My Bitcoin Mining Experience

MinerGate is GUI mining program that is incredibly simple to get started with. With MinerGate you can mine any of the following: AEON BCN BTG DSH ETC ETH FCN INF8 MCN QCN XDN XMR ZEC If you're new to mining or don't like using all the command line miners you've tried before, getting started is super simple. Create an account at MinerGate (Click here) Download MinerGate's miner Install Login Start Mining You don't need to set up any wallets or anything like that since your logged in everything is saved to your account and you can just mine away until you want to withdraw your currency. If you're not sure what currency you want to mine, they even have the option to run the "Smart Miner" which mines the most profitable coin for you. Set the intensities of mining to your needs, you can adjust them to mine while you use your computer so you're always mining. Going to bed? Just increase the intensity overnight

Crypterium - cryptobank just launched token sales earlier today and i'm very excited to see what they do with their platform. The best part of this ICO is the cryptobank services that would be available in the normal brick and mortar banks, but now using blockchain. Bringing blockchain technology much more mainstream by providing services that people would expect from a bank into a completely digital space is very exciting! Here's some information you should know: What is a cryptobank ? A cryptobank is a new kind of bank that provides the same type of services as a traditional high street bank, but with cryptoassets such as a cryptocurrencies and tokens rather than everyday money we are used to seeing today (often referred to as fiat money). Cryptobanks provide a service-payment infrastructure; a communication between the crypto-world and the fiat-world, opening up an opportunity for users to pay in cryptoassets, and the merchant to receive funds fiat money for ser

Bitmain has begun making hardware for different algorithms aside from sha-256 (Bitcoin algorithm). They created one for scrypt and now, they've created an incredibly fast miner for the X11 algorithm. Antminer D3 - Specifications Hash rate: 15 GH/s (Variation of ±5% is expected) Power consumption: 1200W (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temp). Dimensions of the miner: 320*130*190mm Hashing algorithm: X11 Antminer D3 - Profitability Check these links for the latest profitability data: CryptoCompare CoinWarz As a summary, it looks like ROI for this hardware is about 11 days. This is an incredible value for new hardware and i hope we see more ROI's like this! Summary Very interesting new miner on the block with very, very high ROI. Definitely, something miners should consider if you're looking to upgrade your current gear, or even coming into mining for the first time!

A lot of Bitcoin users love the currency, but if you need to use some of it in the real world, there are generally speaking a ton of hoops, as well as long wait times. For instance, a normal workflow would be: Transfer Bitcoin to exchange Exchange Bitcoin to local currency (USD, CAD, etc) Wire the currency to a third party service Transfer to bank So there is a lot of room for improvement here. Bitcoin Debit Card You've likely heard of these, especially if you've been in cryptocurrency for a while but they are actually pretty great to have. I use WageCan  and haven't had one bad experience so far. I want to outline the positives and negatives of these kinds of services (but specifically WageCan ). Pros Use your bitcoin for everyday purchases. Withdraw money from ATMs. Bitcoin you leave in your wallet earns 0.009% interest every day. Cheap debit card Cons Transaction fees Depending on the card you may need to wait a short period o

As we all know, mining changes quickly no matter what currency you're looking at. For a while, scrypt mining really dropped off my radar with lack-luster hardware, it just didn't seem like a viable choice. Recently, however, there has been some great hardware released with very reasonable power consumption. Enter: Antminer L3+ This miner is an absolute beast with some of the greatest ROI in the current mining marketplace. Here are the specs: Power: 800 Hash Rate: 504.0 MH/s Mines: Litecoin Power cost per day: $ 2.30 Return Per Day: $ 39.35 Profit Ratio: 1708% Return Per Week: $ 275.48 Return Per Month: $ 1,180.61 Return Per Year: $ 14.36 K Cost per MH/s: $ 3.26 Payback period: 41 days Annual Return Percentage: 873% Theses units sell for about 1600USD a piece and at the 800W power consumption, you may be able to run 2 comfortably off of one circuit.  The one drawback is the purchasing/delivery. Each unit is generally a pre-order or if it's n

Problem I run a 125MH/s ETH GPU mining rig but I was having issues where it would restart intermittently and when it would come back online it would obviously stop mining and i would lose mining time because of it. Solution Automatic restart  Run your miner automatically on startup This is actually a very simple way to keep your miner in check so you don't encounter much or any down time. As an added bonus, it's very simple to set up. Automatic restart Search for "task scheduler" in your windows search bar and open it. Now select "Create Task..." from the right side panel. Give your task a name and check the "run with highest privileges" checkbox Go to the "Triggers" tab and click the "New..." button. Here you should select "Daily" and select a date and time you would like this task to be run. Once you're done with your selection, click "OK" Go to the "Ac

I spent some time trying out a few different pieces of software to try to figure out one that works best for me. I have 2 good options for mining ZCash, both for the coin and using NiceHash to auto convert it to BTC for you. Option 1 Download the NiceHash Miner Run the miner (install steps) Put in your btc address and your worker name Run the benchmark (depending on your number of devices this can take some time, however, it's worth it). Once the benchmark has completed, simply click "Start" This option will be mining with NiceHash, however, it auto converts coins into btc. This may not be what you're looking for, so see option 2. Option 2 Download the latest release of nheqminer Extract Create a run.bat file Here's a couple examples for your run.bat file Examples AMD 1 GPU nheqminer_zcash.exe -l usa -u YOUR-ZCASH-ADDRESS-HERE -t 6 -od 0 NVIDIA 1 GPU nheqminer_zcash.exe -l usa -u YOUR-ZCASH-ADDRESS-HERE -t 6 -cd 0

I've decided to build a GPU mining rig, primarily focused on ETH at the moment. Here's a run down of the hardware in my rig: 5 AMD RX 480 GPU's GPU Shack Bundle 1300W PSU So, we're looking at about 750W power consumption and about 125MH/s speed for ETH. Since I'm Canadian, here is a breakdown of my costs and ROI (roughly). Now that we have seen the hardware we're using and approximate ROI, let's build an open air rig to house our new hardware. We're not going to need a whole lot, of course you can build yours differently than I build mine. Here's a really simple parts list for this build, sizes may vary: 1 Piece of Plexiglass (large enough for motherboard & PSU) 7 feet of L-shaped Aluminum 15 screws & nuts Once you have all your pieces just cut aluminum to size. You need to cut 4 pieces to create a base for your plexiglass that holds your motherboard and PSU. 4 legs that give about 10 inches of clearance betwee

As a good chunk of the bitcoin community is very aware, the bitcoin mining reward will be getting halved very soon, and this could mean a few different things When About 31 days from now (check  http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/ ) the bitcoin mining reward will be halved from 25 to 12.5 bitcoin (this occurs 210,000) for each solved block, this means that the supply will lower significantly for bitcoin world wide. What does it mean This means things to different people. For an opportunist, I think quite a few people will buy a few BTC now, and dump after the halving because a lot of people are speculating that the price will rise because of simple supply and demand. For miners, they will probably be making approximately the same  (in USD or CAD) as they used to, however the actual amount they receive in bitcoin will be half of what they received previously. If the price remains constant, and does not rise, that could mean the majority of miners shutting down howe