My Bitcoin Mining Experience

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...

Overview This article will be about the basics of bitcoin mining for finding a bitcoin miner and understanding some of the concepts that differ from miner to miner. Hashrate Hashrate is a pretty simple concept. It is literally how many hashes the miner can complete per second. In modern bitcoin miners you'll be seeing a lot of stats like 100 GH/s or 1 TH/s. It's still a hashrate, but at a much higher speed. For instance, 100 GH/s is actually 100,000,000 hashes per second. Examples: 1 kH/s is 1,000 hashes per second (sometimes mistakenly written KH/s). 1 MH/s is 1,000,000 hashes per second. 1 GH/s is 1,000,000,000 hashes per second. 1 TH/s is 1,000,000,000,000 hashes per second. 1 PH/s is 1,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second. Power Consumption Before looking for a miner, I strongly recommend you test or look up (as long as your home/flat is up to code) the wattage of your wall outlets. Each miner has a different consumption as well as effici...

I recently reformatted my computer and decided to try out Ubuntu as my OS. I'm pretty new with a lot of Ubuntu but I decided to figure out how to mine using the .sh files as opposed to the .bat files used on windows OS's. To help other miners through this process, i'm hosting some files in my DB account that you can use as a boiler plate. Mining software files are here . Download and extract. Alter these .sh files with your credentials. Run scripts by goingto their directory and typing ./mine.sh and ./minecpu.sh in separate terminals And there you have it, It's that easy! You'll be mining in seconds.

OneWallet, The Bitcoin Market Place Everyone has heard of, and likely used Ebay, or Ebay adjacent sites. They generally are online auction sites that sell in a variety of currencies, primarily in GBP, CAD, and USD. OneWallet takes the concept of online auction sites, and made a version exclusive for Bitcoin. Simple Sign up process and a nice design. This platform will definitely help those in the bitcoin community purchase goods with bitcoin, and mitigates that need to convert bitcoin to their local currency. Landing Page OneWallet has all the pieces needed for a well functioning auction platform. Honestly, my favourite part of the home home page is where it says "BUYER PROTECTION" at the bottom. If you've been around the community for almost any amount of time at all, likely you've been scammed or at least someone tried to scam you AT LEAST once. These protections will ensure that the customers will feel safe with the platform and help it grow a...

Coinbase Is Great If you're a vet to the bitcoin and crypto currency world, you've very likely heard of a little company called Coinbase (my personal wallet of choice). I stumbled across a incubator called Y Combinator , this company had incubated Coinbase into the bitcoin wallet-ing behemoth that it is today. Y Combinator  puts $120,000 into tech startups and they help incubate (mentor and such) them to ensure they grow large. Now, why give out this money, just the goodness of their generous hearts? No, not so much. This company takes a % equity in each business they incubate, from 5-10%. If you visit their site, you can see all the huge companies they's worked on, owning a fair stake in each one. To bring this into perspective, they own 10% of Reddit and Twitch, Twitch was acquired by google. What i'm trying to say here, the incubation of coinbase by this company is a really big deal, and it gives me (and hopefully you) huge hope for the crypto-curr...

Give Me Coins ! But actually, Give Me Coins is my favourite pool out there. They pool for LiteCoin with DogeCoin, SysCoin, Umbrella-LTC, and PesetaCoin all merged. You still get all the LTC you normally would, but you get a whole lot extra! Now, as you know, these are all scrypt coins, unfortunately they don't have any pools for SHA-256 and it doesn't look like they any plans on expanding into the SHA-256 realm. Although I think more pools will since BTCGuild closed it's pool very recently. They also mine FTC, VTC, and PPC. So if you're looking to switch up pools at some point soon, or just give a different pool a whirl (ahahaha, pun.), give Give Me Coins a shot, with 0% pool-fee and automatic  withdrawals  there's no downside. I mean, just look at it!

Buy Low - Sell High Everyone knows this basic principle to make some money at investment. This can be used in the stock-market and the like, but also a fantastic principle to keep in mind when dealing with bitcoin. Bitcoin has massive volatility like stocks do, but keep this in mind not when you are buying and selling bitcoin, but buying and selling THINGS with bitcoin. I use this principle when I purchase cloud hash power for instance, let's have an example. If I have a large sum of bitcoin, let's say 4 BTC, and I want to buy cloud-mining from Hashie.co . They sell at a rate of $4.90/ 10GH. @ Bitcoin price of $350: 4 BTC X $350 = $1400 You can purchase 2857 GH/s @ Bitcoin price of $400: 4 BTC X $400 = $1600 You can purchase 3265 GH/s Now, with the above example you can see a large difference in the amount you can purchase (You already knew that) but when you can resell this hashpower when you're made enough, you can sell them at the low...

GAW released some information and their White Paper for their coin code named " HashCoin ". They're developing a new platform that encompass Zencloud and Hashtalk called "HashBase", and with this large development process, this coin is just another brain child that GAW is pursuing. The basis of the coin is to become in my opinion a less volatile bitcoin, that is widely accepted by merchants. Now, obviously, to do this they are going to need serious merchant adoption and for merchants to adopt, I think they're going to need to see that it's not volatile first hand. I see issues with it, but they are a good and very well off company, so I'm sure they've thought through the problems with their strategy. If you're interested in the specifics, please check both GAW's site  and a release of the information from and Cryptocoin News . This coin seems like it's going the route of more institutionalized currency, like USD or CAD (...

As you know, I just got a Bitcoin credit card from Shift Payments which i reviewed a few days ago here . Overview I love the card, and a mobile app for a product like this, in my opinion, is a must. The application is pretty handy and basically takes the place of any kind of website account / web-app. The app is for both iOS and Android devices, I'll be using the Android app. Boot screen Something that a lot of apps seem to forget, that Shift  hasn't, is above all keep it simple. The app has a clean simple design that makes it very easy to navigate and consume the functionality within. Wallets & Accounts Accounts screen With the ability to add and remove accounts on the fly, and choose your active account (The account you withdraw bitcoin from) quickly and easily is done very well. It drops that average "slide in" menu from the left or right as most mobile apps use, which is great because that's just one less tap you need to...

The Shift Payment card arrived in my mail today (took about 30 days from Shift to Toronto Ontario). Although the wait was long, I was amped to try a bitcoin card for quite some time! Since this card is from a fresh start-up, and is still in beta phase as well you expect that the product isn't fully fleshed out. The card came to me very generic as any visa/debit card would from a card supplier, attached was a list of things that can't be done and general information about the card. The card is based off the old magnetic strip on the back like cards back in the day. It's pin-less, and so far doesn't work EVERYWHERE but it's still in beta. After the beta, early adopters (such as myself) will get personalized cards after the beta phase that should look more like this, if it being pretty is a big concern for you. Current Beta Version Pretty Version I've been able to use it for daily purchases like Tim Hortons, or things like buying a...

Bitcoin nodes are in essence computers that check and keep up to date on bitcoin transactions. A node helps process and confirm transactions in the bitcoin network, which theoretically, means the more nodes in the network the quicker your transactions get confirmed. To do this is actually very simple! Download bitcoin core Install it Allow it to update (This may take some time, so please be patient) Open port 8333 in your router/modem settings While you wait for your install to update the entire blockchain, go ahead and go into your router settings to open up the port. This can take a minute if you're not very tech savvy. Try going to  http://192.168.0.1/ , this should bring you to your router, try logging in (generic credentials user:admin password:admin). Once you're in you should be able to navigate to something along the lines of "Forwarding" and then you should need to add a new port to allow. Add port 8333, for all protocols and that's it! ...

Overview So, you may be thinking "Hey, I've got a some bitcoin. I need to sell them for USD(or other currencies) to buy everyday things like groceries." Here's how I do it. So, at the current moment it's a transfer rate of around $300/bitcoin, not a very good rate. However, this is the process that I go through, not very complicated. Cryptsy This beautiful trading platform is great, if you don't have an account with them. Make one. Make sure you use Authy or something with all accounts relating to your money, it's worth your time. Add Bitcoin to Cryptsy Account Once logged on, go to your balances page, and select the bitcoin link. A little popout window will give you some options, select deposit, generate address and then send your bitcoins into that address. Make sure you give about an hour or so, so it can confirm with the network. Sell Bitcoins Now, you've got your money right where you want it. Go to the markets on the ...

Today I realized for those miners that still don't feel comfortable, or just want to utilize their own computer hardware while they're not using it, there is a good solution. Everyone knows that you can mine X11 coins and Scrypt algorithm coins with your CPU and or GPU. However, using your CPU to mine X11 coins is far more efficient then trying to get it to mine Scrypt coins, so my advice is to split your computers hardware. As covered in a previous post (here) I cover how to mine Darkcoins with both GPU and CPU. Try to mine Darkcoins with your CPU (6+ cores preferably)and use your GPU to mine Dogecoins (or whatever Scrypt based coin you prefer). Using these two different algorithms, you can utilize your hardware in a more profitable way (in my opinion), especially since you can now play two markets if you enjoy making profits from coin exchanges. As you can see, this way you can use your CPU in a much more efficient way and still have your GPU mining another profita...

A quick word of advise to someone that's new to bitcoin mining, or even just thinking about starting into it. One thing I've learned through experience is that you don't want to invest into "USB Miners" these are mining hardware like Block Eruptors, Red Fury's Antminer U1's and U2's. It may seem like they're a cheap way to get into mining, but i can honestly say, it's just not worth it. Around 7 or 8 months ago when i started into mining, I began using my computer at home and then setting up mining software on 20 or so computers in my college for 8-10 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week. I figure, the computers are going to be on anyway. Either way, This was an interesting way to get into it, I say interesting because obviously even months ago this wasn't what some people like to call, "profitable", although I was intrigued by doing it and monitoring how much yield i could get out of them and maybe if i expanded to 25-30 computer...