Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mint It Yourself With a Browser-Based Bitcoin Miner

Posted by timothy on from the b-b-but-the-feds-are-here! dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There's a popular discussion happening at the Bitcoin forums about a new browser-based bitcoin miner released today. This lets people mine for bitcoin straight from the browser. There's talk of making an embeddable version. How long until websites start using CPU power from their users to create Bitcoin for their owners?" As Bitcoin gets more attention, I foresee malware with payloads promising to do the same thing.

3 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. Best explanation: SN 287 by keith_nt4 · · Score: 5, Informative
    When this came up a couple of days ago I didn't see anyone link to this for some reason (or I missed it).

    The podcast called Security Now featuring Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson (famouse for that the "Shields Up!" web page) dedicated episode 287 entirely to bit coin.

    I thought steve gave an incredibly well thought out, clear, concise explanation of what bit coin is why it is apparently impossible to "game" the system in anyway. The following episode (288) was the "listener feedback" episode with many listeners expressing doubt and even more excellent explanations from Steve.

    Here are the convenient transcripts of these episodes, linked here in the hopes perhaps it will be useful to the slashdot community.

    http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-287.htm - main episode

    http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-288.htm - Q-and-A episode

    In my mind if Steve says it's trustworthy and not a scam, that's good enough for me. But then I've listened to all 300+ episodes and am a big fan so I may be biased.

    In fact there was a spike in use after the SN bitcoin episode. It may be wholly or partially due to Steve's apparent endorsement (he says he's going to make his software purchasable via bitcoin).

    --
    "UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
    1. Re:Best explanation: SN 287 by rantomaniac · · Score: 5, Informative

      impossible to "game" the system

      The system has already been "gamed" by its very creator and a handful of early adopters. They mined most of the bitcoins currently in existence and then they made people believe in their value and became millionaires. (Satoshi is said to own between 1 and 2 million bitcoins, that's between $7M and $14M at current market prices.) Regardless of the usefulness of the idea itself, bitcoin was also designed to be a get rich quick scheme. You could conceive a similar digital currency, where wealth distribution was not so heavily biased towards early adopters.

  2. Word of warning by Zibbo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Site uses only CPU mining, and I can guarantee you that you will be spending more on electricity than gaining in bitcoins with the current valuation. You need a powerful GPU or some other specialized hardware to do it profitably. It's cheaper and easier to just buy bitcoins.

    That said, if it works as a steppingstone for you to get interested in Bitcoin, and actually familiarize yourself with the system, before coming to the wrong conclusion about its validity, then go for it.

    Here are some places you can start with:
    http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf for the original whitepaper that everything is based on (internalize this)
    https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths for some of the more common myths flying around about bitcoins
    https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses for some ACTUAL weaknesses in the system, so you don't have to come up with the same old false ones that come up with these thread all the time.