Show HN: Golang automation for mining cryptocurrencies on the Spot Market | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Golang automation for mining cryptocurrencies on the Spot Market

github.com

64 pointsalexellisuk17 comments

Be careful with this kind of stuff.

Someone posted a link [0] to a GitHub repo here a few days ago that would fire up a miner on some AWS GPU instances... except that they hard-coded their own account (wallet) into it so any profits would go to them. It hit the HN front page pretty quickly.

This might be completely legit but, at minimum, take a few minutes to look through the code before you just blindly deploy it.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16249372

Always read the code - this is why I'm not supplying a binary.

I don't even know if this is valid within the T&Cs - but I hope it will be interesting and of educational value at the least.

But you are supplying a binary !

This docker container calls a pre-compiled binary ./cpuminer. There is no way to tell if this binary faithfully uses the bitcoin address provided in the command line (yes there is some code there but you cannot confirm that this it was compiled from that code.)

But it gets worse. Even if someone does disassemble the binary, you could update the the docker container to add this capability, and nobody will be able to tell because the image gets pulled each time.

Have you taken a moment to read the README? The Dockerfile is linked in the mine-with-docker project. You are well within your rights to rebuild that. The concern raised was what happened with the cloud API.

It seems the repo has a hardcoded mining address here, isn't it? I'm not sure how do you configure a user at a mining pool, but be careful.

https://github.com/alexellis/spotminer/blob/master/main.go#L...

I've fixed that - it was unintentional and thank you for pointing it out.

So if enough automated miners hit Packet.net's spot market does that mean that it'll take the cheap supply away so that non-miners will be competing for cost-effective instances?

How quickly will I lose money with this?

Slower than if you used dedicated EC2s

Heh that’s fair.

What's the spot instance which can be used and not lose money on mining with 'em?

It's not for GPU coins, but some altcoins are pop in and out of profitability on CPUs, if you balance it in realtime you can make money. (I have an employee doing this as a learning project)

But if making a lot of money is your goal then you're better do it it trading, no I'm not going to elaborate

Is trading really better? With this you're basically guaranteed a profit, as long as you can find a spot instance cheaper than the mined amount.

youre guaranteed a small profit. Trading is greater risk greater reward.

Mining might get you hundreds, low thousands a month. Trading is 10s thousands / low hundreds thous. Month

I remember seeing stats that something like 90% of the traders lose money trading stocks. I'm sure it's the same in crypto, though it's compensated by the nearly constant growth. I doubt though that many traders beat the simple buy-and-hold strategy.

LoL. Son, you must be new at this.

as long as you can find a spot instance...

In other words never. Now that this is out of the bag it's over.

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