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Comment by jarin | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea of Bitcoin, but I've been running the client for about two weeks on my quad-core machine and still have not generated any Bitcoin. It's a little disappointing!

Yes, I know I could buy some, but until there are enough venues that accept Bitcoin, I'm only motivated enough to get free Bitcoin. The only one I've seen that I'm interested in so far is a site that lets you bet Bitcoin on pro Starcraft 2 matches, although the idea of buying Call of Duty: Black Ops for Bitcoin is pretty good too.

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A two year old video card can crunch numbers faster while using less power than a 2.8ghz Core i7 Quad.

Two things to check out that you can find on the bitcoin forums: pooled mining and GPU miners

With both of those, you can earn 1-2 BTC/day on an older video card.

Ah, ok this makes a lot more sense. Getting started with DiabloMiner and http://mining.bitcoin.cz now.

I don't use Bitcoin anymore (now that it's popular, I'm a cryptocurrency hipster), so I can send you the few BTC I have remaining if you want to play around with them. Just leave me an address. :)

Hey, much appreciated! Here's my special HN receiving address:

1HzJQSHcRTbMmuT3Hb2myDEybDwnD4LgGp

You have 5 BTC incoming once I catch up on crunching the block chain (I'm a few thousand blocks out of date) and there's a few confirmations. Have fun!

hey, I'd like to play around with them if you have some to spare! 18CsFA1WJh4zCMTPWoNcwmzfod9vrdZkNS

I only have 0.07 left, but you can have them (minus the 0.01 transaction fee). :)

Lol, CPU mining is not sensible, use GPU. And why do you think that it would be easy to get free money? Bitcoin value is pretty high, so there are people running GPU farms & mining it. Competition is high.

I think currently mining is profitable, you can pay your hardware investments back maybe in 2-6 months.

you can pay your hardware investments back maybe in 2-6 months

Can you clarify the logistics of this? Do I borrow BTC, find a hardware vendor that accepts it as payment, then repay with what I've mined? Or do I find a lender that will give me USD and accept BTC in return? Or do I spend USD on hardware and put the resulting BTC towards my regular costs of living? I doubt my landlord/utility providers would accept rent/bill payments in BTC. I've seen the "trade" page on the wiki, and it only lists a few dozen merchants, generally dealing in web site services and luxury goods.

You can sell BTC for USD.

https://mtgox.com/ - liberty reserve http://coincard.ndrix.com/ - paypal

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

When you're using quad-core machien to generate bitcoin, you're probably wasting electricity. That doesn't stop people from pooling their resources together and mine, though.

If your speed doesn't allow you to get a block at least every few days, then you should use bitcoin pool,

Bitcoin mining pool with currently open registration: http://deepbit.net/

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

There was a pretty big spike in difficulty after BTC reached $1.

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