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 ...

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...

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 ...

COINCUBE - automatic trading platform What is COINCUBE ? COINCUBE is an automatic trading platform for bitcoin. It uses your chosen API ( coinbase , bitfinex ) for an exchange to use your bitcoin to grow your investment. They use an algorithm called WAVE to trade bitcoins into and out of whatever currency you choose (USD, EUROS, etc.). They charge either a flat rate or a performance based rate, performance based rates make more sense because then you only pay if you make money. Security How  COINCUBE  works allows you to have all your holdings in your own account. For instance, I use the Bitfinex  exchange in my "CUBE". All the bitcoin I'm using with the platform sits in the exchange account of your choosing, meaning you have control to take your bitcoin whenever you'd like. They also have 2 factor authentication on your account if you choose (which i always recommend), it's a solid step to a more secure platform and even if they get through that, the ...

Forget the heat, lets mine in the snow So, I've been mining inside for about a year, normally with one or two pieces of hardware. I lived in a one room apartment then, so the heat and noise was a bit crazy. Luckily I live in a proper several room flat with a fairly large balcony, which will now be the new stage for my small mining farm. What's involved So all that's really involved is as follows: 1 x large rubbermaid storage unit 2 x 6 inch vents 2 x 4 inch vents 1 x 6 inch blower fane 1 x 4 inch blower fan 2 x 3 slot extension cords 1 x router 3 x ethernet cords 1 x piece of cardboard for a divider 3 x miner PSU 3 x Antminer S5 Here's a little video of the rig that I have set up: So now you should have an idea of exactly how it's set up. There's many ways to build an outdoor unit like this, but this was just my vision. I just wanted to go through some of the reasoning behind how its set up, to help educate some of your decisio...

Overview Recently I picked up a Antminer S5 from the great folks over at BitcoinWare . The unit works fantastic at the rated 1155GH/s at factory settings. The unit really has a simple set up, and are basically plug and play. Specs: Hash Rate: 1155 GH/s ±5%  Power Consumption: 590 W (at the wall)   Power Efficiency: 0.51 J/GH (at the wall)   Rated Voltage: 12V   Dimensions: 298 mm x 137 mm x 155 mm   Cooling: 1x 12038 fan   Operating Conditions: 0 °C to 35 °C   Certified By: FCC / CE   Network Connection: Ethernet   Hardware Setup What you need: Power cord Ethernet cord PSU (power supply unit)  I purchased a PSU  ( 900/1200W PSU ) and the Antminer S5 from  BitcoinWare , so the only bit I needed to have was an Ethernet cord ready.  Plug the 4 PCI-E plugs from the PSU into the miner, grab your ethernet cord and plug it into the front (side with fan), then just plug the PSU into the wall and...

I didn't get any scrypt miners until recent, and I know these have been around for a while, but they yield some pretty serious bitcoin. So I'm currently running 2 13MH/s Black Widows, and getting in and around 0.01BTC/day. They are a fairly noisy unit, but I've found that purchasing fairly mid-grad computer fan, and subbing it in for the factory fan, reduces noise massively and also doesn't result in heat issues (take this with a grain of salt, make sure you do get the appropriate fan for the unit, size, and speed). A good suggestion also, for running units like this is to get a high efficiency PSU to help reduce heat in the wires, as well as noise of the PSU. I'm running a 1300 Watt EVGA PSU with no issues, powering both of my units. CleverMining I've set my pool up with CleverMining because of their profitability and auto conversion into BTC. Now, before people hate on multipools because it essentially can end up increasing sell pressure, I'm ...

Article from:  CoinDesk A long-anticipated report published by the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce has called for a "regulatory light touch" on bitcoin and digital currencies. The report, entitled  "Digital Currency: You Can't Flip This Coin!" , comes after a  months-long review  that included a number of  hearings  before the Senate committee, and will undoubtedly play a role in how the Canadian government shapes future regulation. The committee recommended that the government look for ways to utilize digital currencies and blockchain technology, deeming the technology "ingenious" and capable of potentially meeting critical needs in both the financial sector and the unbanked in the world. The report stated: "The federal government [should], in considering any legislation, regulation and policies, create an environment that fosters innovation for digital currencies and their associat...

People coming into this community may have a bit of a disconnect from bitcoin to "real currency", in other worlds, our conventional currency system that's already set in place compared to this new more streamlined process. Now let's bring these two into prospective. Modern Banking Banking with local currencies (CAD for me), has made leaps and bounds as far as upgrading into a more digital environment. With features like email money transfers and online transactions between your personal accounts, there has been some serious movement in the online banking space. This being considered, the time from start to finish from an email transfer, it takes a good deal of time to send any amount of money. There's also the issue with having to deal with a very inefficient system to do any complicated service like opening an account. Cryptocurrency Now enter, crypto (specifically bitcoin). You can create a wallet (or "bank") in less than a minut...

Cloud mining is a very shady beast. Unfortunately far too often people cut and run with investors/customers money and that's it, no recourse, nothing to do. This article will cover legitimate cloud mining, companies that I've personally done business with and a summary of their service. I won't be going into price comparison because in my opinion, you need to look through all the candidates before making any kind of purchase. You need to have the final decision on which company you trust the most. Hashnest Hashnest is my up-most trusted site. If you know bitcoin mining, you've heard of BITMAIN , a fantastically honest company that really strives to make great mining hardware. If you don't want to buy hardware and run it locally, you can purchase shares of their co-location units and start mining right away. Transactions are done on a P2P basis generally so the price of hashing power can vary a fair amount. If you haven't already made an account,...

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...

If you've read some or any of my posts, you know that I like bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for what they are capable of and the concepts behind them. I'd love to see them dominate trades in the real world and squeeze out country regulated money, but as I say this I'm reluctant to think that will actually happen. Bitcoin has some of the greatest people I've met, but also a large amount of scum and scammers. If we want the currency( or currencies) to go anywhere, and truly become the first universal, multi-nation currency, how can our base-line of users be garbage. In the bitcoin community I rarely trust any one company or person (with the exception of Bitmain and GAW perhaps). The community that runs these scams and ponzi's and what not, are in my opinion, shattering the strength of the community as well as the want for any new comers to join the community. I believe that this technology is in a playground phase, we're aware of it's potential but we...

Today I'll be giving a bit of a look into BTC-Flow . It's a game based bitcoin faucet that has me pretty into it. No more of the jumping from site to site clicking your way through pop ups and other fun activities. The concept of the game is that you run a  company. At first, your company mines bitcoin and has a earning rate of 0.0000015 BTC/Min and your max capacity is 0.000012 BTC. Your part in running this company is getting the bitcoin from your company either before or after your max capacity is hit. You then need to click once your bitcoin capacity is reached to put that balance into your main bank. From here you basically repeat this as much as you'd like. If you really enjoy this, you can "level" your business with bitcoin to increase capacity and earning/min at any point. If you like faucets, you need to check this out . BTC-Flow.com

Slush pool has a nice open beta web client that is so much better than the old one, it's mind blowing. It has new charts that give you good insight into hardware performance and up time, as well as a good log of your payouts, and block rewards. They have implemented a rewards system called the scoring hashrate. Dashboard Scoring Hashrate User participation to pool's mining power is measured by  scoring hash rate . It reflects how much work the user did in recent hours. You can understand scoring hash rate as an  exponential moving average  from hash rate of all user mining devices connected to the pool (see   EMA on wikipedia ). The averaging smooths out short hash rate drops or increases and makes rewards calculation more stable and fair (the exact mathematical definition is provided lower). For example, if your scoring hash rate is 1% of the whole pool, you receive 1% of the block rewards. If you own 0.031% of hash rate, you receive 0.031%...

What Is Pool Warz? PoolWarz is a pool (with a collection of different mine able coins) that has a little bit of a different approach to the set up of your miners. Creators of this site also bring you CoinWarz , and RigWarz , now have their own pool, they're not linked to one another however. Within PoolWarz , when you create a worker, you only point your hardware at one URL, as opposed to multiple different URLs for separate coins. At anytime you can alter what coin this worker is mining by changing where it's pointer (or "assigned" to ) on your dashboard in your PoolWarz account. Subscription There is an option to pay a monthly subscription fee to PoolWarz for a 0% fee (as opposed to their standard 2% fee) and also getting the ability for "auto-switching". If you've been mining for a while, you'll know the concept of "auto-switching" because it's the same as a multipool basically, except you keep all the coins you mine. ...

Overview This is for the Antminer S3 , mine are batch 11. So to get started, the units are very nicely made from my experience, and actually not too bad to get started with. You're going to need your miner, a PSU (power supply unit, like the one in your PC) and an Ethernet cord. S3+ Specifications: Hash Rate: 453 GH/s±5% with great OC potential   Power Consumption: 355 Watt at the wall    Power Efficiency: 0.78J/GH on wall   Power Supply: 12V DC Size:  331 mm x 137 mm x 160 mm  Fans: Two 14038 fans mounted on both front and back ends   Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 35 °C   Complied with: FCC / CE Network Connection: Ethernet   Power consumption: This figure depends on the PSU efficiency, ambient temperature and the accuracy of the power meters. Step One: Network Let's prepare your network. You need to have your routers IP address to look something like 192.168.1.X. The x can be reall...

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...

Hashie.co is release an upcoming update with their new feature of Miner Mods . Unfortunately there haven't been any specifics mentioned as of yet. I can only speculate that they may involve functionality similar (but different) to companies like Zeus or GAW. I have a feeling they will act as "boosts" such as hash-speed boosts, or maybe something like GAW's double dip. When this update is released, I'll be tweeting it out with a new blog post on all the details of what features are actually added onto Hashie .

Money Transfers A big reason is money transfers. Look at any comparable money transfer site, or even your banks fee chart/table. For a much smaller fee I guarantee you transferring money as bitcoin is no where close to the fee that you're currently paying. If you've never tired this, please do, save some money, and support bitcoin in tandem with your local currency. Think of using bitcoin similar to using e-transfer from one bank to another to bring it into terms of everyday people and bank users, it's not so complicated. Merchant / Company Adoption Just as you might think, companies and businesses have began accepting and using bitcoin day to day, this means the customers are able to pay with bitcoin. When customers gain the ability to pay with bitcoin it becomes more of a priority to pay with it as opposed to USD or any other local currency.  Some large scale companies that have started their acceptance of bitcoin are Amazon, Newegg, and TigerDirect. Ke...