My Bitcoin Mining Experience

MinerGate is very interesting Mining pool with it's own mining software AND web mining (something that I've personally never seen). It is primarily used for mining cryptonote coins. If you have a slower CPU/GPU machine, it might be something you can get a reasonable yield out of. With much lower global hash rates, you have less competition for shares. Some cryptonotes have to be exchanged into a different coin before bitcoin but some like BCN can be exchanged straight into BTC (if that's what you're looking to do). Start Mining Simply download their GUI miner, and you can start at least mining with your CPU almost instantly. The second route is to navigate to their home page and scroll down past their GUI and download their open sourced mining software (if you dont like using these, just stick with the GUI). Fairly easy to set up, they're basically plug and play. Here's a simple set up for the  Claymore CryptoNote GPU : setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT...

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. ...

Paycoin Paycoin is a SHA256 algorithm coin released by GAW Miners a couple days ago. The coin is now open to be mined by anyone with SHA256 hardware with a few possible pools to choose from. I'm personally mining it with 2 antminer S3's and mined 1.5  XPY(paycoin) within 8 hours. Paycoin is currently in it's POW (proof of work) phase, but then will phase into it's POS (proof of stake) stage in the upcoming weeks. GAW has stated no 100% promises of the coins value, however on December 19th 2014, they are releasing their Paybase platform and doing a coordinated launch with "many" large currency exchanges (Something like Cryptsy I imagine). GAW and the community on launch expects a price of approximately $20 USD, and through this launch they intend to actively try to moderate the market price. Current Market Paycoin Pool Wallet

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 ...

When you first get into bitcoin, whether it's mining or investing, you've got to have a good grasp on the market. This post is just to give you a little bit of understanding what some of the factors are that can effect the price, and in turn, your investment. Supply and Demand This is a very basic factor and is involved in basically every things cost. This principle simply states that if there is a good deal of something available, lets say bitcoins, the demand will be very low which decreases its value/cost. Inversely, if there is very little supply it will push the cost higher. Circulation If you mine bitcoin, i very much encourage you purchase items with it, it strengthens the bitcoin economy through natural circulation. It helps secure a real world cost to the currency if its able to actually be used instead of just sold to third parties. now this may not be a factor to many currencies but you need to keep in mind that this is a decentralized curr...

Anyone that's on the same mining pool as me, CEX.io, you should definitely be leveraging the trading capabilities that they service. The Basics The basics of trading on CEX.io is a couple basic principles; buy low and sell high, and that the market changes due the the value the people THINK THEY ARE WORTH. So the first point is very simple, take some time and watch the market. As the markets trend up and down it will eventually become second nature to you how they operate. Now, these trends are not determined by time or value, since this is virtual currency it isn't governed by anyone but the users/consumers. For instance, when a bitcoin was worth $800 USD, not one person chose that it was worth that much it was governed BY ALL TRANSACTIONS. Please refer to investopedia for a good writeup on supply and demand in investing. (All my currencies are in trading at the moment, so the balances read "0") Referring back to CEX.io, here's what one of their...