Does Bitcoin work better for one user if they always use the same IP?

Question

I use a VPN and regularly change my IP. As it is, I've been running Bitcoin on and off (mostly "on") for over a year now and have yet to generate anything (well, except lots of heat). So I got to wondering if having different IP addresses would help explain this "dry spell."

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Edit 1

Thanks for the responses. I'll be more clear.

"...running Bitcoin...." means I have the "Bitcoin client" up and running with "8 active connections to Bitcoin network." The green checkmark icon on the lower, right-hand portion of the "Bitcoin Wallet" window, which is what comes up when I single-click the "Bitcoin Client" icon in the System Tray, reports "Up to date. Downloaded 188,522 blocks of transaction history. Last received block was generated 32 seconds ago";

"...generate anything...." means I have a "0.00 BTC" balance in my wallet.

My system as a relatively-basic Windows Vista computer that is my primary device for reading, composing, blogging and (occasional) video watching; no gaming and the like. It does have a GPU (128M or 256M, as I recall) but it, as well as the system as a whole, is neither intended nor designed as a Bitcoin generator. I just thought since I'm online a lot during the day and do torrents overnight (the PC doesn't stay off for long), why not put it to work generating Bitcoins?

Maybe I'm doing it incorrectly.

Thanks.

Edit 2

Ok. I definitely didn't do this whole Bitcoin thing correctly from the start.

As near as I can tell, I had downloaded and was running only my wallet; I was doing no mining (Sure pays to completely read directions.)

So I'm now running the GUIMiner program, doing pool mining.

I think I'm now on the right track.

Thanks.

Are you mining with a graphics card? CPU mining is so inefficient there's a good chance you'll never solve a block with it. More info here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/59/516 — Highly Irregular, Jul 09 '12 at 22:01
This question might also be of interest: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/118/516 — Highly Irregular, Jul 09 '12 at 22:04
What do you mean by "generate anything"? What are you trying to generate? When you say "running Bitcoin", what exactly do you mean? — David Schwartz, Jul 09 '12 at 22:21
Further to David's comment, if you're running the standard Bitcoin client with the generate option turned on, then you're CPU mining. If that option is off, then you're not mining at all. — Highly Irregular, Jul 09 '12 at 22:28
What hardware do you have, and what software are you running? — Highly Irregular, Jul 09 '12 at 22:34

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 10 '12 at 00:15

If you are using the standard client alone in hopes of generating Bitcoins, you most likely won't solve a block in your lifetime, regardless of your IP.

If you are using some GPU-based mining software, it will still take a long time. In general your IP does not affect it, as long as your miner is set up correctly (say, to a mining pool).

IF you are hosting your own bitcoind instance and mining on two different machines, yes, it can make the difference, but only if your bitcoind's IP is changing, thus not allowing the miner to connect to it.

If you are just running the standard client in hopes of generating Bitcoins without any extra configuration, you are out of luck - the client by default is not generating Bitcoins, as it would be highly inefficient at it.

All in all, unless you really know what you are doing, you ought to look into mining at a pool with a mining software such as GUI miner. But first you really ought to check if it is really worth it. You can do such calculations using my Bitcoin calculator and getting your hardware specs from here. Most likely you'll find the answer to be, that is it not profitable for you to mine Bitcoins, as your electricity costs will be greater than what you will earn.

For the future, be more clear about what you are trying to do and what is your setup, as it allows people to give more specific answers to your problems.

Does Bitcoin work better for one user if they always use the same IP?

1 Answers1