
Pure python bitcoin miner to understand how it works - clay
https://github.com/jgarzik/pyminer
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technotony
One of my frustrations with bitcoin is that there is a small cable of
investors who own significant amounts of the outstanding bitcoins. They stand
to make a fortune if the currency were to take off and it seems that would
leave us with an economy controlled by a small number of participants,
defeating much of its potential benefits.

A better proposal would be to distribute the available bitcoins equally to
everyone on the planet, creating a fair and true starting point... wishful
thinking, or could we hack the algorithm and shortcodes to do this?

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gregschlom
_A better proposal would be to distribute the available bitcoins equally to
everyone on the planet, creating a fair and true starting point_

That's exactly the point of the algorithm, but instead of distributing
bitcoins to everyone _in the planet_ , it distributes it to everyone _running
the software_.

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ck2
There is even a javascript implementation out there somewhere but it only runs
at 4khash/sec.

Oh here's a variation <https://github.com/progranism/Bitcoin-JavaScript-Miner>

But what we really need is some code with true hash throttling because
limiting it to one CPU just makes performance unbalanced as it still runs at
max cpu.

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base
for pure curiosity... isn't bitcoin like a pyramid scheme? 25% of the money is
with the early adopters and the first individuals have big amounts compared to
people that came 1year after.

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gloob
Could you describe how that makes it like a pyramid scheme?

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biot
The return one gets is a function of elapsed time since bitcoin started with
every newcomer getting ever-diminishing returns even if they expend the
(Moore's law inflation adjusted) same amount of work. With pyramid schemes,
the wealth of those who got in early is entirely supported by those who came
in under them at a later date. It's not entirely analogous as later bitcoin
adopters aren't kicking back value to the early adopters, but there are
similarities in the end result: someone new to bitcoin in the year 2029 has no
chance of catching up with those who were new in 2009 due to the fact that the
total number of bitcoins has been mathematically limited to 21,000,000:
<http://www.bitcoin.org/faq#How_are_new_Bitcoins_created>

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vesto
Can anyone provide an explanation as to what we're looking at here?

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dekz
This python script is communicating with the bitcoin program (the one
available from the bitcoin website which is running in headless mode) via
JSON-RPC. It's asking the program which is communicating with all the other
nodes for work, performing that work and returning an answer eventually to the
bitcoin program which then will propagate it to other nodes. This python
script is simply performing the work in python instead of (in parallel?) the
bitcoin headless server performing the work.

Essentially, attempting to implement the communication protocol of bitcoin,
it's piggy backing off the bitcoin application and just attempting to perform
the work. If you've ever looked at the "specification" of the communication
protocol you can certainly emphasise going with this route.

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golgo13
How long does it take to create a coin using the official client? The only
coin I have is from that bit coin faucet that I heard about a while back. I've
been running the client now for almost a month, and nothing. I've dedicated 2
of my laptop cores on coin generation, but I haven't seen anything. Or, are
the only people getting coins those that are using their GPUs to generate
coins?

~~~
scotty79
Check how many khash/s do you process and use this calculator
<http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php> to estimate how long you'll
have to wait to get bitcoins with 95% probability.

I currently have 150 000 khash/s on Radeon HD 6850 And I'm hoping to see 50
bitcoins per two months (I don't run my computer 24/7).

Six core AMD 1090T does only 9 000 khash/s so with two cores of laptop you'll
see your first mined bitcoin exactly 5 seconds after hell freezes over. ;-)

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mariusz10jonski
Ok, I want a lesson on this. @tenzwarszawy

