Free Software Bitcoin Mining

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ssdclickofdeath
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Is there a program to mine Bitcoin with only free software?

lembas
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It's possible with a CPU which is completely useless these days. Not possible with GPUs. No idea about FPGAs and ACICs.

ssdclickofdeath
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What program do I use? Even if it's not feasible, I still want to say that I've mined Bitcoin. :)

lembas
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$ apt-cache search bitcoin
bitcoin-qt - peer-to-peer network based digital currency - GUI
bitcoind - peer-to-peer network based digital currency - daemon

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Can't figure out how to mine with this software. Are you sure this is a feature of it?

aloniv

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Bitcoin mining software is listed here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bitcoin#Mining
cgminer and cpuminer are free software.

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Thanks!
Just for me to know what to expect if I take the effort and compile the package:
With my intel core duo, 1,66 Ghz - how long will it take to mine 0,1 Bitcoin?

aloniv

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I'm guessing days/weeks...CPU mining isn't economical as far as I know...

lembas
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Chris

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I think it's possible to mine bitcoins with 100% free software using a special USB dongle. This is cost effective. I haven't verified this with certainty though. I asked someone else to do a quick check and it appears to be the case. I should have one or two of the devices shortly.

I believe they run about 1BTC to 2.5BTC or $100-250 USD.

If we can confirm they are free software friendly we might start selling them.

It would be great to see them FSF certified. I'll investigate at some point probably and talk the the FSF and whoever is designing/manufacturing them.

ssdclickofdeath
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"I believe they run about 1BTC to 2.5BTC or $100-250 USD."
The device produces that many Bitcoin every [ hour | day | month | year ], or is that how much the device costs?

Chris

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That is the cost of the device- apparently the price dropped. You can still find it for over $250 USD...

That said I'm not sure how many BTC it produces. You may need a boatload of these to make any real money from them.

However it could be useful if you want to create an anonymous source of money to use for payments. If you pay with a credit card for bitcoins for instance and then send the bitcoins received to another user for something somebody else could trace it back to where you bought the coins from and since that company has a record of your credit card they could identify you.

On the other hand if you have purchased this device and generated your own coins from it your the original source and nobody can identify who you are unless you make an association when you go to make payment for something.

For instance you could buy something virtually (entertainment content) or contribute to a cause without being identifiable.

Examples where somebody might do something like this is: Middle eastern persons whom are looking at entertainment content online that there government doesn't like. Or for that matter Germany or the US.

Other examples might be a person in the United States wants to contribute to a campaign to legalize something wrongly perceived to be horrendous. However a public donation would result in criminal, social persecution, loss of life, or job, even though its not technically illegal to advocate for it (because it's political speech, and the advocacy is to legalize).

An example might be a user of marijuana wanting to contribute to a campaign to legalize it. While the campaign is not illegal the government might trace the donations and persecute those donating based on the assumption (legal or otherwise) all those who want it legalized probably are users (and thus criminals). They might use that as a basis to get a warrant and search for said contributors homes for illegal substances.

This isn't a great example although I'd be afraid to put forth a better example. I'm sure people can think of more politically incorrect things.

Maybe it is your advocating for socialism during the mcarthy era, or similar.

I will state that just being identified as 'x' or advocating for 'x' can today get people killed in the United States. In some instances people have been dragged through the streets and in other cases the government has legally convicted people for actual crimes, locked those people up, and in the process sentenced them to death, because they have knowingly put them in dangerous conditions which they knew would result in the persons death. Nobody objects because nobody likes people part of group 'x'. People would say/do say in comments to articles things like 'they deserved it' or 'they got what was coming to them'. It's really messed up. I'd be afraid to even advocate against the conditions for fear of being labelled as part of or advocating for group 'x'. The disturbing thing is not the crime committed. It's that we don't allow for dissent and persecute people for speaking up. We murder people openly who disagree in ways which are completely disturbing. Because the law didn't do it directly it's OK? That's the attitude. American's prison / legal system is screwed up.

ssdclickofdeath
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I'm sure that most (or all) of the Government's activity in these cases are clearly unconstitutional, they completely ignore their Constitutional Oath.

Chris

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Yes- of course. That's exactly the point. No one is held to account. The reason people end up in jail is for the wrong reasons. It ends up being for the benefit of employment/advancement of various parties like: prosecutors, police officers (the cops are doing "something"-doesn't matter if the person charged is guilty of a crime), mayors (further a career), politicians, prison owners (privatization), etc.

Then you get into the issue of prisons not really helping prisoners or society. Instead of being places to train, educate, and help to improve peoples lives they become places to which society can feel like it's gotten its revenge. What they do is house people in savage-like conditions. Sadly it rarely happens that the victims actually feel justice has been served despite it being one of the focus points of the system (the idea of victims rights). You can't ever fill that void or pain of the victims relatives and family. It's sad not because we haven't punished the person sufficient or can't. Its sad because we think revenge is a good reason to punish people. It's not. Its selfish for society and those in it to think this way and misses the point that not all people have had the same opportunities or have been born with the right genes. Many of the people in prison are themselves victims. They are the most victimized individuals in our society.

We don't have to have a completely just or socialist system. That probably won't work well either. However I think we should be avoiding creating a system which is punitive and makes upward movement for the worst off difficult (banning ex-cons from employment opportunities ensures continued re-offending). We should not be expecting the system to rehabilitate every or even most prisoners even if the goal is to give them as many opportunities as possible. While giving them the opportunities and encouragement it must be a prisoners own desires to better themselves.

oralfloss
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Joined: 06/20/2013

Relating to the first part of what you said:
If you are interested in buying bitcoins anonymously you can buy them with physical cash instead of cards through BitInstant.
It uses Moneygram/Zipzap which you can pay through 700,000 locations around the world, usually in convenient stores. You are given a reciept and you can redeem it online. No ID required.
There is a fee but anonymity isn't cheap these days.

teodorescup

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Hash: SHA1

About buying bitcoins anonymously, correct me if I'm wrong, but can't
one buy bitcoins on line and then send them to another wallet (or
more), therefore loosing their trace and the source of the money ?

- --

teodorescup

I use: trisquel.info | fsf.org | eff.org | torproject.org | flattr.com
| duckduckgo.com | h-node.com | skepdic.com |
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andrew
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On 29/06/13 01:03, teodorescup wrote:
> About buying bitcoins anonymously, correct me if I'm wrong, but can't
> one buy bitcoins on line and then send them to another wallet (or
> more), therefore loosing their trace and the source of the money ?

You would have to broadcast the transaction via the Tor network, else it
still might be traceable to you.

Andrew.

Chris

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This might make it more difficult to trace although not impossible. Cameras, etc. If you do the mining yourself there is no link (correct me if I'm mistaken).

oralfloss
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You are correct about the cameras being able to track people, which I was going to mention in my first reply but decided not to because it seemed far-fetched. I'm sure it is possible though.

If you do the mining yourself, there is likely no way to link it back to you, unless your ISP tracks you and the data is unencrypted. The problem however is that solo mining bitcoins is no longer viable due to the difficulty increasing almost 100% every 2 days (due to all the hype). To be able to make a profit on solo mining with today's difficulty would require a mining rig around $10,000 in price, and even then there is still no guarantee.

This makes people resort to pool mining, which is very centralized on one server, which could be a huge problem. Privacy issues arise as a result of this, as the servers can easily track IPs of miners and any other information of the like.

I realize that yes, there is no way to track you if you solo mine, but it is completely inviable with all the current hype. This is very unfortunate for those who wish to be anonymous, which is why I am happy that there are many bitcoin alternatives. These alternatives usually have less hype which makes people with cheap computers to be able to mine coins and remain anonymous.

I sure hope that some day more online services will start accepting other crypto-currencies rather than the popular bitcoin. It would help the online economy grow due to competition and would benefit those who can't afford multiple thousand dollar rigs.

Chris

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Can you combine Tor with bitcoin pool mining? I'm not sure of the details (yet) of how bitcoin mining pools work. I would think it would be possible to do fairly anonymously if one sets it up right.

oralfloss
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Yes, you can set up a proxy for pool mining which means you can probably just use the tor service as a proxy for mining. It might be a bit slow but I believe that would work.

After searching up a bit on using tor for mining bitcoins, it turns out you can and there are even tor exclusive bitcoin mining pools. That is one way to stay anonymous.

ssdclickofdeath
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If you are talking about metadata in an image, there are programs that remove the metadata, I'm not sure if free ones exist though.

andrew
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On 02/07/13 04:31, gameboyab wrote:
> If you are talking about metadata in an image, there are programs
> that remove the metadata, I'm not sure if free ones exist though.

You could try MAT (Metadata Anonymisation Toolkit), but I don't think
it's in the Trisquel repos at the moment.

https://mat.boum.org/

Andrew.

ssdclickofdeath
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What are you talking about when you say 'camera'? A digital camera? A security camera? A film camera?

Chris

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Security cameras in the stores where you purchase the bitcoins, or something that translates into them later.

quantumgravity
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if I go and get some cash from the cash point, I can be tracked like this as well.

In my opinion, we need to stay anonymous when sending and receiving money to others; but with real cash, my bank knows everything how much money I take, too.

Dave_Hunt

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With real cash, your bank may know how much money you take, but they
don't know what you're doing with it. Can you take real cash to the
post office and buy money orders? You may lose the convenience of
on-line shopping, but you get some privacy back. What are you willing
to trade off, and who do you trust?

--Dave

Chris

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In the early days of the Internet I use to use US money orders to buy stuff online all the time. The reason was simple. I didn't posses a credit/debit card.

You may still be able to do so... with at least some companies. You can also get a prepaid debit card. Unfortunately there have been laws passed that make it difficult to buy anything over $100 USD without giving up a SS#. I don't know if it is possible to purchase a foreign prepaid debit card number online that would allow for greater amounts to be charged. Though it wouldn't surprise me if there were places to get such cards.

Of course now there is bitcoins... and so who would do such a thing if they wanted to stay anonymous?

__martin__
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Thanks for this amazing legal thread guys, but now back to the original topic. The Free Software I tend to use with Bitcoin cryptocurrency is Electrum (available throughout python-pip install method, not included in upstream repos). Sadly no miner here.

http://electrum.org/

Chris

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It looks like it is under the GNU GPL license.

You would have to follow the directions on the download page and install it manually if you want it:

http://electrum.org/download.html

ssdclickofdeath
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I tried to install the GNU/Linux version of Electrum, but I couldn't figure how to get it to work, so I downloaded the Windows version to run in Wine, but I noticed that there were files like "Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest", and "msvcm90.dll" in the Electrum directory. Are files like this nonfree?

Edit: I got the native GNU/Linux version working now.

ssdclickofdeath
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Is it practical/possible to mine with an Intel GMA card?

Chris

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I'm pretty sure the answer is no. However even if possible it is not cost effective. The bitcoins produced won't cover the electric required to produce the bitcoins.

ssdclickofdeath
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I was wondering if one can GPU mine with an Intel GMA with free software at all.
I'd suppose that it would be faster than a Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz CPU.

liligaston
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Joined: 09/25/2013

It will take you a year or two to mine one package of bitcoin with ATI 7600 GPU , thats about 3000usd for 25BTC pack. Today everybody moves to FPGA devices which has also GNU software good luck with your mining
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