Putting my computer to work

November 5, 2016 10:05 PM

So I recently discovered I could make a few extra bucks by setting my computer to mine cryptocurrencies. I'm part of a mining pool and while my pretty decent computer runs at a rate of about 20 H/s, the top miners perform at a rate of 25,000-70,000 H/s. What would explain the difference in rates? Are they using supercomputers? Do they control botnets to mine the cryptocurrentcy? Have they set up multiple instances in a service like Amazon virtual machines? Something else maybe? Thanks in advance for the insights.
posted by Gosha_Dog to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: They are using specific setups of video card arrays to run many many teraflops. You are almost certainly using more money in electricity than you are "mining".
posted by sanka at 10:08 PM on November 5, 2016 [24 favorites]

ASICs surpassed GPUs some time ago as the most power-efficient way to mine bitcoins. The top miners are running in warehouses in China with cheap (government subsidized) electricity. I don't know what state the other crypto-currencies are in, but any of them that actually become valuable will follow this path.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:52 PM on November 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

They are using racks of custom-built devices.
There are variations for most of the top crypto-currencies.

There is no possible way to compete in that realm with a home computer.
posted by madajb at 11:14 PM on November 5, 2016

ASIC miners plus cheap electricity (to make the miners pay for themselves faster).
posted by zippy at 12:53 AM on November 6, 2016

Find another early cryptocurrency before it gets big and bet on that or as a hobby. As a cottage industry, nope nope nope.
posted by sammyo at 4:06 AM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

At the risk of stating the obvious, sanka is right that you are almost surely losing (much) more money in your electricity bill than you are gaining by mining, and this applies even if this is your regular computer and it normally stays on. Computers do use more power under load than at idle.
posted by musicinmybrain at 6:59 AM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]