digital-coins.net
  • Visit us on
  •  Twitter
  •  Medium

digital-coins.net

Bitcoin, Altcoins, Defi and more

Decentralized Finance

Earn up to 3.33% daily
Learn more

Menu
  • Home
  • Introduction
    • Overview
    • Blockchain – in simple terms
    • Wallet
  • Decentralized Finance
  • Invest and earn coins
    •  How to get coins
    • Free (Bit-)coins
    • For Publishers
    • Investing your Bitcoins (update required)
  • Mining
    •  Mining Overview
    • CPU Mining
  • About

asic

What is an ASIC device actually?

21. March 2014 by digital-coin.net Leave a Comment

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.

Posted in: News Tagged: asic, bfgminer, bitcoin, cgminer, litecoin, miner, usb

Evaluate an ASIC Device

16. March 2014 by digital-coin.net Leave a Comment

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.

  • http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
  • http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php
  • http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator
  • http://blockchained.com/profit/
  • http://btcinvest.net/en/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php

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.

Posted in: News Tagged: asic, bitcoin, calculations, gpu, miner, mining device, mining rig, profitability

First try with CPU Mining (incl Tutorial)

24. November 2013 by digital-coin.net Leave a Comment

After getting a quick overview of digital coins, having collected one or the other free coins, we want to give it a try to mine our first coins. Lets have a look at that topic:

To mine coins we got the following options to mine with:

CPU Mining: This is the easiest way probably to try mining for coins as a first run. The requirements here are pretty basic: You need a CPU. Luckily every computer got that. And you need a program called cpuminer. Cpuminer is also known as “minerd”. Sign up to join a mining pool and you are ready to go. Advantages of mining with your CPU are pretty obvious: almost no requirements, no additional hardware besides your CPU. Disadvantage is the performance of you CPU: it is pretty slow compared to the other methods. Your energy costs will eat up all of your profits.

GPU Mining: Mining with your GPU is already a much more efficient way to mine coins and was the next step after CPU mining. Compared to your CPU the GPU is able to solve the hash values much more efficient; you get way more out of your energy bills. To mine with your GPU you need a modest graphics card which is supported by the GPU miners like cgminer. Most modern Radeon or Nvidia cards are supported. Requirements compared to CPU mining are only the additional graphics card you need – or even better several of them – and mining makes much more fun.

ASIC: ASIC hardware are specialized devices produced for only one task: To mine coins. But this in the most efficient way: This gives you the best hash rate/power consummation ratio of all of the three methods mentioned. However, you have to have access to such a device so there is an additional cost.

To jump directly into mining and gain my first experiences, I have chosen for the first option, the CPU mining way.

So, these are the steps we will follow:

  • Download cpuminer for your OS
  • Join a mining pool
  • Run cpuminer with appropriate parameters for your pool
  • Watch the numbers and have it run for a while

That’s it really. So lets have a look at this in detail:

Download cpuminer
Depending on your operating system, you have to download cpuminer (minerd) from this site or you use the OS internal packing system (like apt or yum). If you have to download it, make sure to pick the right architecture (eg x86 or x86_64), download the archive and extract it to a directory of your choice.

To install with a Debian based system like Ubuntu you simply run “sudo apt-get update” and “sudo apt-get install cpuminer” and the system does the magic.

Join a mining pool
There are several mining pools out there, all with different rules like fee’s and payout models.

  • Bitcoin mining pool comparison
  • Litecoin mining pools comparison

I tried my luck with a Litecoin pool and picked minersdream.com: most green boxes and no block fees. So browse to your chosen pool’s website and register your account. When done you have to add a “worker”. You need a worker for each of your device you will have to support your mining activity. As we just give it a try with our cpuminer, you need to add only one for the time being. Remember the name and the password of your worker, we need it in a second.

When you got your worker, we will start our miner soon. Depending on your OS, open up a terminal or command prompt and type in the following command:

minerd –url=stratum+tcp://stratum-eu.minersdream.com:3333 –userpass=USERNAME.WORKER:PASSWORD

(Please make sure to redirect to the correct path for your minerd binary. Replace USERNAME, WORKER and PASSWORD with you own values)

When you typed in everyt correctly, you should get an output like this:

cpuminer running in commandline

cpuminer running in commandline

 

Perfect, our first test is running successful; our CPU miner is mining.

Tip to have minerd  running in the background
To have cpuminer running in the background while you are  working, you can decrease the priority of it. In Windows you start up the task manager, tab “Processes” and then right-click on minerd and select priority “lowest”. (Not having windows, hope this all correct…)

In Linux you run the command like this:

nice -n 19 minerd –url=stratum+tcp://stratum-eu.minersdream.com:3333 –userpass=USERNAME.WORKER:PASSWORD

This sets the minerd task to the lowest priority and have it running in the background.

 

Posted in: Tutorial Tagged: asic, bitcoin, cpuminer, for dummies, gpu, litecoin, miner, minerd, mining, mining for dummies, newbie, tutorial
Earn Free Bitcoin

1 BTC = $23102.07 USD  (via Coinbase)
1 ETH = $1586.54 USD  (via Coinbase)
1 LTC = $96.47 USD  (via Coinbase)
Quotes delayed up to 2 minutes.

Decentralized ‘Twitter Killer’ Nostr Goes Live On Apple’s App Store

Bitcoinmagazine
Feb 01

No Policy Pivot In Sight: “Higher For Longer” Rates On The Horizon

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

Ordinals Project Launches Enabling NFTs Directly On Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

Fiat Ruins Work But Bitcoin Rewards Those Who Add Value

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

Strike Launches Instant, Cheap Remittances For The Philippines Using Bitcoin Lightning

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

ZEBEDEE And Stattrak Launch New Esports Fantasy Product With Bitcoin Rewards

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

The Four Worst Ways To Attack Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

German Asset Management Giant DekaBank To Offer Bitcoin And Crypto

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 31

Twitter Prepping For Payments, Could Include Bitcoin And Crypto: FT

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 30

Mastercard And Binance To Offer Bitcoin, Crypto Card In Brazil

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 30

A Presidential Visit To Madeira: Is This Island The Next Bitcoin Paradise?

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 30

Bitcoin Sellers Exhausted, Accumulators HODL The Line

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 27

Biden Administration Releases Roadmap To Mitigate Cryptocurrency Risks

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 27

Senator Ted Cruz Is Bringing Bitcoin To The Capitol With Vending Machines

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 27

The Five Lessons I Learned From Ignoring Bitcoin For Years

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 27

POS Giant Clover Teams Up With Strike To Bring Bitcoin’s Lightning Network To Millions Of Merchants

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 26

BitPay Announces Partnership With MoonPay, Removes Bitcoin Trading Fees For Limited Time

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 26

Fiat Debases Belief, But Bitcoin Makes Us Human

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 26

Mt Pelerin Crypto Exchange Adds Support For Bitcoin Lightning Network

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 25

Arizona Senator Introduces Bill To Make Bitcoin Legal Tender In The State

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 25

Swiss Bitcoin App Relai Now Allows Companies To Buy Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 25

The Kazakhstan Mining Exodus Has Flipped Bitcoin To Clean-Energy Dominance

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 25

Blockstream Raises $125 Million For Bitcoin Mining Expansion

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 24

EU Lawmakers Vote To Impose Strict Capital Requirements On Banks Holding Bitcoin And Crypto

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 24

World’s Largest Bitcoin ATM Software Platform Acquired By Bitstop Founders

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 24

After the Failure Of Their Stablecoin Experiment, Iran And Russia Will Inevitably Adopt Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 24

Announcing “Hunting Sats,” A Bitcoin Wallet Cracking Contest

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 23

In 2023, Bitcoiners Must Stop Shooting (Or Blocking) The Messengers

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 23

Crypto Lender Genesis Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 20

Mississippi, Missouri Lawmakers Introduce Bills To Protect The Rights To Mine Bitcoin And Run A Node

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 20

Mainstream Bitcoin Exchanges Have Obscured The Value Of Private, P2P Alternatives

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 20

New Hampshire Commission Recommends Statewide Bitcoin Mining Energy Plan

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 19

CleanSpark Breaks Ground On 50 Megawatt Bitcoin Mining Expansion

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 19

What Black Investors Can Teach You About Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 19

Bitcoin Price And Risk Assets Jump In Correlated Move

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 18

Okcoin And Paradigm Announce New Grant Awarded To Bitcoin Core Maintainer Marco Falke

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 18

U.S. Department Of Justice Shuts Down Crypto Exchange Bitzlato, CEO Arrested

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 18

ZEBEDEE And VIKER Launch Bitcoin Chess, Bitcoin Scratch Mobile Games

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 18

Dear Normie, Don’t Buy Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 18

Bitcoin Price Reaches $21,000, Shorts Demolished In Biggest Squeeze Since 2021

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 17

Sazmining Launches Hydroelectric-Powered Mining Facility In Wisconsin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 17

Bitcoin Is The Solution To The World’s Economic Inequality Problem

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 17

To Becomes Bitcoin’s Go-To Platform, Nostr Will Have To Solve Its Key Management Issues

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 17

With Confident Ignorance Of Bitcoin, So-Called ‘Experts’ Sacrifice Their Credibility

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 16

How I Introduced My Younger Sister To Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 15

Seven Factors Bitcoin Investors Should Watch In 2023

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 15

Bitcoin Mining Is Proving To Be A Lifeline For Africa’s Oldest National Park

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 13

Establishing The Architectural Styles Of Bitcoin

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 13

Potential Paths Forward For The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 13

One Of America’s Largest Hemp Processors Makes Entry Into Sustainable Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoinmagazine
Jan 12

Latest Crypto Fear & Greed Index

Tags

adapad airdrop animal farm asic binance bitcoin bluezilla bscpad celsius coinbase compound cryptopolis defi drip earn ethpad exchange faucet free free bitcoin furio gamezone giveaway gleam IDO igo litecoin metavpad miner mining money movez nft nftlaunch passive-income polypad promotion reward souls of meta trading trustpad tutorial velaspad wallet whitelist

Latest Platform Reviews

Celsius
Coinbase
Crypto.com (updated)
OKX

Cloud miner reviews

Hashing24.com
HashFlare.io
Genesis-Mining

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • May 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • December 2014
  • March 2014
  • November 2013

Disclaimer

This site contains referral links to described websites. Thanks for your support.

None of the sites content is financial advise. Do your own research, please.

Copyright © 2023 digital-coins.net.

Magazine WordPress Theme by themehall.com