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Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

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Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#91

Post by m3kw9 »

ritinkar wrote: post #82
vinceguidry wrote: post #73

> It's clear I'm not going to make my fortune off manual mining, and I haven't even included the cost of all the paper and pencils I'll need. He's not taking into account price inflation over the long term. If BTC ever cracks a million USD, he'll really regret not squeezing every last bit of hashrate he can now.

If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?

If bitcoin price is derived from the bid ask, most of the worlds money would have to be parked in bitcoin, does that even make sense?

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#92

Post by jjeaff »

m3kw9 wrote: post #91
ritinkar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?

If bitcoin price is derived from the bid ask, most of the worlds money would have to be parked in bitcoin, does that even make sense?

"parked"? No, since no real money or asset is held to back up bitcoin. It could go to $100 million tomorrow based on a few transactions, but that wouldn't be indicative of what anyone else will be able to get for it.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#93

Post by jjeaff »

ritinkar wrote: post #82
vinceguidry wrote: post #73

> It's clear I'm not going to make my fortune off manual mining, and I haven't even included the cost of all the paper and pencils I'll need. He's not taking into account price inflation over the long term. If BTC ever cracks a million USD, he'll really regret not squeezing every last bit of hashrate he can now.

If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?

Only in the most theoretical sense. Since there is no underlying asset, you are going to run out of buyers real fast at that amount.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#94

Post by Shoothe »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #60
Shoothe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that Bitcoins are indistinguishable from themselves. So that'd be a very niche idea.

That's not entirely true - individual addresses and/or transactions can be seen as "tainted", and those coins can be tracked through the Blockchain. I've been a Bitcoin proponent for a long time, but this lack of basic fungibility is one of its major downsides in my opinion.

> individual addresses and/or transactions can be seen as "tainted", and those coins can be tracked through the Blockchain.

I'd say it's rather tainting transactions that use outputs of your "tainted" transaction. Personally I don't like bringing "coins" into discussion because people think it's something more material than it really is while in fact "coins" are just numbers in transaction outputs.

If you have transaction that sends 2 BTC to an address you can't taint 1 BTC out of it because in this scenario they are just numbers, like you can't distinguish both 1s in 1 + 1 = 2.

That you can track transactions back to their mining block is another matter.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#95

Post by Florin_Andrei »

discordianfish wrote: post #67
remcob wrote: post #9

Around when this was published I looked into the feasibility of pencil-and-paper wallets. What would it take to generate a key-pair using just pencil and paper? There are tricks like big tables of precomputed multiples of the generator that make it easier, but you still need to do hundreds of 77 digit modular multiplications. And you want to be absolutely sure you made no mistake.

A mechanical wallet would be awesome!

Now I want to read a steampunk sci-fi novel where cryptocurrency is mined on steam-powered devices. Of course, the algorithms should match the capabilities of the underlying hardware.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#96

Post by sah2ed »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #89
fvdessen wrote: post #18

I've found it works best with artisanal sharpened pencils http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com

$500/pencil? Sounds similar to recent online money laundering schemes.

Nope. That link has been posted around here since about 7 years ago!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2453713

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#97

Post by Shoothe »

EmielMols wrote: post #34
Shoothe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well secp256k1 private keys are just 32 random bytes (with some minor exceptions) so I think you could arrange something with a plain dice and a little bit of time.

Of course, but it would be cool if you could also calculate the public component on paper (and ideally verify it computerless as well). You could really create your bitcoin/ether/etc wallet with the public key only, whilst having an extremely low attack surface (private key never touches computer memory).

But remember the caveats about using the same key pair for multiple transactions: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#98

Post by vinceguidry »

jjeaff wrote: post #93
ritinkar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?

Only in the most theoretical sense. Since there is no underlying asset, you are going to run out of buyers real fast at that amount.

If the market can't clear, the price will drop until it does. Saying bitcoin has reached a certain price carries with it the implication that the market is clearing at the price, i.e. that people are indeed buying.

Million-USD transactions already occur in BTC all the time.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#99

Post by Shoothe »

remcob wrote: post #63
Shoothe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well secp256k1 private keys are just 32 random bytes (with some minor exceptions) so I think you could arrange something with a plain dice and a little bit of time.

Generating the private key is the easy part; Just 77 rolls with a ten-sided die and re-try if it exceeds the prime. Or 256 coin flips, if you prefer binary. It is computing the public key that is so hard.

For practical purposes I'd recommend an offline laptop, maybe running Tails OS and Electrum [0]. Public key is one thing and making transactions and signatures quite another.

[0]: https://tails.boum.org/doc/anonymous_internet/electrum/index...

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#100

Post by lotyrin »

EmielMols wrote: post #34
Shoothe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well secp256k1 private keys are just 32 random bytes (with some minor exceptions) so I think you could arrange something with a plain dice and a little bit of time.

Of course, but it would be cool if you could also calculate the public component on paper (and ideally verify it computerless as well). You could really create your bitcoin/ether/etc wallet with the public key only, whilst having an extremely low attack surface (private key never touches computer memory).

I wonder if a slightly more feasible solution of producing and verifying a solution out of simple TTL, so there's no "computer" just a application specific machine made of simple commodity parts which one could trust reasonably easily would be actually worth something.
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