 9800. It took some tweaking, but I got it up over 30MH/s. WOOHOO WE'RE COOKING NOW!
It was more just to figure out how mining worked before I bought my first GPU, which was about 2 weeks later. Got one of those Sapphire 5830 Extremes off Newegg for $130. I went from 30MH/s to 300MH/s, and thought it was the coolest thing ever!Thus continued the mining fever. Buying more GPUs. Switching from Phoenix to CGMiner. Switching from Windows to Gentoo and back to Windows. Researching everything that I could. Figuring out that if I undervolted, I could keep the temps down and CGMiner's auto-gpu function would keep them at a higher clock and mine faster. Buying BFL FPGA Singles. Selling GPUs. Buying BFL ASICs. Etc.
A drug addict in front of a mcdonalds ranting on about how silk road ruined his life. I came home, googled silk road, had my brain in bits for days thinking about how payments are made, then BAM....bitcoin was revealed to me. Silk road isnt my thing personally, but the way BTC seemed to enable its existence just grabbed my interest and wouldn't let go.
Just out of curiousity how did you get into mining? how did you hear about it?
I started late in 2012 after doing some research into benchmarking PCs for gaming - i nated to test one of my performance PCs to see how much i could push the PC with heat and thermal testing and one person on a forum mentioned using bitcoin to to test the GPU.
I quickly did some research and downloaded GUIMiner and went from there... now i have quite a few USB BEs and a few GFX cards mining altcoins (plus dabbling in a few other 'mining' experiments)
I have also got a few friends mining and using BTC/LTC/FTC and now looking at XPM (Primecoin - still undecided on longetivity but it mines alongside my USB and GPUs with a slight profit so its all good whilst turning a profit
I've recently found a pub that accepts bitcoins so now am also drinking/eating a percentage of my mining profits
whilst trying to expand my mining rig (and looking at my ROI disappearing) whilst having a blast working on 0 cost thermal reduction methods without reducing security 
I started late in 2012 after doing some research into benchmarking PCs for gaming - i nated to test one of my performance PCs to see how much i could push the PC with heat and thermal testing and one person on a forum mentioned using bitcoin to to test the GPU.
I quickly did some research and downloaded GUIMiner and went from there... now i have quite a few USB BEs and a few GFX cards mining altcoins (plus dabbling in a few other 'mining' experiments)
I have also got a few friends mining and using BTC/LTC/FTC and now looking at XPM (Primecoin - still undecided on longetivity but it mines alongside my USB and GPUs with a slight profit so its all good whilst turning a profit
I've recently found a pub that accepts bitcoins so now am also drinking/eating a percentage of my mining profits
whilst trying to expand my mining rig (and looking at my ROI disappearing) whilst having a blast working on 0 cost thermal reduction methods without reducing security Jump to: