Compute4Cash: it's a trap or not?

[Easy Rhino]

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?

 

[TheLaughingMan]

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.

 

[laszlo]

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

 

[Jack Doph]

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?

 

[TheLaughingMan]

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

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.

 

[Compute4Cash]

@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.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

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.

 

[qubit]

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

 

[laszlo]

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

i'll bet nobody cares till get payment

 

[TheLaughingMan]

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?

 

[Compute4Cash]

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.

 

[scaminatrix]

@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.

 

[Steve-007UK]

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.

 

[pantherx12]

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 : ]

 

[scaminatrix]

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?

 

[pantherx12]

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?

 

[scaminatrix]

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

 

[Mussels]

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.

 

[HalfAHertz]

@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...

 

[Mussels]

@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?

 

[laszlo]

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...

 

[BlueMatt]

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%.

 

[Arctucas]

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?

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

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?

 

[BlueMatt]

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.