The most legendary bitcoin mining machine: once the moon landing hero

The most legendary bitcoin mining machine: once the moon landing hero

Bitcoin mining machine that has been on the moon
Ken Shirriff is a passionate person who comes from the repair of old computer hardware. In his latest project, Shirriff got a guidance computer from the Apollo space mission and then got it working again; in his opinion, this is the only viable example.

This computer is small enough to be installed on a realistic Apollo spacecraft. Most of the computers in Apollo when they landed on the moon ranged in size from large refrigerators to entire rooms.

Of course, once you have such a machine, you should give it something to do. After all, there aren't so many lunar events that can be used to guide the direction.

But what does it do? In Shirriff's own words:

“Trying to mine bitcoin on this computer in the 1960s seems to be meaningless and out of date, so I have to let it try.”

Implementing the SHA-256 hash algorithm on this 15-bit (15-bit) machine is difficult, but you may have guessed it. However, Shirriff succeeded.

The most legendary bitcoin mining machine: once the moon landing hero

As you can imagine, this machine is far from the fastest mining machine. A SHA-256 hash takes 5.15 seconds. Since Bitcoin uses a double hash, it is slightly slower than 0.01 hashes per second. At this rate, Shirriff calculated that mining a bitcoin block would take about 1 billion times the age of the universe.

However, this is not the slowest bitcoin mining method he has ever tried. His previous projects included using the old punch card computer system for mining and even manually digging a block.

In contrast, the punch card experiment can calculate a bitcoin hash in 80 seconds, while using a pencil and paper to calculate the hash speed is 0.67 per day.

Obviously, these will not make Shirriff a bitcoin millionaire. But his commitment to protecting the computing technology of the past should obviously be praised.

We only hope that he will stop converting any Apollo-guided computer into mining equipment. Or, Cambridge University's project to calculate real-time bitcoin network energy needs may have to realign its worst-case efficiency scenarios.

Original: https://bitcoinist.com/to-the-moon-is-where-this-bitcoin-mining-rig-went/
Author: EMILIO JANUS
Compile: Kyle
Source: Translation: Babbitt Information (https://www.8btc.com/article/443781)

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!

Share:

Was this article helpful?

93 out of 132 found this helpful

Discover more

Blockchain

PayPal CEO responded for the first time “Libra exited the door” and revealed that individuals only hold bitcoin

The article was originally published in Fortune When Facebook announced the digital currency project Libra in June, a...

Blockchain

Notes | About the scrutiny of the verifier 100% Slash, a16z talk about open source movement

Shinji Satoshi: The best quality article of 5 cryptocurrencies is selected every day. Today's content includes: ...

Blockchain

Twitter Featured | Traders: Global hedging or detonating this bit of bitcoin crazy bull market

01 Safe-haven investment will ignite bitcoin crazy big bull market Recently, the sentiment on Twitter is getting stro...

Blockchain

New research: 0.5 Bitcoin can lock most liquidity, payment channel loopholes paralyze Lightning Network

Introduction: Ayelet Mizrah and Aviv Zohar, professors of Hebrew University, jointly published the paper " Conge...

Blockchain

Discussion: Impact of Digital Currency on Financial Accounting and Policy Suggestions

Author: Cheng Lily (People's Bank of China Guangzhou Branch) Source: China Finance Issue 24, 2019 Editor's ...

Blockchain

Opinion: Why BTC transcends our time

The author of this article, Ming Guo, is the co-founder of the blockchain star project Soteria. Soteria was initiated...