Bitcoins bitcoins bitcoins

I'm going to defcon soon and it seem that there is only one lectrure on bitcoins. This saddens me. I use Mt.Gox to do all my bitcoin transactions. Which is to say convert my bitcoins into DOLLA DOLLA DOLLA bills. I am somewhat proud and somewhat ashamed to admit I am a bitcoin miner. As of right now I don't have any winning tips for you on how to be a miner. I will however introduce you to them.

Go here if you want to read the real version of what they are and how they work, instead of my dramaticized half fictional account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Bitcoins are a currency based on cryptography, using various mathmatics to prevent shenanigans. Bitcoin miners, people who provide proof of work, for the bitcoins, can actually aquire bitcoins. And bitcoins can be turned into dolla dolla dolla bills. So to do this proof of work you rent out your proccessor, ok really you need to rent out your graphics card: ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison )

Woah Woah Woah, why are all the cards ATI..., well it turns out the function mostly used is sha256 and guess what, on ATI cards, there is a specific asm function for that....WAY TO GO Amd.


So get a client to cruch this cryptography and start cracking away. Use poclbm if you got graphics cards on the brain( https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm ). Now if you want to use CPU's which is by all accounts is at least 50 some odd times slower you can still go for it, use RPCMiner for mac, and minerd for linux. Join a mining pool like deepbit and start crackalackin a way.

If you join a mining pool the rewards can come very fast.......but with very fast, come very small rewards, lol.

CAVEATS:
OH AND ONE HUGE CAVEAT. This will eat electricity like a mother fucker. No joke, if you live in (Worse case US scenario ) Hawaii, have two rigs, with 2 graphics cards a piece your electric bill can go up over 200 dollars what it normally is. LOl that math is bad and terrible. For real math ( http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Bitcoin-Mining-Update-Power-Usage-Costs-Across-United-States ). This also makes crunching solely on cpus, pretty much a no gain death trap, by my understanding.