# Compute4Cash: it's a trap or not?



## qu4k3r (Feb 16, 2011)

Many know the nonprofit project Folding @ Home, Seti @ Home, WGC, etc... which basically consist of creating a huge "farm "of computer performing complex calculations in a distributed manner for scientific research in various fields, using the power of our CPU / GPU with a background application.

Then there is a similar software called Compute4Cash, which works very similar but with completely different objectives.



> Use your computer to generate some extra cash!
> So you want to put your computer to work for you to make some extra cash, eh? Great! We can help you do just that. Compute4Cash will pay you for your video card's free cycles which we will use to perform massive computations. All you have to do is register, download the Compute4Cash client, make sure your video card drivers are up to date, and run the program. The more work your hardware does for us the more we will pay you - it is as simple as that!
> 
> How we measure the work you complete
> ...


It's a trap or not?

PD: I didn't know where to post this, sorry if it's at wrong place.


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## A Cheese Danish (Feb 16, 2011)

No idea. But there website could use some help.

Edit: Just found this:


			
				i.programmer.info said:
			
		

> Update
> 
> Geeks3D has some information from Compute4Cash about what it claims to be computing. It is allegedly a hash with specific properties for the "financial sector" . The task is encrypted compression and you won't get into trouble for helping compute it. Of course there is no way to verify this and in general secrecy is going to be a feature of such GPU computation projects. After all if it is worth paying to have computed then you would want to keep it secret.


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## theonedub (Feb 16, 2011)

I'm not even going to click the link


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

To good to be true kinda thing... plus why not use your comp to help people via wcg or folding isn't that worth the buck fifty a month?

*Promotional rate valid through Feb. 2011  so only .20 for feb then back to a dime


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## animal007uk (Feb 16, 2011)

I've tryed it and everything seems ok but the prob is you need to do 50 work units before you can test to see if they will pay you funds.

I might do 50 units and see if they do pay but if not then we can say its a scam of some sort.

There program seems clean no popups of any sort, No moaning of viruses or anything and the program is also simple as in it only asks for the username you used to sign up with. As long as you use a name and pass you don't use on anything else then i can't see any problems with this atm.


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

looks interesting if it is real


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## _JP_ (Feb 16, 2011)

OH JOLLY, FREE CASH!
Nope. This atually raises a lot of flags, if you just visit the site. I mean, you need to give them a paypal account for them to pay you, you have to run a program made by them in your computer and the site is certified by GODADDY.COM (WTF?!).


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## dank1983man420 (Feb 16, 2011)

So if a gtx460 would pull in about 100 a month( a guess), would it be a good idea to switch 1 or 2 of them to this app to pay for the electric bill for my rigs?  Everything else would still be folding/crunching and I probably would add another card for the hell of it.  I guess I still have to wait and see if this is legit or not and make sure I'm not supporting mass spam attacks or something like that.


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

animal007uk said:


> I've tryed it and everything seems ok but the prob is you need to do 50 work units before you can test to see if they will pay you funds.
> 
> I might do 50 units and see if they do pay but if not then we can say its a scam of some sort.
> 
> There program seems clean no popups of any sort, No moaning of viruses or anything and the program is also simple as in it only asks for the username you used to sign up with. As long as you use a name and pass you don't use on anything else then i can't see any problems with this atm.



*Do you even care what these wu's are doing? You could be helping some shady shit here and you don't know.*


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> *Do you even care what these wu's are doing? You could be helping some shady shit here and you don't know.*



who cares. get that money, yall!


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## animal007uk (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> *Do you even care what these wu's are doing? You could be helping some shady shit here and you don't know.*



No i don't care and im also not afraid to try new things now and again.

steve007uk's Overview

Balance: 2.75 WUs
Value: $0.55 USD
Cashed Out: $0.00


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## _JP_ (Feb 16, 2011)

Yeah, those WU are sure are mysterious. And working trough port 80 could impact web browsing.


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> *Do you even care what these wu's are doing? You could be helping some shady shit here and you don't know.*



if its for money its a good enough cause for me!


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

$600/year limit


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

animal007uk said:


> No i don't care and im also not afried to try new things now and again.



Awesome so you might be helping to further scientific research on trans gender sex change operations. Good job trying something new. 

Does it not bother anyone that they do not disclose what work is being done on your computer?:shadedshu


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

Bo$$ said:


> $600/year limit



so to get that you need a top of line card and need it doing whatever 24/7 ? screw that lol!


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## animal007uk (Feb 16, 2011)

Bo$$ said:


> $600/year limit



This is kinda why i tryed it out, It's not like there offering 1000's of doller a year.



Easy Rhino said:


> so to get that you need a top of line card and need it doing whatever 24/7 ? screw that lol!



My HD5750 seems to do pretty good, I'll do a test and post back how many work units an hour it does roughly, They do say a 5970 will do roughly $300 this month due to the promotion.


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## Fourstaff (Feb 16, 2011)

Well, if it costs more to power your computer to do a WU than $0.20, you are basically subsidising them. Someone need to do a cost to profit analysis.


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

animal007uk said:


> This is kinda why i tryed it out, It's not like there offering 1000's of doller a year.



i know just wanted those lot who were too scared to enter the site to know


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## theonedub (Feb 16, 2011)

Well, let us know if they end up draining your PP


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

Fourstaff said:


> Well, if it costs more to power your computer to do a WU than $0.20, you are basically subsidising them. Someone need to do a cost to profit analysis.



well for those who fold, it really sort of saves a little cash on a spare rig, but point is duely taken


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> Awesome so you might be helping to further scientific research on trans gender sex change operations. Good job trying something new.
> 
> Does it not bother anyone that they do not disclose what work is being done on your computer?:shadedshu



they could be helping bin laden!!!  probably just a bunch of wonks testing out some lame porn software or something. just as good as curing cancer


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## animal007uk (Feb 16, 2011)

theonedub said:


> Well, let us know if they end up draining your PP



If you mean paypal i got no worries as i only setup an account to see if this works lol, No bank details associated with my paypal yet.

Seems you have to use your paypal email so they can send you cash.

http://img.techpowerup.org/110216/pie.jpg


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> they could be helping bin laden!!!  probably just a bunch of wonks testing out some lame porn software or something. just as good as curing cancer



loled hard 

but seriously who would actually run this after it goes back down to 0.1/WU


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## _JP_ (Feb 16, 2011)

Fourstaff said:


> Well, if it costs more to power your computer to do a WU than $0.20, you are basically subsidising them. Someone need to do a cost to profit analysis.


It would depend on the price of electricity. But if a HD5970 can do, at best, 2.5WU/hr, then the rest of us would be making 2/3 or 1/3 of that. Now, using a HD 5970, two months it could have payed you for the card, but not the electricity you paid to run it.


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

People forget so easily Easy


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## A Cheese Danish (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> *Do you even care what these wu's are doing? You could be helping some shady shit here and you don't know.*



Check out my post (#2).


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## _JP_ (Feb 16, 2011)

A Cheese Danish said:


> Check out my post (#2).


Still could be anything else. They just said something to calm us down. What is said in their site doesn't explain it at all.



garyinhere said:


> People forget so easily Easy
> http://img.techpowerup.org/110216/51.jpg


I don't get it.


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

_JP_ said:


> I don't get it.



dude got burned from A2Zparts online and that's their addy


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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

generally is opencl faster on Nvidia cards or ATI cards?


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## 20mmrain (Feb 16, 2011)

I looks like it would be a phishing site too me...horribly made.... if it's real awesome! But I doubt it. Why would anyone offer this....when stuff like this is usually done for free and out of niceness?


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## _JP_ (Feb 16, 2011)

This is for the greedy within you. 
Also, nobody would support the financial sector without something in return, right? After all, it is a market.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

i pay $0.14 per kilowatt hour. a 5970 on full stress takes 425 watts. That is .425 kilowatts per hour. so that close to $0.06 per hour it would cost to fold non-stop. that means it costs $1.44 in energy costs per day for me! (some of you may pay a little less or a little more) 

they say a 5970 will do around 2 WU per hour so that mean $0.40 per hour ($0.20 per WU) they pay you run the program non-stop. that is $9.60 per day they would pay out somebody.

so it is pretty clear you are losing out. $1.40 in energy costs - $9.60 = $8.20 a day in profit

it could work but you remember it is maxxed at $600 a year.


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> i pay $0.14 per kilowatt hour. a 5970 on full stress takes 425 watts. That is .425 kilowatts per hour. so that close to $0.60 per hour it would cost to fold non-stop. that means it costs $14.40 in energy costs per day!
> 
> they say a 5970 will do around 2 WU per hour so that mean $0.40 per hour ($0.20 per WU) they pay you run the program non-stop. that is $9.60 per day they would pay out somebody.
> 
> ...



I live with your parents so i don't see the "cost of doing" only the reward of internettings


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> I live with my parents so i don't see the "cost of doing" only the reward of internettings



and that is the only way this would work out for you. but if you live with your parents you are either to young to have a paypal account or to old that the money will not make any real difference in your life.


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

see edit post #34


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

shit...Id take $600 bucks right now!


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> see edit post #34



bwuahahahahahaha


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 16, 2011)

This looks really, really dumb.  Regardless, someone get to the required 50 WU's to cashout so we can see if this is legit.  From the looks of it, it is not.  I'll stick to folding!


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## garyinhere (Feb 16, 2011)

pvtCaboose needs to put up a graph on this


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

sneekypeet said:


> shit...Id take $600 bucks right now!



not if it means shelling out $900 in electricity...


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> not if it means shelling out $900 in electricity...



I just meant it may not change my life, and not everyone can do math for both ends, they see the $600 and jump in with both feet

Point of my comment was just that I already pay it(F@H) Gimme my $600 please


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## theonedub (Feb 16, 2011)

If your rent has utilities included you are volunteered to try this out for us


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 16, 2011)

Found this This


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

theonedub said:


> If your rent has utilities included you are volunteered to try this out for us



another great idea to make actual profit!!!


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

AphexDreamer said:


> Found this This



from the link

"Compute4Cash does not wish share more information but they assure that you will not get any trouble with the law by using this tool."

yea, just take their word for it 



sneekypeet said:


> I just meant it may not change my life, and not everyone can do math for both ends, they see the $600 and jump in with both feet
> 
> Point of my comment was just that I already pay it(F@H) Gimme my $600 please



wouldnt it make more sense to not fold at all or do this stupid program and save $900 ?



sneekypeet said:


> another great idea to make actual profit!!!



yea but i doubt the landlord will keep the agreement if the utilities bill spikes 100%


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## theonedub (Feb 16, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> yea but i doubt the landlord will keep the agreement if the utilities bill spikes 100%



Signed lease agreement can say otherwise?  Only one way to find out. Have a flashlight, blanket, hand crank radio, and canned foods on hand if the lights go out


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

theonedub said:


> Signed lease agreement can say otherwise?  Only one way to find out.



well, sure if your landlord is an idiot (not saying most aren't). but if you check the fine print you will see the landlord reserves the right to alter the agreement at anytime and if you don't sign the new agreement then you have to leave.


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## LDNL (Feb 16, 2011)




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## Bo$$ (Feb 16, 2011)

LDNL said:


>


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## Steevo (Feb 16, 2011)

I see where it creates a file. Is it by chance just encrypting all your data and sending it along like a keylogger/trojan.


I could download a empty hull file, let it compute the best way to search my hard drive for a set of specific numbers like SSN, CC..... then inject them into a new smaller transport file and send it away, along with all your paypal info.


Hell it could be doing ADS and encrypting them and copying your hard drive byte by byte.


I might try it on a new, clean computer,behind its own firewall with connection monitor and then spend some time in a few utilities figuring out what it does. But not on a PC I actually use.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 16, 2011)

I'm thumbing through the code now.  







EDIT:

Used an FTP DLL to send data, looks like it uses MD5 encryption as well.  POP3 and SMTP mentioned, means it emails something.  GZIP mentioned, means it zips up data before it sends.  Winsocks library used for proxy options.  And this:






Wat?

Something to do with the days of the week...  no idea why this is here:






Anyone have any idea what the below is?






O hey look it makes a file here:






I'll keep looking...


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Feb 16, 2011)

now thats a killer review


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## punani (Feb 16, 2011)

Likely the electrical companies behind this  .. hoping that your rigs are gonna suck juice worth more than they are paying you


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## hellrazor (Feb 16, 2011)

Is there a way to limit the processing power they use? You know, just to get in the "most efficient" range of your power supply?

Hahahaha just saw this on geeks3d:





"We certainly are not brute forcing passwords"


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 16, 2011)

hellrazor said:


> Is there a way to limit the processing power they use? You know, just to get in the "most efficient" range of your power supply?
> 
> Hahahaha just saw this on geeks3d:
> http://img.techpowerup.org/110216/Compute4cash.jpg
> ...



Could also means it compares the size to the size of a max file size to send in an email, so the zip file can be emailed to someone.  Just saying.


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## _JP_ (Feb 16, 2011)

Scroll further down. Their response to questions regarding the costs of energy spent on doing those calculations:


> Here’s a thought to chew on: the heat generated by your video cards when running the Compute4Cash client can be used to heat your house, so some if not all of the electricity expense involved with running the Compute4Cash client is offset by a reduction in your heating costs (in cold climates at least).


Now, my computer does definitely heat up and my cooling arrangement is set so that all of the heat generated is expelled as quickly as possible, but is not near enough to warm up a 25m^2 room (or something like that, I don't know the room's exact measurements). Also, those with powerful computers will surely like their GPUs running at 90% load, 24/7, during summer.


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## Arctucas (Feb 16, 2011)

"All your GPUs are belong to us"


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 16, 2011)

I'm gonna do it for a bit.

It'll be like folding minus the benefits of folding.

If anything happens to me, I will let y'all know. Unless I end up naked in some 3rd world country, then I will still let y'all it will just take me longer.


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## Fourstaff (Feb 16, 2011)

Need to send the code to Anon and see what they think , From what I know, they don't like people cheating on them: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...peaks-the-inside-story-of-the-hbgary-hack.ars


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

_JP_ said:


> Scroll further down. Their response to questions regarding the costs of energy spent on doing those calculations:
> 
> Now, my computer does definitely heat up and my cooling arrangement is set so that all of the heat generated is expelled as quickly as possible, but is not near enough to warm up a 25m^2 room (or something like that, I don't know the room's exact measurements). Also, those with powerful computers will surely like their GPUs running at 90% load, 24/7, during summer.



they actually use that as a reason? they didn't think that those costs would be offset by cooling your house in the summer  wow, just wow...


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> they actually use that as a reason? they didn't think that those costs would be offset by cooling your house in the summer  wow, just wow...



they wont be paying you when its warm, the $600 cap will be up by then, duh


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 16, 2011)

Well use 90-94% of my GPU and temps are 70-71C. 

It says I'm getting a lil over 1 WU/Hour.

So what, that like a dollar per hour... Meh...


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

AphexDreamer said:


> lil over 1 WU/Hour.



thats a lil over 20 cents an hour


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 16, 2011)

sneekypeet said:


> thats a lil over 20 cents an hour



lol Yup. I just checked on the site and it says I've made .9 cents for .43 WU's 


Thats almost .10 cents for Half a WU. Screw that lol.

I wish it were a buck per hour lol

Back to folding.


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## DannibusX (Feb 16, 2011)

They should call it Folding4Madoff


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

guys i am a moron and missed a decimal point. i am surprised nobody checked my math. so here is new math showing it could indeed work out for you so long as your electric costs are below say $1.00/kwh (which they are unless you live in a third world country)and you stop when you hit $600.

i pay $0.14 per kilowatt hour. a 5970 on full stress takes 425 watts. That is .425 kilowatts per hour. so that close to $0.06 per hour it would cost to fold non-stop. that means it costs $1.44 in energy costs per day for me! (some of you may pay a little less or a little more)

they say a 5970 will do around 2 WU per hour so that mean $0.40 per hour ($0.20 per WU) they pay you run the program non-stop. that is $9.60 per day they would pay out somebody.

$1.40 in energy costs - $9.60 = $8.20 a day in profit

it could work but you remember it is maxxed at $600 a year.


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

and the .20 per wu is only till the end of the month, then its $4.80 -1.40, still profit but much less.


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 16, 2011)

This is ghey IMO.  Ima just stick with WCG and let my GPUs sit and do nothing, I really dont like the feeling i get after reading all this.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 16, 2011)

sneekypeet said:


> and the .20 per wu is only till the end of the month, then its $4.80 -1.40, still profit but much less.



i wonder how wear and tear factors in to this. 

also, say you do make $600 you basically get paid less than the cost of the 5970. so it is not like you can use it for gaming when your not folding or whatever for them because then you would be losing revenue. essentially they are subsidizing the cost of the GPU and you pay the difference in the power bill. power bill for me would come out to $1.44/day * 365.25 = $525.96


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## sneekypeet (Feb 16, 2011)

thats how I see the payoff. Cheaper for them to make payments monthly then to front everything at once.


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## scaminatrix (Feb 16, 2011)

These are timezones

I think this is just like all the others. The time/effort/money you put in is not reflected in the payments. Unless you got all the computers in your local school hooked up...


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## n-ster (Feb 16, 2011)

Meh.... 6870 = 1WU/hr is my guess.

It is meh for many people IMO. especially at 10 cents per WU. At 500W for PC power consumption, and 16 cents per KWh, you par 8 cents per hour just in electricity. Now add in card depreciation etc etc, and you are left with practically nothing


My situation is 8 cents per KWh, and at 20 cents per KWh for feb, that makes 16 cents per hour? 15 days * 20 hours = 300 hrs * ~ 15 cents = 45$ profit. So for now it is pretty good for 15 days  At 10 cents, it would be 6 cents profit per hour. 30 days * 20 hours = 600 hours * 5 cents = 30$ profit per month, 1$ per day. Not too shabby.


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## Beertintedgoggles (Feb 16, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> guys i am a moron and missed a decimal point. i am surprised nobody checked my math. so here is new math showing it could indeed work out for you so long as your electric costs are below say $1.00/kwh (which they are unless you live in a third world country)and you stop when you hit $600.
> 
> i pay $0.14 per kilowatt hour. a 5970 on full stress takes 425 watts. That is .425 kilowatts per hour. so that close to $0.06 per hour it would cost to fold non-stop. that means it costs $1.44 in energy costs per day for me! (some of you may pay a little less or a little more)
> 
> ...



I'm glad I read through all the comments before pointing that out.... still what do you think are the chances that this might be a front for a Chinese supercomputer/password cracker


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## n-ster (Feb 16, 2011)

Mine isn't working... giving me only 0.077 WU/hr and 0% CPU or GPU usage


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## pantherx12 (Feb 16, 2011)

n-ster said:


> Mine isn't working... giving me only 0.077 WU/hr and 0% CPU or GPU usage



stupid question, APP installed?


Also I've been running this a few days now, I've had a bit of banter with the people via email and have even got them to fix things .


I'm running a machine that if I ran the program for 6months ( not nesscerily all at once) I'd be making £300 pounds ( 6 months is how long it takes me to get to 600 usd cap with my 6870 by the way) (374 pounds from 600 usd) so £75 there to pay me electricity bill for running the card during that time. 

Frankly I thought it was iffy as hell too, but I thought what the hell.

I've walked into dodgier deals than this lol


my 6870 at 1000 core pulls 0.88 peak and can dip as low as 0.55 with 0.75 being average WU per hour.


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## xbonez (Feb 16, 2011)

When someone reached 50 WUs , and does get paid, a lot of us will regret not having started sooner...lol


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 16, 2011)

i will have no regrets... WCG is my main focus, IDC about this really, $600 meh


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## n-ster (Feb 16, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> stupid question, APP installed?
> 
> 
> Also I've been running this a few days now, I've had a bit of banter with the people via email and have even got them to fix things .
> ...



Yup...  That is disappointing for such a high clocked 6870! How doesa 5970 pull 2WU/hr then though  and someone else said something about 1WU/hr on his 6870


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## PaulieG (Feb 16, 2011)

Have fun with this guys, just keep the language clean.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 16, 2011)

n-ster said:


> Yup...  That is disappointing for such a high clocked 6870! How doesa 5970 pull 2WU/hr then though  and someone else said something about 1WU/hr on his 6870



Seems performance is mostly tired to the amount of stream processing units in the card.

( or nv equivilent)


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## qu4k3r (Feb 16, 2011)

Certainly is not very trusted not knowing what that client is really doing.

But people can try it by creating another email adress and another paypal account, just to see if it works.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 16, 2011)

qu4k3r said:


> Certainly is not very trusted not knowing what that client is really doing.
> 
> But people can try it by creating another email adress and another paypal account, just to see if it works.



To be fair, all 3rd party software has a risk of doing something that is not supposed to doing.


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 16, 2011)

Balance: 2.72 WUs
Value: $0.54 USD

Is that right?


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## xbonez (Feb 16, 2011)

2.72 x $0.2 (Feb special) = $0.54

So, yup...its correct.


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## n-ster (Feb 16, 2011)

Cannot install AMD drivers anymore


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 16, 2011)

n-ster said:


> Cannot install AMD drivers anymore



read your thread  even more reason for me to stay away from this.  Wish there was something i could do to help, N-ster......


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 17, 2011)

n-ster said:


> Cannot install AMD drivers anymore



Wow that is pretty bad.  Coincidences?  They do not exist.


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## erocker (Feb 17, 2011)

I'll stay far away from this. Perhaps if they actually disclosed what they are having your computer crunch I would think differently. Financial stuff could mean many things.


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## Athlon2K15 (Feb 17, 2011)

Malware!  Beware!


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

@PVTCaboose1337 - The SMTP/POP stuff you found in the code comes from the library we compile against that handles our http connections.  That library apparently was built with SMTP and POP support in addition to HTTP support.

The filename you found a reference to is not a file that you will actually find on your computer - it only exists on our build machine as it is the debug database from visual studio.  Just google "visual studio .pdb" and you will find out all about .pdb files.

The Compute4Cash client does not ever read any files off of the hard drive, except for the Compute4Cash.ini file when the client starts up.  You can verify this with any number of tools if you like, that will prove to you that your personal info on your HD is safe.  


@SneekyPeet - you are absolutely right about making monthly payments rather than paying upfront.  We have invested in several dual 5970 machines ourselves, but it makes more sense to us to rent the hardware from users around the world rather than investing further in our own hardware.  We may buy some Radeon 6990 cards when they come out though 


@Scaminatrix - you say that the time/effort/money you put into Compute4Cash isn't reflected in the payments, but I don't understand how you can think that.  How much effort is required to register, download the program, and run it?  Seems pretty simple to me...  In fact, as others have said, it seems to good to be true.  We have however delivered payments to several users so there are people out on the net somewhere that can vouch for us.


@n-ster - sorry to here about your experience, that is a real shame.  That doesn't have anything to do with Compute4Cash though, that is a problem with the AMD drivers.  We have experienced many problems with the AMD drivers ourselves and we've had to reinstall the OS several times on a few systems during our testing of different driver versions.  Also in your thread you mentioned a concern about a dll - our Compute4Cash client does not come with any DLLs so this must have been related to the drivers you were installing.


@AthlonX2 - There is no spyware/adware/malware of any kind in the Compute4Cash client.  Why do you think there is?


----------



## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @PVTCaboose1337 - The SMTP/POP stuff you found in the code comes from the library we compile against that handles our http connections.  That library apparently was built with SMTP and POP support in addition to HTTP support.
> 
> The filename you found a reference to is not a file that you will actually find on your computer - it only exists on our build machine as it is the debug database from visual studio.  Just google "visual studio .pdb" and you will find out all about .pdb files.
> 
> ...



Can you give us an idea of what you are doing?  You have a reason to be secretive, so therefore I think you are doing something illegal.  Please PM me what you do and I will promise not to reveal to the community, pinky swear.  

But in all seriousness, can you post your source code to show us this is legit?  If the program is legit, I am sure a whole lot of TPU'ers would do this!  We would love to support you, we just don't trust you.


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## marvelous211 (Feb 17, 2011)

Is this trap or not?

I want to make some money.  All utilities included in our rent.


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

@marvelous211 - no, this is certainly not a trap.  You can stop the Compute4Cash client at any point if you choose to.  The Compute4Cash opportunity works exactly the way it is described on the website: http://www.compute4cash.com.

@PVTCaboose1337 - There is only one reason we are being secretive about what we are doing: competition.  Right now there is not too much competition in the market we are participating in, but being more open about things would be inviting more competition which would hurt our bottom line.  We know this secrecy can't go on forever and competition will find its way into our market, but we don't want to accelerate that process.  For this same reason we cannot share our source code.  We understand this makes it difficult to trust us, but with a bit of time we're sure you will hear enough positive reports from those who have already been working our system to convince you all that our words are true.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @marvelous211 - no, this is certainly not a trap.  You can stop the Compute4Cash client at any point if you choose to.  The Compute4Cash opportunity works exactly the way it is described on the website: http://www.compute4cash.com.
> 
> @PVTCaboose1337 - There is only one reason we are being secretive about what we are doing: competition.  Right now there is not too much competition in the market we are participating in, but being more open about things would be inviting more competition which would hurt our bottom line.  We know this secrecy can't go on forever and competition will find its way into our market, but we don't want to accelerate that process.  For this same reason we cannot share our source code.  We understand this makes it difficult to trust us, but with a bit of time we're sure you will hear enough positive reports from those who have already been working our system to convince you all that our words are true.



so you admit to you subsidizing the cost of the card but what about electricity costs to the person doing the work units.

for instance, for me to make the stated $600 max cap i would actually have to currently own a card that costs around $600. then, i would have to shell out over $500 in utility costs at 11 cents per KWH (a card that can do 2 WU/h pulls currently 425-450 watts). that is low compared the the U.S. national average. don't you feel inclined to mention this on your website?


----------



## AphexDreamer (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @marvelous211 - no, this is certainly not a trap.  You can stop the Compute4Cash client at any point if you choose to.  The Compute4Cash opportunity works exactly the way it is described on the website: http://www.compute4cash.com.
> 
> @PVTCaboose1337 - There is only one reason we are being secretive about what we are doing: competition.  Right now there is not too much competition in the market we are participating in, but being more open about things would be inviting more competition which would hurt our bottom line.  We know this secrecy can't go on forever and competition will find its way into our market, but we don't want to accelerate that process.  For this same reason we cannot share our source code.  We understand this makes it difficult to trust us, but with a bit of time we're sure you will hear enough positive reports from those who have already been working our system to convince you all that our words are true.



But by promoting people to do work for you you are becoming more popular and thereby risking competition from the start. 

By informing users what work their computers are doing how exactly do you add to that risk if that risk is already there?

You aren't the first to do this and you won't be the last. Currently folding@Home and many other have users donating. Cloud computing isn't something new and if anyone wanted to do it and knew how they could. I understand keeping your source code a secret but still fail to understand why you won't tell users what it is they are getting paid to do? 

And I fail to understand how you further add to the risk of competition by telling us.


----------



## laszlo (Feb 17, 2011)

AphexDreamer said:


> But by promoting people to do work for you you are becoming more popular and thereby risking competition from the start.
> 
> By informing users what work their computers are doing how exactly do you add to that risk if that risk is already there?
> 
> ...



i understand them as in the market if u have 1 business which make profit u won't give away to others the idea from which started.

every company has its business secrets and is normal to keep it secret.

everybody is paid for the work period.u don't like it don't downloaded it.

even if the work is illegal it can't be proved as every gpu receive pieces (is like torrent but reversed) so is their responsibility fully.

a good programmer can make a soft like this to work for a big company to create a project.;just imagine that a 100 milUSD project made by 10000 gpu's around the world;payment 10000USD for them and a nice profit for developer and the company which don't have to invest in hardware;this way of making business will grow fast and but payments to final owner won't grow as more & more gpu's will be available.


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 17, 2011)

The guy has been banned from Videocards.com 

http://www.videocards.com/forums/member.php/4968-Compute4Cash

Reason? I'm not sure.

But he has been banned from 02-06-2011


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

Yes, this is a difficult position to be in.  If we explained enough for everyone to understand why we're being secretive then there wouldn't be any secret!  The secret isn't our model - as you said, F@H, S@H, and countless others use this model.  The secret is in what we're doing with the model and how we're using it to make money.  That information is quite valuable, so it shouldn't be too hard to understand why we're not giving it away.  Instead, by keeping it secret and using this distributed model we are able to allow other people to gain some from our idea while we guarantee that we will still be able to gain from it as well.  This is a age-old business strategy.


Here are some profit calculations for those who are interested:

Estimated Stock Performance
6970 = 0.9 WU/hr, 250W
6870 = 0.6 WU/hr, 151W
5970 = 2.0 WU/hr, 300W
5870 = 0.8 WU/hr, 188W
5770 = 0.4 WU/hr, 108W
GTX580 = 0.4 WU/hr, 244W
GTX480 = 0.35 WU/hr, 250W
GTX285 = 0.2 WU/hr, 204W
GTX260 =  0.16 WU/hr, 182W

Assuming $0.15/kWh
Monthly profit calculation: WU/hr * 24h * 30days * $0.2/WU
Monthly cost calculation: TDP * 24h * 30d * $0.15/kWh


Calculations for all cards listed, using Feb. promo rate:

6970 = $103 net profit/month
6870 = $70 net profit/month
5970 = $255 net profit/month
5870 = $95 net profit/month
5770 = $46 net profit/month
GTX580 = $31 net profit/month
GTX480 = $23 net profit/month
GTX285 = $7 net profit/month
GTX260 = $3 net profit/month

All profits will roughly halve when after February when we return to the standard rate and nVidia cards pretty much all net a loss.

These calculations all neglect the motherboard/ram/cpu/hd power usage and they assume that you are not using the computer for anything other than Compute4Cash.  If you are surfing the web, for example, then your GPU is already using about 1/3 of its TDP so you would only be increasing your power costs for using Compute4Cash in the background by about two thirds that of the figures provided here.

Also, if you live in a cold climate, the heat thrown off by these cards will heat your house and offset some of your heating bill.  In warmer climates if you use A/C then obviously this will increase your cooling costs.


----------



## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

We posted on videocards.com to advertise our website, apparently they did not like that so they banned our account.  We received a similar reaction from most forums, so we moved to Google AdWords instead


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

so you admit that after electricity costs there barely is any profit especially once the $0.20 per WU deal expires. perhaps you have another angle to sell your business model?


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

This all seems weird because you talk about "your market" and "competition", but I don't see how you earn money from this.  If we are doing the folding and you are paying us for it, how do you earn your cash?  If you are getting paid for the units just like us, but more, that is fine with me.  I can clearly see your profit line and how you can make this a business.  Or if you earned money by advertising stuff to us via the client.  Or if you are a non-profit organization that receives money for the research the units are being used for.

For now it just looks too good to be true is what I am saying, but I will be one of the people that give it a shot.


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## laszlo (Feb 17, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> This all seems weird because you talk about "your market" and "competition", but I don't see how you earn money from this.  If we are doing the folding and you are paying us for it, how do you earn your cash?  If you are getting paid for the units just like us, but more, that is fine with me.  I can clearly see your profit line and how you can make this a business.  Or if you earned money by advertising stuff to us via the client.  Or if you are a non-profit organization that receives money for the research the units are being used for.
> 
> For now it just looks too good to be true is what I am saying, but I will be one of the people that give it a shot.



put yourself in their position

would you tell other how to make money?

would you pay more ?

people tend to be satisfied with any payment if is a profit that's capitalism


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## Jack Doph (Feb 17, 2011)

Well.. it seems above-board from what I can gleen.
Furthermore, the $600/year cap shouldn't be an issue, as you can setup several profiles; thus you can have several accounts.
If, for example, you setup 10 different accounts, that cap becomes $6k/year.
Of course.. I don't know the fine details, but from what I can see.. it *could* be worthwhile, as long as you play your cards right on your own end too.
It's only good business-sense by spreading your efforts 

Has anyone found out for a fact this is all legit yet though?


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

laszlo said:


> put yourself in their position
> 
> would you tell other how to make money?
> 
> ...



I don't want them to tell me how they pulled it off.  Example.  I know Valve makes money from Steam via advertisements, distrabution costs, etc.  No one outside their company knows their exact formula of what earns what for them, but we know they are getting paid.  I don't want to know how they are doing it, just that they are doing it.  Companies that pay you, but don't earn money are 99/100 times scams.

Second, I don't want them to pay me more.  I was using the example of if they pay us .20 cents a unit, but they earn $0.50 a unit through whatever, I can see how it works. I don't need to know who they are getting the 0.50 from, just that they are getting it.


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

@TheLaughingMan - Yes, you can be assured that we do make money from the work our users complete.  Our goal is of course to maintain more money coming in than going out.

@Easy Rhino - Yes, in some cases there is little or no net profit to be made, and in some cases there is a lot to be made.  There are lots of variables involved in such an analysis and that is why we have chosen not to get into the details on our website.  Each user will need to work out the figures for themselves to determine what their net and gross profits can be.


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

I am up and running.  Worst comes to worst, I waste some power.  ATI cards suck and normal folding anyway.  Folding is the only time I miss my old GTX260 that got me to a Million points.


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## qubit (Feb 17, 2011)

I'll bet it's a pyramid scam of some sort...


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## laszlo (Feb 17, 2011)

qubit said:


> I'll bet it's a pyramid scam of some sort...




i'll bet nobody cares till get payment


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

Seriously, how do you tell when you finish a unit.  The client doesn't seem to tell you.  Do I really have to go to the site to see how many units I have so far?


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

Yes, if you want to see the total figure that you have accumulated then you need to go to the site.  The client will display the WU/hr rate it is currently doing though, so that should give you a pretty good idea of how much to expect.  We are adding an accumulated earnings readout to the next version that will show how much you've done with that instance of the client.


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## scaminatrix (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @Scaminatrix - you say that the time/effort/money you put into Compute4Cash isn't reflected in the payments, but I don't understand how you can think that. How much effort is required to register, download the program, and run it? Seems pretty simple to me... In fact, as others have said, it seems to good to be true. We have however delivered payments to several users so there are people out on the net somewhere that can vouch for us.



Too good to be true? You don't want to claim that status, we're all taught to stay well away from that claim!!

Yes it does seem simple, but it's not just the effort:
I don't have the time to check on my rig all the time to make sure it's doing it's job right.
Even the amount that I would have to spend on electricity bills would not be covered in the payments.
Also, from the reports I've seen from other users in the forums, F@H etc. shortens the life of your video card dramatically.
My time and money would be thrown away, and I would be left with no profit, only loss.
I would have to spend £40 a month on electric to Compute4Cash @16hrs/day, and I would get less than £25 back. And half that when the offer finishes.

I trust that you are paying people, but this is a loss maker for people in the UK. Our electric prices are too high.


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## animal007uk (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> 40 a month? what kind of bullshi9t 1960s computer do you have  ( not being nasty but your computer should NOT be drawing that much, my total system powerdraw whilst running this client is around 250-300w)



Its like here at home, Since i got this pc its been on 24/7 and our lecci bill has hardly moved, im sure if this pc used that much power my old man would have a proper moan about it.

AND NO i don't use the power saving modes as the pc is overlocked to.

IF anything i get moaned at for boiling the kettle 300 times day cause im a coffee addict.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

Before I commited to that rant, going to do more maths,

BRB.


Okay in a worst case scenerio every 6 months I'd be spending 195 on bills, so 180 profit.




Even in worst case scenerion that's still a bit of pocket money to spunk on something eh!


And say for example you live with someone with a similar spec computer system, sign them up too and evey 6months you get £360 monies to spend on what you like.

Holiday to amsterdam perhaps 



No body should be looking at this like a cashcow, they should look at it was a small bonus every x amount of months.

( x being amount of months taken to achieve 600 usd max, takes 6months a 0.70WU average)


Essentiially if this doesnt turn out to be a loud of rubbish, since I won't be running it everyday I'd be getting my bonus around christmas time.

A time when any amount of extra money is helpful : ]


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## scaminatrix (Feb 17, 2011)

When I started crunching, my leccy bill jumped from 50p a day to over £2 a day. That's why I can't crunch until summer months.
Having the PC on for 16 hours a day does bugger all to the leccy, but as soon as I start crunching/folding, it murders the bills (EDF)

Does crunching use as much leccy as folding or less?


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

scaminatrix said:


> When I started crunching, my leccy bill jumped from 50p a day to over £2 a day. That's why I can't crunch until summer months.
> Having the PC on for 16 hours a day does bugger all to the leccy, but as soon as I start crunching/folding, it murders the bills (EDF)
> 
> Does crunching use as much leccy as folding or less?




You got one of those live monitor things?


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## scaminatrix (Feb 17, 2011)

I don't know what a live monitor is, so I guess not


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## Mussels (Feb 17, 2011)

you can figure out the math fairly easily.


around here its 17c per KW/h
for this month at least, its 20c per unit.

my 5870 comes out bang on 1WU per hour.
5870's are roughly 150W on load (look at w1zzys reviews)

now i'm bad at math and triple checking this, catch me out if i get something wrong.

at 1WU an hour at the current rate, i get 20C per hour.
17c*0.15 (150W is 0.15% of 1000W) it costs me 2.55c per hour.


that'd make it something like 17.45c profit per hour.

at 24 hours a day over the next 10 days in the month, i could make $25 profit.
any air conditioning costs you have, will eat into that, fyi.


the problem is that once the special rates end for this month, 10c per WU comes down to 7.5c or so an hour per 5870 - so for me, that means if i gave up gaming and left this system on 24/7 (and negated the small extra electricity cost from not sleeping it when i, not using it) then i'd have a max profit of about $50 a month from doing this.



$50 just aint worth it to me, due to the extra costs of the REST of the system being on, and the effort involved (and the heat, gah)




if you got video cards more energy efficient than a 5870, spare systems to run them in, and low/no energy bills... hammer away. make some money.


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## HalfAHertz (Feb 17, 2011)

@Compute4Cash: Um I'm not quite sure I understand your business model. Isn't it cheaper and more reliable to rent real servers than client machines? Something like Amazon's EC2 cluster servers. They use Nvidia Tesla and not ATi but the density is so large that it should make up for the inefficiency. Plus you get better reliability and constant availability...


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## Mussels (Feb 17, 2011)

HalfAHertz said:


> @Compute4Cash: Um I'm not quite sure I understand your business model. Isn't it cheaper and more reliable to rent real servers than client machines? Something like Amazon's EC2 cluster servers. They use Nvidia Tesla and not ATi but the density is so large that it should make up for the inefficiency. Plus you get better reliability and constant availability...



overhead startup cost. who's to say they wont slowly build up their profits til they can afford to do exactly that?


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## laszlo (Feb 17, 2011)

Mussels said:


> overhead startup cost. who's to say they wont slowly build up their profits til they can afford to do exactly that?



even they make the money for that why would invest;i won't because i find cheap gpu's which work for cents...


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

This is actually just a wrapper around a bitcoin miner called poclbm. It is available at https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm.  See bitcoin.org for more information.  It appears the owner of the site takes around a 50% cut, whereas there are mining pools that take 2%.


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## Arctucas (Feb 17, 2011)

BlueMatt said:


> This is actually just a wrapper around a bitcoin miner called poclbm. It is available at https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm.  See bitcoin.org for more information.  It appears the owner of the site takes around a 50% cut, whereas there are mining pools that take 2%.



Interesting... I wonder how Compute4Cash will respond to this?


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 17, 2011)

What the hell is bitcoins?  Seems to be a virtual currency determined by computing power...  but what do you spend it on?  What does the computer do to get bitcoins?  Why the hell should I care?


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

The point is that bitcoins can be exchanged for cash, and the Compute4Cash program is simply a middleman taking 50% off the top.  If you were to do it yourself, you could make x2.


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## theubersmurf (Feb 17, 2011)

garyinhere said:


> *Do you even care what these wu's are doing? You could be helping some shady shit here and you don't know.*


For example, helping crack encryption used by large user base sites or similar to harvest personal data (say, Amazon, facebook).


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## Arctucas (Feb 17, 2011)

Who knows?

It may be the Chinese government hacking the Pentagon communication ciphers.


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

The exe matches that of pocblm, and is clearly for bitcoin.  My point is simply that one can easily cut out the middle man and make 2x what he is offering.  Also, the following is a canned response put together by the people in #bitcoin-otc on freenode: 

Compute4cash is actually using your gpu power to make bitcoins (http://bitcoin.org), and then exchanging them for about twice as much cash as he pays you.  Bitcoin is an online currency which you can exchange for cash, services, and other goods.   The exchange rate is currently at about 1 USD per bitcoin. If you chose to do this on your own, rather than through the compute4cash middleman, you will make more than double the money.

compute4cash is being ambiguous to the point of dishonesty, in telling you that this is used for "data compression for the financial sector".

 compute4cash is using an open-source miner called Poclbm (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OpenCL_miner). At current difficulty and bitcoin price levels, the guy is making >50% profit on this. Any of you who are participating in the compute4cash pool, would do better on your own, using a free open source gpu miner. where better == about twice as much return.

I encourage you all to learn about bitcoin and cut out the middleman.

here are some links you should visit if you are interested in making money with bitcoin
http://www.bitcoin.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/10/189246/Online-Only-Currency-BitCoin-Reaches-Dollar-Parity


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## Arctucas (Feb 17, 2011)

Heh...busted!


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

bitcoining is shady business. essentially a bunch of individuals or small groups of people form a small company and partake in bitcoining. to make bitcoins they then create programs like comput4cash which pays out other people a small portion in return for compute cycles that go into a massive computing farm which does various jobs paid for by other companies. 

so essentially if you take part in this program your computing cycles could be going to all sorts of nefarious enterprises and you would never know. i hope that $600 - electric bills is worth it


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> bitcoining is shady business. essentially a bunch of individuals or small groups of people form a small company and partake in bitcoining. to make bitcoins they then create programs like comput4cash which pays out other people a small portion in return for compute cycles that go into a massive computing farm which does various jobs paid for by other companies.
> 
> so essentially if you take part in this program your computing cycles could be going to all sorts of nefarious enterprises and you would never know. i hope that $600 - electric bills is worth it



Not really, its an online currency, which gaining some steam with the recent dollar parity (see slashdot article).  Its no shadier than what goes on on some of the online currency transfer sites.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

BlueMatt said:


> Not really, its an online currency, which gaining some steam with the recent dollar parity (see slashdot article).  Its no shadier than what goes on on some of the online currency transfer sites.



it is not a recognized currency. it would be like me saying i have invested 10 million dollars in a pool of rocks in my backyard and if you install a program on your computer that benefits me you can have some of my precious rocks


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

LOL.  This is getting better by the minute.


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> it is not a recognized currency. it would be like me saying i have invested 10 million dollars in a pool of rocks in my backyard and if you install a program on your computer that benefits me you can have some of my precious rocks



True, but that doesn't make it shady.  Yes it can be used for shady things, but AFAIK it isn't much currently.  Note that any other online payment processor could be used just as easily to accomplish shady things.
Note also, that dollars have value because you can buy things with them, not because they are legal tender (though you can buy things with them because they are legal tender).  There is a market for bitcoins, thus you can buy dollars, euros, and some random things with them the same as with any currency.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

BlueMatt said:


> True, but that doesn't make it shady.  Yes it can be used for shady things, but AFAIK it isn't much currently.  Note that any other online payment processor could be used just as easily to accomplish shady things.
> Note also, that dollars have value because you can buy things with them, not because they are legal tender (though you can buy things with them because they are legal tender).  There is a market for bitcoins, thus you can buy dollars, euros, and some random things with them the same as with any currency.



well we could definitely get into a conversation about fiat currency but im afraid we would derail the thread 

my point is, real people are actually investing actual dollars into this program believing that one day their early investment will pay off as the demand for bitcoins grows. 

the actual bitcoin program does not pay out anything right now. compute4cash is paying people to compute for them on the basis that one day all those  bitcoins they generate will be worth something. it is hysterical. one would think in the age of the internet this kind of scam would be much harder to pull off.


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

BlueMatt said:


> True, but that doesn't make it shady.  Yes it can be used for shady things, but AFAIK it isn't much currently.  Note that any other online payment processor could be used just as easily to accomplish shady things.
> Note also, that dollars have value because you can buy things with them, not because they are legal tender (though you can buy things with them because they are legal tender).  There is a market for bitcoins, thus you can buy dollars, euros, and some random things with them the same as with any currency.



No, dollars have value because it is a promissory note backed by the national gold reserve.  Its kinda like say, "Hey gold is heavy and hard to carry around, so use this to represent your gold in various transactions".  Fail.

I read through your "material" and it is just as vague and strange as Compute4Cash.  It sounded like a weird mix of a pyramid scam and stock manipulation.

But please, do continue.


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## HalfAHertz (Feb 17, 2011)

It's not bit coin because you make ridiculously little bitcoins per compute time. I've heard stories that you need months for 1 bitcoin.
From the bitcoin site:


> The total eventual circulation will be 21 million bitcoins. There will never be more coins than that. The coins are entering circulation gradually, at a steady pace over many years, to nodes supporting the network in proportion to the CPU time they contribute. With the current total CPU power on the network, *most CPUs will usually take months between successfully generating 50 BTC*.



So it will take you months to generate 50BTC or 50$? How is this the same thing?


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> No, dollars have value because it is a promissory note backed by the national gold reserve. Its kinda like say, "Hey gold is heavy and hard to carry around, so use this to represent your gold in various transactions". Fail.
> 
> I read through your "material" and it is just as vague and strange as Compute4Cash. It sounded like a weird mix of a pyramid scam and stock manipulation.
> 
> But please, do continue.



The USD used to be backed by gold, but they stopped that quite a while ago.

I understand that it does seem as bad as Compute4Cash.  But at the end of the day, things only have value if there is a demand for them.  Gold is only valuable because it has a limited supply and to many people it looks nice.  The same with the USD, bitcoin or any other currency.  (bitcoin being limited by technical measures, go read the source code)

I'm sorry you don't understand, and yes I realize it looks like a pyramid scam, and yes it could collapse at any point.

And yes, with cpu mining you get a tiny sum of bitcoins over time, gpu miners can make a bit more however.  Also note that this rarity is part of what creates value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_value_(economics) "must be in limited supply")

In any case I've made my point and whether you agree, disagree or think it is ridiculous I don't really care.  In any case understand what Compute4Cash actually is and that you could make around twice as much if you cut out the middleman.


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## Arctucas (Feb 17, 2011)




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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

eh, bitcoins will never work as a real currency. if you have to spend money on a CPU to make bitcoins obviously something has gone completely wrong 

proceed at your own discretion...


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## praxeologist (Feb 17, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> No, dollars have value because it is a promissory note backed by the national gold reserve.



This hasn't been true since before 1972. :shadedshu

This year we get "quantitative easing 2". The first one was more directly related to bank bailouts. Now the federal government is just monetizing its debt. This is what happens in those countries that get massive inflation. Since the US still is the world's reserve currency and the finals steps in debasing the currency, capital controls and such are just getting underway, the effects of these monetary policies have yet to be fully felt.

Dollars have value because they are backed by the force of government, not because the paper squares have much value otherwise. Bitcoin as a medium of exchange has value because some people realize where the US and other countries are headed and its features protect against that type of monetary policy, as well as all of the security and anonymity features.



> Its kinda like say, "Hey gold is heavy and hard to carry around, so use this to represent your gold in various transactions".  Fail.
> 
> I read through your "material" and it is just as vague and strange as Compute4Cash.  It sounded like a weird mix of a pyramid scam and stock manipulation.
> 
> But please, do continue.



Not understanding something isn't a good argument against it. You apparently have been given links to the information.



HalfAHertz said:


> It's not bit coin because you make ridiculously little bitcoins per compute time. I've heard stories that you need months for 1 bitcoin.



The days are over where you can realistically mine with CPUs. This wouldn't work very well long term if it was like, hey anyone can just turn on their computer and make money. Well, you really still can with any decent $200 or less graphics card. See here https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_Hardware_Comparison


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

Found a opencl miner for bitcoin you can get up to 20x the performance .

Only problem is you have to set it up with command prompt which is beyond me.


By the way, considering ALL currency is a load of bullshit made up numbers I'm more than happy to get made up bullshit money from this program.

( see banks for why money is bullshit. or I can just tell you, banks have a license to loan more money then they have. This is print free monies! button for banks. And it's due to this banks collapsed, because eventually they lent out so much bullshit money that it far exceeded the amount of real money in the world ( something like 5% of money is real) so basically there wasn't enough money to pay "back" to the banks and even future earnings would not cover it. very simplified I know but heh!)


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## TheLaughingMan (Feb 17, 2011)

BlueMatt said:


> The USD used to be backed by gold, but they stopped that quite a while ago.
> 
> I understand that it does seem as bad as Compute4Cash.  But at the end of the day, things only have value if there is a demand for them.  Gold is only valuable because it has a limited supply and to many people it looks nice.  The same with the USD, bitcoin or any other currency.  (bitcoin being limited by technical measures, go read the source code)
> 
> ...



Wow.  All I read was blah blah blah, bitcoins are cool cause we say they are......blah blah blah all you guys are stupid....blah blah blah I will stop posting now.

Seriously dude, you came in here to advertise your version of C4C during a "discuss" where we call C4C a hoax, scam, blatant lies, etc. and I will show you HOW YOU FAILED:

1.  You provide no argument as the legitimacy of the practice.  You just said, "Our way is better" in so many words.  This shows me that you did not read through the posts before yours as you would realize that WE AREN'T BUYING IT!  You are like a used car salesman going to another used car lot to tell people that your cars are in better condition.

2.  We did not stop the gold standard, it was set at a fixed rate to nullify its influence on currency value.  If you are not aware, the US kinda horded all the gold.  It gave us a lot of influence of the world economy.  I am not going into the political stuff as it would blow your tiny mind; however, I will say we agreed with the world that setting a fixed rate of exchange on gold and allowing the world economy to be based more on the economy would be a better system for everyone.  See here for too much information.  Many politicians want to go back to the gold standard because it would give the US something to trade, loan, and use as pay outs to other countries to band-aid the problems we have.  It would be a temporary fix to an underlining issue of "the US needs to make some stuff other countries want to buy besides raw materials and porn".

But I digress.  I think I am done here as this discussion is no longer entertaining to me.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

please stay on topic.


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## praxeologist (Feb 17, 2011)

Serious facepalm... This is my last post at this place.

Check out this video for an explanation of what bitcoin is.

See also episode #287 of Security Now here. (and #288 in part)


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## theonedub (Feb 17, 2011)

@ LaughingMan- Bluematt gave us more information on this whole thing than C4C did. I don't know what you are seeing, but he explained exactly how C4C is exploiting the people running their client and gave the resources needed to cut them out of the picture. 

If anyone wants to learn more about how the dollar works, the gold standard, fiat currency, the Federal Reserve, how banks work, or money supply- take some classes at your local community college or University.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

i think it is funny that people participating in bitcoin get mad when we say it is a bunch of crap. of course they will get mad because they need people to buy into it for it to have any real value. if we dont buy into it then they lose their investment.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> i think it is funny that people participating in bitcoin get mad when we say it is a bunch of crap. of course they will get mad because they need people to buy into it for it to have any real value. if we dont buy into it then they lose their investment.





Mad?

Upset maybe, it seems you very overly negative about this man.


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## theonedub (Feb 17, 2011)

^ In his defense he is only bringing up the bigger picture that many people will not bother to see.


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

Well, I guess our advertising was more effective than anticipated - we thought it would be another couple of weeks before the word got out about Bitcoin.

That being said, BlueMatt is misleading you as well.  As discussed previously, there are a lot of factors that play into these types of profitability calculations and it is not fair to say that Compute4Cash takes 48% more than the Bitcoin pools.


There are several significant differences between Bitcoin mining pools and Compute4Cash:

Compute4Cash pays users in USD for the work they complete, without any complicated or expensive currency exchanges.

Compute4Cash pays a fixed rate not subject to market fluctuations or probability games.

Compute4Cash uses less bandwidth than pooled Bitcoin efforts.

The Compute4Cash client is slightly more efficient than poclbm.

The profitability of Bitcoin pools is about to drop *significantly* when the difficulty factor nearly doubles in the next few days – Compute4Cash users’ income won’t change a bit. It may change next month when our promo period ends, but we are hoping that the numbers will allow us to not have to drop it all the way to $0.10/WU.

The bottom line is that Compute4Cash is easier for users and more stable than pooled Bitcoin efforts are. It’s true, our profit margin is higher than that of the Bitcoin pool owners, but there is a good reason for it and we’re confident that most users will see the value in the service we offer.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

theonedub said:


> ^ In his defense he is only bringing up the bigger picture that many people will not bother to see.



It's not a big picture though, that's a very small picture.

It's how every buisiness runs.

No one buys into it, no one gets money.

How ever if people do buy into this.

( people paying people to use their computers) then that's a good thing.

It's another avenue of earning like leasing out a house etc.



A lot of people seem to be very negative about this because it's "to good to be true" or what ever.

But as it stands it's not.

It's like renting out your car/you vagoo etc. ( can get lots of usd per hour for renting out a vagoo! and it's just a vagoo!)


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## qu4k3r (Feb 17, 2011)

What I understood... Bitcoin, a free software proyect under MIT lincense, genereates a new alternative to the money. An electronic currency, becuase the "real money in people pockets" around the world is not enough to cover all the debts and loans done by banks. I'm not an economist and though I am very skeptical to all this, I can deny it sounds like a beautyful dream of trying to change the world. On the other side, all developments in the world have been through dreams/ideas come true. Well... Time will tell.-

If someone has completed the 50 WUs of C4$, let us know if got paid, pls.-


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

@qu4k3r - We've paid several users already, and many more are near and above the minimum cashout limit, so there are people out there that can confirm our legitimacy for you.  The problem is that those people probably aren't wasting their time searching the internet to see if Compute4Cash is real or not - they've already jumped in and started making money.


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## n-ster (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @qu4k3r - We've paid several users already, and many more are near and above the minimum cashout limit, so there are people out there that can confirm our legitimacy for you.  The problem is that those people probably aren't wasting their time searching the internet to see if Compute4Cash is real or not - they've already jumped in and started making money.



So you aren't denying using some kind of bitcoins?


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## theonedub (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> It's not a big picture though, that's a very small picture.
> 
> It's how every buisiness runs.
> 
> ...



I was referring to his posts a whole (including the electricity costs).


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## qu4k3r (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @qu4k3r - We've paid *several users* already, and many more are near and above the minimum cashout limit, so there are people out there that can confirm our legitimacy for you.  The problem is that those people probably aren't wasting their time searching the internet to see if Compute4Cash is real or not - they've already jumped in and started making money.


I meant that I wonder if *someone from the this forum* have been paid for its WUs.


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

No what Compute4Cash is saying is that compute4cash makes bitcoins, and then pays you for them.  Which is exactly what it does, yes it takes a large chunk of what you make, and yes it is much easier to use (paid in USD instead of having to transfer yourself, etc).  I don't know if it is more efficient than the existing open source miners it is based on, but I believe both my and his stories are the same, just with a different spin on each.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

here is all the crap you can buy with bitcoins. 

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

considering how much computational power it takes to make 1 bitcoin the products are incredibly expensive. considering the cost of electricity to run your computer to make the calculations you would be better off not doing bitcoin and instead taking the cash from compute4cash. in the end, it is compute4cash that will lose out on this virtual currency.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> here is all the crap you can buy with bitcoins.
> 
> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
> 
> considering how much computational power it takes to make 1 bitcoin the products are incredibly expensive. considering the cost of electricity to run your computer to make the calculations you would be better off not doing bitcoin and instead taking the cash from compute4cash. in the end, it is compute4cash that will lose out on this virtual currency.



Compute4cash is selling bitcoins for cash.

It's how they give us cash.


You can exchange bitcoins for cash. twice the amount of what compute4cash is paying out.

( for example if I ran bitcoin gpu client for 6months I'd get 1200 usd after exchanging it vs the 600 usd I get from computer 4cash also I can run it all year and get 2400. or run with 4 6870s and get 9600 usd)


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> Compute4cash is selling bitcoins for cash.
> 
> It's how they give us cash.
> 
> ...



no. you make bitcoins if you participate in bitcoin. they are not transferable to any real currency. compute4cash is paying cash for your work units which they make in bitcoins.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> Compute4cash is selling bitcoins for cash.
> 
> It's how they give us cash.
> 
> ...



Except it is much more complex that that.  Difficulty to generate a bitcoin increases exponentially, while the value might or might not go up.  I have been reading this for hours and still don't fully understand.  

My conclusion:  You waste money on power and cards to get bitcoins, and we don't even know if bitcoins are worth anything yet.  Sure you can sell 1 for a dollar, but seriously, if the market flops one day, you are out a whole bunch.


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> no. you make bitcoins if you participate in bitcoin. they are not transferable to any real currency. compute4cash is paying cash for your work units which they make in bitcoins.



Directly transferable, no.  Sell able on one of 4 or more markets for usd, eur, etc, yes.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> no. you make bitcoins if you participate in bitcoin. they are not transferable to any real currency. compute4cash is paying cash for your work units which they make in bitcoins.





guess you've not looked hard enough dude 

Found loads of places


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## scaminatrix (Feb 17, 2011)

Now it's sounding attractive...


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 17, 2011)

still not even slightly interested


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 17, 2011)

Wow so much going so many different views. What's the verdict?


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

@Easy Rhino - you are right, we are exposing Compute4Cash to a substantial amount of risk by offering this service, but we are willing to accept the risk as we believe we can manage it.

@pantherx12 - your calculation is not accurate.  There is a certain degree of loss involved with exchanging currencies, though this is relatively minor.  The MAJOR flaw in your calculation is the assumption that you will always be able to make bitcoins at the same rate.  The bitcoin difficulty changes over time to make it harder to create bitcoins.  Compute4Cash shields its users from this, at least as long as we can.  A difficulty adjustment is coming in the next few days that will almost halve everyone's bitcoin generation rate, and these adjustments occur about every two weeks.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> guess you've not looked hard enough dude
> 
> Found loads of places



you dont get how it works then. there are people who claim that they will BUY your bitcoins for actual money. but you cant bring your bitcoins to the bank and cash them in for actual money. there are companies out there that except payment in bitcoins which i have previously linked to but the products are very expensive and not worth it when you factor in the cost of your pc and the cost of running it long enough to generate bitcoins. 

that is where compute4cash comes in. they will actually pay you cash if you use their client to do the work for bitcoins. this is the better route to go because you are guaranteed cash and when this virtual currency fails you wont be out anything like compute4cash will.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @Easy Rhino - you are right, we are exposing Compute4Cash to a substantial amount of risk by offering this service, but we are willing to accept the risk as we believe we can manage it.
> 
> @pantherx12 - your calculation is not accurate.  There is a certain degree of loss involved with exchanging currencies, though this is relatively minor.  The MAJOR flaw in your calculation is the assumption that you will always be able to make bitcoins at the same rate.  The bitcoin difficulty changes over time to make it harder to create bitcoins.  Compute4Cash shields its users from this, at least as long as we can.  A difficulty adjustment is coming in the next few days that will almost halve everyone's bitcoin generation rate, and these adjustments occur about every two weeks.



Yeah this sounds really dumb of you, unless the value of a bitcoin increase ALOT, then you are losing money.  This is a risk, and a big one!


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

PVTCaboose1337 said:


> Yeah this sounds really dumb of you, unless the value of a bitcoin increase ALOT, then you are losing money.  This is a risk, and a big one!



well, at least compute4cash admits it is a risk. but they are actually paying you out cash for doing virtual work. that IMO is a better deal for you then actually getting involved in bitcoin yourself.


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

We understand the risk and the variables involved here and we maintain a $ reserve so we will never go in the red.


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## BlueMatt (Feb 17, 2011)

Compute4Cash said:


> @pantherx12 - your calculation is not accurate. There is a certain degree of loss involved with exchanging currencies, though this is relatively minor. The MAJOR flaw in your calculation is the assumption that you will always be able to make bitcoins at the same rate. The bitcoin difficulty changes over time to make it harder to create bitcoins. Compute4Cash shields its users from this, at least as long as we can. A difficulty adjustment is coming in the next few days that will almost halve everyone's bitcoin generation rate, and these adjustments occur about every two weeks.



True the difficulty is about to increase from 25997 to 36229, not quite a x2 increase though.  In any case saying that the increase goes up like this every two week is a bit misleading.  Yes, the adjustments do occur every two weeks or so, however the reason for the large increase now is due to slashdot's article on bitcoin, as well as security now's discussion of it.  It rarely goes up so fast, and actually normally goes up fairly slowly.
I have no problems with what you are doing, I just think it would be better if you are honest about what is going on behind the scenes.  There is a pool which takes 10% and does just fine, if you post that you are a bitcoin pool which takes a large percentage (whether its 20 or 50 isn't really relevant), it would seem much less like a con, and a bit more legitimate.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

bitcoin is an interesting concept and fairly ingenious code. however i really do not believe people will put their faith in something they do not understand, even if it is a viable solution to our current financial system. all most people understand is cash money in their hand.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> bitcoin is an interesting concept and fairly ingenious code. however i really do not believe people will put their faith in something they do not understand, even if it is a viable solution to our current financial system. all most people understand is cash money in their hand.



I consider myself a fairly intelligent person and I still don't understand it, therefore, I'm not gonna mess with it.  

Anywho, the question has been resolved.  This is not a trap.  Let's lock the thread and start a new one, about the TPU Bitcoin Pool, where we all pool resources so W1z can use bitcoins to buy hookers and blow.


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## scaminatrix (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> bitcoin is an interesting concept and fairly ingenious code. however i really do not believe people will put their faith in something they do not understand, even if it is a viable solution to our current financial system. all most people understand is cash money in their hand.



I see it as like one of those job oppurtuninties that come up where you have to pay money initially before the company starts paying you. For most people, it will ring alarm bells until we see real results, from real people.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> you dont get how it works then. there are people who claim that they will BUY your bitcoins for actual money.



Stop being a patronising ass man 


I fully understand it and dare I say I may understand it to a greater than yourself hence taking the risk.

yes there's people the "CLAIM" ( quotes for scaryness!) to pay me for bitcoins, and those people do pay out according to my research.


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## Compute4Cash (Feb 17, 2011)

That's another benefit of Compute4Cash - you don't need to understand or mess with Bitcoin.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> Stop being a patronising ass man
> 
> 
> I fully understand it and dare I say I may understand it to a greater than yourself hence taking the risk.
> ...



you thought you could turn your bitcoins in at the bank for cash. obviously you cannot do that. you have trust that somebody else that you have never met is going to pay you cash for them. im going to stick to our current banking system and the US dollar (despite its pathetic performance over the past 20 years.) that should tell you something.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 17, 2011)

PVTCaboose1337 said:


> I consider myself a fairly intelligent person and I still don't understand it, therefore, I'm not gonna mess with it.
> 
> Anywho, the question has been resolved.  This is not a trap.  Let's lock the thread and start a new one, about the TPU Bitcoin Pool, where we all pool resources so W1z can use bitcoins to buy hookers and blow.



Works the same way as money.

You do a job, get a worthless slip of paper ( in this casea bitcoin) people accepting that worthless bit is what turns it into currency.

Seeing as their are people who BUY bitcoins and accept it as currency if people sign up for this it can very easily become a currency.


So at the moment bitcoins are worthless for the most part ( just like real money!) but when(IF) more people accept them then they are not.

Also as demand for bitcoins goes up so does their worth 

so you can trade 1bitcoin for more usd.


No I didn't Rhino. You read it that way I stated nothing of the sort.







Why I think this is genious, it just takes people getting on board with it, if people do then effectively we ( normal people) have effectively done what banks done thousands of years ago, and found a print free money button.

Should be easily able to pay for all the made up money we supposedly owe.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 17, 2011)

pantherx12 said:


> Works the same way as money.
> 
> You do a job, get a worthless slip of paper ( in this casea bitcoin) people accepting that worthless bit is what turns it into currency.
> 
> ...



or you could just get a job or start a real business and have a massive economy already behind you. this is one of those get rich quick schemes without the actual "get rich quick" part of it. nobody wants to do real work anymore. anyway, since the OPs question has been answered and the topic exhausted i am going to close the thread.


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 18, 2011)

here is the final writeup by the OP describing the topic...



			
				qu4k3r said:
			
		

> Compute4Cash client is actually a wrapper around a Bitcoin miner called poclbm (Python and OpenCL).
> 
> What is Bitcoin?
> 
> ...


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## Easy Rhino (Feb 20, 2011)

compute4cash wants to respond


			
				compute4cash said:
			
		

> Compute4Cash is *not* poclbm - it is an original c++ client and server application, it just shares the same OpenCL kernel as poclbm, with some minor modifications.
> 
> Compute4Cash is *not* a wrapper around poclbm, it is an original C++ client. It does use m0mchill's OpenCL kernel, with a minor modification. It uses a completely original server application that wraps around bitcoin.
> 
> ...


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