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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.

14 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. Bitcoin - by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bitcoin Slashvertisements remind me too much of Glen Beck's gold hocking. Have fun with that.

    1. Re:Bitcoin - by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Bitcoin network charts:

      In the last 12 days "There are 201 unconfirmed transactions".

      That's not an "economy" by any means. Your average American highschool probably has more kids purchasing drugs, smokes, and booze from one another in a 12 day time period than that.

    2. Re:Bitcoin - by naz404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow.

      You'll generate "0.00019867 bitcoins per hour" with this. It takes about 100-200 days nonstop to generate a single bitcoin with this if you're lucky.

      If a bitcoin is $8 now, even if let's say it rises to $20, that'd mean you burned hundreds of hours of CPU time/electricity to earn a mere $20 in 6 months.

      There are better things to burn your CPU time, electricity, bandwidth and attention on.

      --
      http://www.object404.com
  2. /vertisement by blackraven14250 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The level of slashvertisement on these things is seriously getting retarded. Stop publishing this crap!

  3. Re:Still wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think most of the merchants that accept Bitcoin do so for the express purpose of giving it value.

  4. 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.

  5. Re:Still wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bitcoin is a stupid idea with excellent PR. Up to and including a weekly slashvertisement.

  6. 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.

  7. Re:Still wondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Arrr. Pieces of eight (decimal places.)

    Sorry, couldn't resist.

  8. Bitcoin... by bky1701 · · Score: 5, Funny

    For some reason, the only way I can analogize bitcoin to people is "it's what you'd get if you explained Star Trek's energy credit system to a stoner, who then ran for US congress and implemented it." I write science fiction constantly and would be hard pressed to come up with a zanier scheme.

    --
    Great Intellect...
  9. Re:Getting you at the exit nodes by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's where they'll get you. Or Visa/Mastercard will stop processing for wherever bitcoin.org is hosted after a friendly call from a Senator.

    Bitcoin.org could be lawyered right off the face of the Earth and it wouldn't make any difference. You'd still be able to trade BTC for USD (or vice versa) with any of the thousands of other Bitcoin owners. It's all P2P, remember?

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  10. Correct me if I am wrong here by Just+Brew+It! · · Score: 5, Funny

    So Bitcoin is basically a mechanism for converting electricity into an asset which is worth less than the cost of the electricity used to produce it, and which can only be used in trade with other people who are stupid enough to have not thought this through? I think I'll pass.

  11. Re:Still wondering... by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    betting on the future value of the currency, in order to profit in the future. Which is exactly what an entrepreneur is.

    No, that's what a speculator is.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."