

Ask HN: Has anyone created a bitcoin mining env. in MS Azure - caruana


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Avalaxy
I'm doing this. Not Bitcoins, but Litecoins because mining bitcoins wouldn't
be profitable at all.

I'm running 7 XS (single core) Windows Virtual Machines that run CPUMiner (or
minerd). They produce around 3.6 KHash/s per server, which is very low, but
Azure servers don't have a GPU so we can't run GPU-based miners like cgminer.
Here's a picture of the running servers: [https://fbcdn-sphotos-
a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/14155...](https://fbcdn-sphotos-
a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/1415530_763464910345604_1829192798_o.jpg)

Doing this is not profitable at all, unless you have free credits. I have a
free MSDN Ultimate subscription that has $150 worth of Azure credits every
month. Since I'm only running a very small and simple website, I have spare
resources that I could spend on litecoin mining. This can hopefully produce
around 1 LTC per month.

Yesterday I stopped running minerd on 2 of my servers and dedicated them to
BOINC (cancer mapping). Ripple Labs will give you free Ripples (XRP) for
donated computing power:
[https://www.computingforgood.org/](https://www.computingforgood.org/)

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

~~~
kr4
Look like if you build some web app and have it run for one or more customers,
it'd be more profitable; that's what I'm doing with my free msdn ultimate.
(passively pocketing at least $300 per month) and another customer is just
around the corner which may tripple it.

Though, finding such ideas/customers is exponentially harder than installing
mining software.

~~~
Avalaxy
Yea of course, but I'm already busy with 3 different projects and none of them
will use Azure any time soon (actually 1 will, but I'll get a new bizspark for
that). Al my credits were just wasted on idling servers...

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ariejan
CPU-Based BitCoin mining hasn't been profitable for a long time. After the
introduction of ASIC-miners, difficulty has shot up and only made CPU mining
more useless.

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joshstrange
IIRC that would all be CPU-based which is considered obsolete in the BTC
mining world. GPU's are on their way out as well I think with ASIC's taking
their place.

~~~
trafficlight
I don't think most ASICs can break even at this point, the difficulty has shot
up dramatically over the last 3 or 4 months.

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caruana
Really, no one?

~~~
fuj
...Read the previous answers. It is simply not profitable. CPU mining is not
profitable at all, GPU mining is almost if not already unprofitable. Even most
ASICs can't break even like trafficlight said.

