Litecoin mining results, is there any future for crytpocurrencies?
I have now been mining litecoin in a mining pool for about 3 days. It took me nearly two days to setup the systems as mining requires installing special video card driver’s and API’s to support OpenCL, and Cuda for NVidea cards. It also required installing special mining software and digital currency wallets. Sixteen hours to setup 3 computers comes to about 5 and a half hours per computer. We have been running one of the computers on linux, 24 hours a day, and two computers on Windows 8.1 have been running 16 hours a day. All three computers are fairly modern, with 64 bit processors and half-way decent video cards.
Computer #1; OS: Windows 8.1,Video Card: NVidea GForce GT 635 M averages about 15 khash/s
Computer #2; OS Windows 8.1, Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 8400 averages about 20 khashs/s
Computer #3; Linux Centos 6, Video Card: Radeon HD 6400 averages about 35 khashs/s
After three days of mining we have earned about 0.05 LTC which equals about 40 PHP or 1 USD. The two windows machines are being used for web development work and the mining operation uses the GPU so running at full speed the computers are still fully functional. The linux computer is a file server that isn’t used much. The truth is we are not earning enough to pay for the additional electricity usage, and certainly not enough to cover the cost of the additional wear-and-tear on the computers themselves.
Is there any possible future for these cryptocurrencies? I don’t think so. There are many people willing to pay the price required to mine the currencies, so many in-fact that it is now impossible to make a profit from mining. It is very possible that governments are dedicating huge computing resources to mining to keep these currencies out of the hands of consumers. Looking at the network hash rate of litecoin reveals that there is currently nearly a billion dollars worth of hardware being used to mine litecoin. For crypto-currencies to be viable the system needs to be changed to keep Governments and corporations out of the market. The good news is it is easy to create your own cryptocurrency which is why there are now dozens of them, but anyone can create there own digital currency with enough technical knowledge and hardware.
Why do I believe there is no future for cryptocurrencies? The answer to that is simple. Cryptocurrencies depend on the strength of the cryptography. After reviewing SHA256D the algorithm used by bitcoin it is obvious there are two key weaknesses to the system. The first weakness is Moore’s law, if it would take a year to break a SHA256D hash today, three years from now it will take 6 weeks, and ten years from now it will only take 7 hours. That is simply using the brute force of computing power. The second weakness is the power of the human mind. We can expect that these algorithms will be reverse engineered to be able to crack these hashes in seconds within the next 10 years. If you can crack a hash in seconds it would then be possible to change every transaction of a currency within a few hours rendering the currency useless. That is the problem why these currencies have no future. Each currency has a shelf-life, they will each be hacked and rendered valueless and useless within 10 to 15 years.
What is the point of learning about crytpocurrencies if you can’t earn money from them and they’re all going to die within 15 years? The truth is there is more going on here than meets the eye. Behind the scenes we can use these currencies to buy things online that we may not be able to buy otherwise. It can also be useful for travelers since the money can be carried with you, in an electronic device, without customs limiting how much cryptocurrency you can carry on you. You can also gamble on currencies the same way you can gamble on the Forex market, but it still isn’t a viable income option since “The house always wins”. The survival of cryptocurrencies is going to depend on the conversion from one currency to another. This is not much different than upgrading your computer every 2 years. If you constantly upgrade your digital currency to newer coins that are more difficult to crack than you can potentially keep your money protected without relying on the banking system. The banking system has had many failures over the past decade and will probably have many more. Taking the time to learn crypto currencies will help you learn the true value of money. Diversification of your income between banking currencies and crypto currencies is a smart way of protecting your money from collapse of the banking system or collapse of the crpto-currency systems.
The global financial system is unstable and in danger of collapse due to the corrupt banking system. Cryptocurrency has become new support-beams to the financial system to ensure that it can survive a failure of the banking system. I strongly encourage you to learn more about cryptocurrencies as they will probably be around for a long time, but be ready to diversify. Each of these currencies has a self-life and will eventually become useless. Knowing this now will help you protect your money, if you constantly upgrade your digital currencies to the latest versions you can ensure the survival of your savings.
