Is it still possible to do cpu mining for experimenting?

Commercially speaking I know it worse than pointless! But please, be gentle and don't remind me. Neither bother about being insulting or patronizing because I ask such a 'stupid' question. Thank you for your comprehension.

The reason I'm wanting the - already four times over obsoleted - cpu mining is because I don't want to earn money with it. It's all about being curious about how Bitcoin works. Not an altcoin or something else. It's about learning about BC.

CPU mining is the only option left. Asic usb miners are sold out everywhere. Raspberry Pi don't support GPU mining, do they ? And I really don't want to buy a dedicate device - because I want to know how it technically works. Do CLI stuff to make it work.

If this wasn't serious to me, I really wouldn't bother asking around how to do it.

So, now that's out of the way...

Is it today still technically feasibly to do solo cpu mining ? (on Rpi3)
If not, how come ?
If it is feasible, is there an online guide, tutorial, ... I could use ?
Optional: Why are people so reluctant about this ? It's not that I'm going to crash the BC system, am I ? :-)

It's perfectly fine to me to download the bulk data with a faster computer and upload it to the rpi.

Jan Goyvaerts

Posted 2017-02-12T09:35:39.427

Reputation: 141

re: reluctance, it's just that the question has been asked so often (e.g. http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/12294/5406). ;) You may want to read up on regtest. If you set your bitcoind to regtest mode, you create your own simulated network and can mine instantly.

– Murch – 2017-02-12T10:02:59.493

Okay - from where I can switch to 'real', well, mining ? – Jan Goyvaerts – 2017-02-12T10:18:49.147

I don't think it's possible right now, because CPU mining power is so low that you wouldn't even be able to mine shares in a mining pool. You would be treated the same there as solo-mining: your cpu would be running full load and would just find duds. – Murch – 2017-02-12T10:51:07.157

Solo mining is what I seek - and yes - I don't expect anything else than duds. :-) – Jan Goyvaerts – 2017-02-12T11:18:05.173

– Murch – 2017-02-12T15:09:18.177

1What do you actually expect to learn from this? I can understand wanting to see what happens when a proof-of-work is found, but you won't ever get that far. – Nate Eldredge – 2017-02-12T15:58:01.243

Answers

Yes it is technically feasible to solo mine with a rpi3. The 'fastest' miner you could run would be minerd. However, there is a slim-to-none chance you will ever mine a block on the bitcoin mainnet, but there is still a chance! I would save the trouble of building minerd and use bitcoind's build in block generator

bitcoin-cli setgenerate true 1

You don't need to worry about crashing other bitcoin nodes, they will validate if your newly mined block is valid.

If you are looking to have some fun with mining on the rpi take a look at bitcoind's regtest mode. Regtest mode lowers the mining difficulty to the absolute minimum level of difficulty. This means you can mine 1000's of your own blocks per hour on a rpi3.

lastcanal

Posted 2017-02-12T09:35:39.427

Reputation: 591

Note that Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 removed the internal mining capability. As to the probability of winning at solo-mining, playing the lottery is much more profitable, see one, two, three related questions.

– Murch – 2017-02-12T15:54:01.633

Not related to Bitcoin, but you can mine Magi coin, a coin whose algo is M7, and is for CPU-only mining.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=735170.0

alexg

Posted 2017-02-12T09:35:39.427

Reputation: 180