Actual profit from cryptocoins?

Hey /lam/ I was seeing this project called storj.io that seeks to be a decentralized storage network. I like the general idea, but I think it falls short. I've always thought that a cryptocurrency based on distributed computer services would have a bright future. Storj does this for storage, but it could be done for processing power as well. I've read about way too many decentralized platforms, but I haven't yet found one that is actually making anyone any money (which would mean that the network has a future). Does anylain know one? >cryptocurrencies as a service?

>>397 I hope that this thread belongs here.. for either good or bad our chan has grown smaller. Sorry if this intrudes on anyone's turf or breaks rules.

I generally believe that a currency backed by something that has actual value, like storage, should be a lot more stable than something like bitcoin. The main problem is that I can think of three distributed "money from storage" platforms off the top of my head: MaidSafe, LBRY and storj.io. This, sadly, makes it very likely that none of them will ever pick up any steam.

Apart from storage/bandwidth as a service (storj, sia, maidsafe), there are also three cryptocurrencies for "computing as a service": Golem and Iexec are distributed computing platforms (you compute something for someone requesting it and for that get paid in micropayments): https://golem.network/ http://iex.ec/ Use cases are for example video rendering or deep learning, both want to build a general computing framework so that everyone can create their own applications and also sell these applications as SaaS to other people wanting to do something similar. Gridcoin rewards your contributions to BOINC on top of proof of stake: http://www.gridcoin.us/ I think these kind of platforms are promising, as they have all the same advantages as crpytocurrencies in general but also some inherent value (storage or computation) that can directly be bought with them.

>>587 Thank you lainon, this is what i was looking for.

>>587 Damn Golem seems pretty cool, thanks

https://lainchan.org/sec/res/1062.html#q1062

Only thread i could find mildly on this topic, hoping it's okay that i post in here too Has anyone here heard of this utox coin? It's getting released soon, and i don't know if i should buy in or wait it out

>>397 I'm actually currently mining cryptocoins! It's not easy, since it requires a massive investment in hardware (in my case mostly GPUs and CPUs), and you have to have a way to manage that system while you're not onsite (I use Teamviewer) I'm mining Monero (xmr) with a friend and we're sharing the costs and profits of it, but we literally just started about 5-6 weeks ago so I have a very limited experience from it I can try answering any questions you have

>>4130 Have you been able to break even? With that I mean: Have you been able to make more money than you spent on hardware and power?

>>4150 Currently I am making a profit based on how much electricity costs where I love (a whopping 0.13 usd per kWh), but because I didn't invest much and I'm still changing coins, I'm going to take about 9 months to break even with 27/4 mining Learning from my mistakes, if you are interested in mining, I would recommend buying an ASIC device (ASIC meaning Application Specific Integrated Circuit, or a chip designed to calculate only a one type of equation), to mine anything BUT Bitcoin or any SHA256 based cryptocurrency (that's the type of algorithm used to mine Bitcoin), because that market has basically reached saturation and it's quite volatile. For example, I was planning on buying an antminer D3 (antminer is a company that creates ASICs) which computed the X11 algorithm (so things like dash coin) which at the stock price (~$1500 USD) would break even in 67 days, but it started selling in September and it's currently sold out with people reselling it for about $1000 usd More (the cheapest I found was $1445 USD, which (according to my calculations) break even in about 100 days, and pay out about $11k usd per year counting for electricity usage at 0.13 usd/kWh, but I currently don't have the capital to buy one of these monsters unless I find investors. So, yes, it is possible to make A LOT of money in cryptocurrency mining, but the initial investment is also huge (making a living off of these antminers would require about $25k usd, and that's if you have guaranteed that you will find 10 of these for $2.5k usd, with which you will have varying success, and that the value of the cryptocurrency will not decrease, and that the cost of electricity doesn't go up, and that that difficulty doesn't increase too much You also have to take into account the amount of electricity these monsters use, since they use about 1200W EACH, so putting more than 3-4 in your home will probably bring down the breakers, so if you plan to make serious money you also have to find a location with a sturdier power grid than your house, or distribute the miners among a few locations I hope you find this useful

>>4154 A few corrections: where I live The cost of the ASIC was 2445 not 1445

>>587 Isn't this what ethereum was supposed to be? It seems to have changed into yet another bitcoin knockoff.

>>4157 No. Ethereum only runs very small programs, as each computation costs ETH and runs on every node in the network. But because of this the calculations are decentralized and do not require trust. You can for example look at the code of contracts before you call the functions of the contract by sending eth there and you know exactly what will happen. Because of this ETH can be used as the mediation layer, that allows the people who pay for computation and the people who offer computation for money to come together without having to trust a third party escrow and also for very small amounts of money, too small that traditional methods of payments would be worth it. The computation run via golem, iexec,... in contrast are very computationally intensive and cannot run on the ethereum blockchain, but on the computers of the people offering this service via the ethereum blockchain.

>>397 NVIDIA and AMD sure do profit.