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Adding platform reviews

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Although I haven’t been active for a while on my site, things moved on quite a lot in the crypto currency universe. Really a lot. Beside the new highs of Bitcoin, lots of new coins, many new platforms were founded, known ones grew further, Coinbase is now listed on NASDAQ and much more….

As I got some time currently, I started playing around with some of the old and with some of the new players on the market and like to share my experiences I collected using them.

I started using the Celsius app where I started documenting my experience on this page: Celsius. Teaser: I really like it, despite being not really an app-only supporter.

More to come.

Bitcoin Rich List

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Bitcoin RainHave you ever wondered how much bitcoins the big wallets on the blockchain contain? In the below link, this is exactly what you see:

https://bitinfocharts.com/de/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

Yes, that is over a billion USD with the current rate in the 1st wallet. Quite some asset. Most likely the big wallets are the cold wallets of the exchanges where they store securely the coins of their customers. Unlikely that this is a single private person owning so many coins. On the other hand we don’t know; perhaps one of the early adapter that started mining many years ago?

Anyway, still pretty interesting link.

Bitcoin flying high

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Checking currently coinmarketcap.com, Bitcoin reached a new all time high way over 5500USD; currently it shows it as 5626.48USD for a bitcoin which is an increase of about 9% compared to the last peak. Roughly 75% more then what the rate was a little over a month ago. Hope you all invested back then.

Reasons behind it are speculated by analysts to be the expected technical change that will be implemented later this month with the upcoming fork of Bitcoin Gold; like it was done with Bitcoin Cash end of August, to spread the digital currencies even wider. Although if you look at the current rate of Bitcoin Cash, which is 321.08USD right now, we have to see, if that plan will work out to be successful.

Bitcoin price hit over $1500

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The Bitcoin price hit over $1500 in the last days which is a new all time high for the crypto currency. Reason for it? That is the big unknown currently and probably everybody would be interested in. It could be that Bitcoin is getting more attraction also within mainstream medias and hence gains in popularity. Although rumors on various sites go more in the direction that Bitcoin acceptance is rising, as further countries intend to regulate digital currencies. Examples like Mexico, India.

Tradingview: BTC reaches 1500USD

This obviously gives a boost to all the (cloud) miners as the outcome of their investments is much more worth then before. Hope you are also one of them.  Some of them are celebrating it with  special offers. This is what I spotted so far:

  • Hashing24.com:  Use promo code RPM2YC9E at checkout and get 4% discount for your purchase!

If you got more special offers, please let me know. Happy to list.

BitLendingClub.com to close their doors in 2017

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bitlendingclub.com LogoBitLendingClub.com sent a message to all of its clients the other day where they stated that they have to close their doors due to regulatory pressure in 2017. This is the message they sent to all customers:

 

BitLendingClub Closing Soon Due to Regulatory Pressure

Dear Customers,
We’ve worked extremely hard to build a platform and a community which is uniquely positioned to provide the Bitcoin ecosystem with a greatly needed service. However, over the last year or so, the regulatory pressures has been increasing to the point that it is no longer feasible to maintain the operation of the platform. We are regretfully announcing that we will have to begint terminating the services effective immediately. Of course, we will maintain some minimal functionality in order to allow our existing users to repay their loans and withdraw their funds.

What Functionality Will Remain?
We will restrict the functionality of the website to either repaying a loan, depositing to repay or withdrawing funds. There will be no new registrations, loan requests, verification of new users, investments or anything else. Just repaying of the existing loans or withdrawal.

When Will The Service Become Restricted? 
We expect to begin restricting the functionality sometime next week. We don’t have a specific date, but we will send out an e-mail when the change occurs.

How Long Will The Platform Remain Operational With Restricted Functionality? 
The platform will remain operational with the limited functionality for 30 days after all loans are either repaid or written off (i.e. they have defaulted and are written off). After that we will be terminating the services completely.  The expected termination date is approximately August 2017. it may be earlier or later, but that’s subject to change.

How Long Do We Have To Withdraw Our Funds?  
Users will be able to withdraw their funds up to 30 days after the last loan is repaid or marked as written off. We will completely terminate the platform 30 days after the last loan is repaid or written off. We recommend that you begin withdrawing your funds immediately.

Again, we’re extremely sad to be delivering this news, but that’s the reality of operating a business in the Bitcoin ecosystem. There are regulatory pressures, which make business extremely difficult and we have always done everything possible to be compliant with regulators. Given that we’ve reached the point where it is no longer feasible to run the platform and be compliant, we have decided to terminate the platform.

Best Wishes,
The BitLendingClub Team

 

So what does that mean for you as an investor? Pretty simple: Monitor your investements and as soon as they are paid back make sure to claim your money back and look for further investment options. Either invest into other platforms or use for further mining.

Cloud mining

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This new article is about mining in the cloud, instead of buying and maintaining your own infrastructure and hardware. Various providers are offering their services in the meantime. Worth comparing prices and services.

In other words: No complex setup of hardware and software, no loud coolers running in your basement, or even worse, in your bedroom: This is all located and managed remotely in an appropriate data center.

So why should I consider cloud mining or not?

You should because:

  • No noisy fans at home
  • No increased electricity bill
  • No expensive new miner to invest into
  • No equipment to get rid of when mining profitability ends

You should NOT because

  • Lower profits: As you delegated the system management, there is some fee involved
  • Opaque mining operations
  • Risk of fraud
  • Less control (and fun)

Types of Bitcoin Cloud Mining

Usually we talk about three forms of remote mining available at the moment:

  1. Leased hashing power: Rent an amount of hashing power without owning/renting a dedicated physical/virtual equipment. This is the most popular form of cloud mining.
  2. Hosted mining: Renting mining hardware that is hosted by the provider
  3. Virtual hosted mining: Rent a virtual private (standard) server and install your own mining software on it

 

Cloud mining providers overview

On this page I will start to add cloud mining provider reviews including a scoring so you see immediately if they are worth considering or not. The page just started, so it is a bit slim currently.

New section: Investing Bitcoins

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As more and more platforms with Bitcoin investment possibilities show up across the globe, I try to list here the most interesting companies where either

  • my research resulted into overall positive impression
  • I made positive experience myself

If you got other got investment tips, I am very happy to hear about it.

The page into two sections currently: Either you can deposit your Bitcoins into an account and you are getting paid a regular interest on your funds. you can do active trading and earn based on your investments.

-> Investing Bitcoins

Please remember that all of these investments will always come with certain risks involved, so please make sure to do your due diligence accordingly before sending money to anyone in the world you don’t know.

bitcoin.org: 0.13.0 Binary Safety Warning

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This message is directly coming from bitcoin.org to raise awareness of a potential state sponsored attack and about possible mitigation:

Summary

Bitcoin.org has reason to suspect that the binaries for the upcoming Bitcoin Core release will likely be targeted by state sponsored attackers. As a website, Bitcoin.org does not have the necessary technical resources to guarantee that we can defend ourselves from attackers of this calibre. We ask the Bitcoin community, and in particular the Chinese Bitcoin community to be extra vigilant when downloading binaries from our website.

In such a situation, not being careful before you download binaries could cause you to lose all your coins. This malicious software might also cause your computer to participate in attacks against the Bitcoin network. We believe Chinese services such as pools and exchanges are most at risk here due to the origin of the attackers.

Mitigation

The hashes of Bitcoin Core binaries are cryptographically signed with this key.

We strongly recommend that you download that key, which should have a fingerprint of 01EA5486DE18A882D4C2684590C8019E36C2E964. You should securely verify the signature and hashes before running any Bitcoin Core binaries. This is the safest and most secure way of being confident that the binaries you’re running are the same ones created by the Core Developers.

 

If you don’t how to verify the integrity of a file, head over the instructions page of openoffice.org. There you will find explanations available for Windows, Linux, online and more:
http://www.openoffice.org/download/checksums.html

 

What is an ASIC device actually?

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Specially when it comes to Bitcoin mining you read everywhere about these ASIC devices. What is that actually?

ASIC stands for “Application Specific Integrated Circuit”. ASIC’s are specially designed pieces of hardware for performing dedicated tasks only. Nothing else. But this as efficient as possible. So when it comes to the hashing algorithms necessary to mine a specific digital coin and verify hashed transactions, ASIC’s are designed and manufactured to perform exactly the necessary hashing only and nothing else.

 

 Advantages of an ASIC

  • fast; specially at release date
  • energy efficient

Disadvantages

  • investment costs can be pretty high

What other software do I need to get an ASIC to mine?
Here the usual suspects are to listed again: cgminer and bfgminer are your chosen tools to power your ASICS. I plan to do a little tutorial soon showing you how to get a simple USB ASIC to start mining.

Evaluate an ASIC Device

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When you played around with CPU mining, you shouldn’t too much anyway as it is not worth it anymore, and you are still interested in mining digital coins, then it is time to invest in some mining hardware: Either GPU based or ASIC device based. Which one you choose, is up to you. There are a few things to consider when evaluating the appropriate device(s).

Here are a few bullet points to consider to pick the best device at this point in time:

Timing is everything
The most important is to get the right miner at the right time: fast hashrate processing using as less power as possible. This is important to get back your invested money as soon as possible. When I was reading though forums and tutorials and did some calculations it took most miners about 4-6 months to get back their investment before earning money.

Availability
Make sure, the device is available when you order a product. There are many ASIC producing companies promising the latest and greatest mining rig soon. This ‘soon’ can be in a few days or in a few months. It does not help, if the rig got can process the ideal hashrate as per today if they deliver it finally in a few months when the mining difficulty increased and the rig it is outdated, it will take ages to get even the investments costs back (if at all). To be fair, many companies offer then better hashrate processing, but do not take that as a given.

Profitability calculation
There are many sites offering some calculations based on the currency you are mining. Here are a few to do your first calculations. There are many more site around, just use your favorite search engine to find more if you like.

All of these profitability calculators take different parameters, so pick the one which suits your needs best.

Example
Lets do an example here: Lets assume we buy a miner today having the following specs:

  • Miner costs: 3’199 USD
  • Hashrate: 320GH/s
  • Power usage: 320W/h

The electricity costs here are around 0.13 USD/kWh. You will find these numbers probably on your providers or community/city’s homepage. So if we do the calculations for 90 days we would get the following:

  • Income for 3 months: 1281.22 USD
  • Daily income: 7.57 USD
  • Bitcoin per day: 0.01 BTC

After around 3 months we would have our investment back and then can really start earning money. Sounds like a good deal.