Can I mine Bitcoin with my iMac?

Can I just get some cheap software and start mining bitcoins?

I’m not sure how that works. Do I just have to get lucky and get one?

As evidenced by my post, I have done zero investigation into this.

That’s what I rely on you people for.

no, but you can trade it in for bitcoin. probably not for a full coin though

you might accidentally mine one, but that only lands you like 50k, and the chance is very low.

Buying the lottery is more rewarding imo.

Can I just leave it on all night? It doesn’t get much use. (The computer, that is)

What’s it gonna use, a couple bucks a month in 'lectric?

considering people use super powerful computers to mine bitcoin 24/7 and the energy usage is through the roof, your mining efficiency might not be on par.

If you’re looking to contribute your computer’s downtime and electricity, consider joining our World Community Grid and/or Folding @ Home teams.

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But I want teh bitcoinz

have you tried selling illicit goods. I hear bitcoin has a market for that.

I downloaded tor the other day. So maybe I’ll give it a whirl

This. Now, there are ‘pools’ you can join, where you team up with a bunch (no idea how many) of other folks. When a coin is mined, it is doled out based on the number of operations each person’s computer(s) performed. This smooths out your revenue over time, I don’t know much more than that, like whether or not the owner of said pool takes a cut.

I have a friend with a lot of GPUs mining coin, in a locale where electricity is quite cheap. He claims that his marginal cost is about $21k, any price above that and he’ll keep his rig running. He walked me through it once at a high level and it felt like he was excluding a lot of costs - for example, his rig isn’t insured (I think his total cost was just under $100k) and there is no fire suppression system, and he hasn’t mentioned cooling the building (I presume running 100 GPUs in a small space during summer could be problematic), and so forth. He also hasn’t accounted for the fact that every time ~2000 coins are mined, they dial up the degree of difficulty. I think compared to a year ago, it takes something like ~40% more computations per coin mined.

Edit: $21k is not break-even, it’s marginal cost.

So, a single iMac won’t make me any bitcoin?

Eventually, maybe. Might take a year or eighty. Might take a day, but that’s extremely unlikely, as you can imagine.

If you want a toe in the water for funsies, you might look into mining some of the less valuable coins. I don’t follow crypto much, Dogecoin isn’t worth much and might be easier to mine, for example.

are you sure about that…

I meant price per coin, isn’t it like a nickel?

oh you’re right. it’s cheap.
Didn’t know it was that cheap considering it jumped 1000% in the last 3 months