Mining monero on old devices.
from dry_water@programming.dev to privacy@lemmy.ml on 14 Jun 22:06
https://programming.dev/post/52002045

Is there a realistic way a person having an old computer and cheap (but not free) electricity can actually mine monero equal to some amount which can be used to donate to good service providers or purchase services?

I keep hearing about low reward to effort ration, but can I get a respectable amount in let’s say a year without having to deanonymize myself by going to a Centralised exchange?

#privacy

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BCsven@lemmy.ca on 14 Jun 22:12 next collapse

Of you want to donate to providers or purchase services you are better off just paying cash, or anonymous through those prepaid visa cards. Mining (if even possibel) on that PC is just going to run up your electricity bill.

dry_water@programming.dev on 14 Jun 22:34 collapse

Cash withdrawal / Prepaid cards can be traced back to me and I would like to avoid them if possible. As I said electricity is cheap but I would like to know the reward to effort ration for a PC like linux-hardware.org/?probe=578a7e4ccf

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 14 Jun 23:56 collapse

How is cash traced back to you? And you can pay cash for a prepaid card so the transaction is pretty anonymous.

I haven’t followed the coin you may be using but recently bitcoin were hitting the reward is not with the cost of gear and electricity, causing miners to move to something else. I think that is by design of how cryptoworks, you eventually reach a stasis of mined coins

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 15 Jun 01:38 next collapse

withdrawal can be traced.

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 15 Jun 02:05 collapse

They don’t know who you gave cash to if you take cash out of bank and then send via mail, money order etc

icelimit@lemmy.ml on 15 Jun 10:13 collapse

Cash has unique id to reach bill, which can be logged on withdrawal, final point of reentry system can be logged. Of course, everything in between is unclear. But with enough re-entries at various points in time, a fuzzy picture is possible. Especially with multiple sources of withdrawals going through a common mid point.

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 15 Jun 14:36 collapse

Sure, but nobody is checking that, and if you were such high profile that you thought somebody would be, you just stop a few stranger and ask for change for a 20 etc and the numbers tracking will dissolve quickly.

If you /OP are that paranoid about cash, crypto is worse, its a full ledger of every transaction.

And mining it is not anonymity because the proof you mined it has to be checked in the entire system.

FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works on 15 Jun 15:18 collapse

Cash withdrawal / Prepaid cards can be traced back to me

IDK… I get cash from my bank. I watch teller grab bills, hand them to me. She doesn’t scan serials. I suppose it might happen for very large transactions. Or if they have a criminial investigation going and are using bait bills. But I’ve never seen it when I get cash.

Plus, say serials WERE logged. Take bills, buy lunch at local food truck for cash, get change from the nice Mexican lady who makes the badass green chili sauce. Thank lady, enjoy burrito. Bada bing, untracked serials! Burrito truck is not scanning shit.

Seems like in theory it can trace your purcahses, sort of, if both sides of the transaction record the serials. But in practice, it’s astronomically unlikely. It feels like robust and easy anonymity for buying things. Even more than most cryptocurrency, with how easy opsec failures are, and every transaction being on a permanent blockchain.

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 15 Jun 19:24 collapse

Yeah agreed. Even if cashiers had a tracker for bills you still have general population chaos. Like I take 20 out of bank (tracked). Say I paid a friend and they bought something (tracked) then you have some rudimentary contact tracing/location, however: I could take out 20 (tracked) and ask a homeless guy if he’d give me $18 in change, bills and coins for a $20.
Now my transactions just disappeared, if the homeless guy immediately buys something you have some tracing and location, but you know how life is: money slips from his pocket, the wind blows it a few blocks away, a guy from out of town finds it and maybe mails it to a relative as part of a birthday card, that sits in a kids piggy bank for a year. Spends it and it’s tracked…but that data connection is a mess to try to work backwards to the withdrawal

voxel@feddit.uk on 14 Jun 23:01 next collapse

You may better ask in a Monero community, I think they’re more have knowledge on this manner.

whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml on 15 Jun 00:01 next collapse

No.

I mean, check www.coinwarz.com/mining/monero/calculator and see for yourself, but I don’t think so.

shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip on 15 Jun 06:30 next collapse

Lookup RandomX cpu benchmarks. That will tell you roughly what the CPU is capable of doing as far as hash rate, and then you can stick that into a calculator such as on the nano.p2pool.observer site under share calculator.

whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml on 15 Jun 19:02 next collapse

Hey I did some actual testing. On an old dual Xeon pc it’s barely worth it. You might get about 2 monero a year output and after paying for the electricity it ran a $100 yearly profit.

This was with a 40 core 80 thread rig set up to be relatively efficient per watt with a fair amount of optimization and some stuff set up that would make it not really useful for other applications.

It was also decently loud and hot.

E: You are really probably better off just laundering your cash and using that to directly pay for stuff or buy monero if you absolutely, positively have to have an immutable ledger.

I can help you figure out how to use cash in a way that keeps you anonymous or private if you will say what keeps you from being able to.

BillMangionee@lemmy.ml on 17 Jun 04:19 collapse

Wrong forum for this type of question.

But No. Its also not nearly as big of a deal as your making it out to be. No one cares you’re topping off your mulvad subscription using xmr. Just use cash or buy crypto on a CEX/atm/local and swap to xmr. Especially on an old, less power efficient computer. You need to use Ryzen CPU, folks usually buy minisforum pcs for this.

just ran the numbers, if you get one of these newer amd ryzen pc’s you actually might be able break even if your electric is less than 12 cents USD / kwh

use xmrrig.com for benchmark for cpus use miniforum pcs or build your own use www.coinwarz.com/mining/monero/calculator use monerica for swap services

Also, if your this concerned with your privacy you should run your own node. See monero.fail