bitcoin

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.

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.

Prepare a PC power supply to use with a mining device

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Many mining devices do not have an internal power supply (PSU) hence they depend on an external one. In most cases it is a standard PC PSU. All modern power supply are intended to be used within a computer and switched on via the power button. As you your miner does not have such a power button, you have to ‘hack’ your PSU to run standalone. Here is how to ‘hack’ your PSU.

Requirements:

  • paper clip (or some wire)
  • electrical tape
  • pincers
  • a power supply

Cut the paper clip according to the pictures below. Then tape it with the electrical tape for shielding.

psu_paperclip_taped

Prepare paperclips for PSU

Prepare paperclips for PSU

Once this is done, ensure the power supply is switched off and not connected to the power plug. Put the paper clip in pin 4 and 5 of the 24switch connector to connect them. This bridges the POWER function of the PSU and it starts running as soon as it gets power. You can additionally shield the paperclip with electrical tape. This also ensures the clip does not fall out of the pins.

PSU Bridged and Taped

PSU Bridged and Taped

 

To make sure you don’t damage the PSU, don’t let it run on its own for too long without any power consuming device.

 

Setup your Raspberry Pi as mining device controller

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As I just bought a new miner (Rockbox new R-Box) I was looking into a convenient way to operate and administrate this box. Currently it is running on a Windows 7 machine using cgminer (a tutorial will follow on that one). As I got some Raspberry Pi’s lying around, I was looking into way how to setup one of the Pi’s as controller.

After digging around I bit, I found first Minepeon. But after a bit of research on the project page and the forums, it seems this project is pretty much dead: Latest release is from early 2014, forums not having any recent post except for one thread with the title “Minepeon Project Died?“.

So I found this great project called “Minera“. Minera is a – very important – active project providing a lot of features on how to control your mining device(s). Its features are

  • Web frontend with Dashboard and widgets
  • Currencies rates
  • Detailed tables for pool and device info’s
  • Charts
  • System monitor like temperature, system load
  • Autorestart, autorecover
  • and much more

Sounds like the tool you need? That is exactly what I thought as well.

Minera Dashboard

Minera Dashboard

 

Hardware requirements

  • Raspberry Pi
  • USB Power plug (preferable with a on/off switch
  • HDMI cable in case you like to attach a TV/monitor to the Pi
  • SD card with at least 4gb

 

Software requirements

Browse to the Minera project page and download the prepared image for your Raspberry Pi in the download section. Click on “Auto Install” and the download starts. Once the download completed, extract the zip file with your favourite zip tool (like Winzip, Winrar, Archive Manager). This gives you the the file minera-latest.img.

As the next step, copy the image to the SD card. Depending on the operating system you are using, it may vary a bit. As mentioned before, this SD card needs to be at least 4gb.

  • Linux: If you are on Linux you can use ImageWriter or the command line below. You probably have to run it with the sudo command or as root:
    dd bs=4M if=minera-latest.img of=/dev/your-sd-card
  • Windows: If you are on Windows you can use Win32DiskImager
  • Mac OSX: If you are on a Mac OS X you can use ApplePi-Baker

Writing the image to the SD card may take a while. Once completed, put it into your Raspberry Pi, connect the Power/USB and the HDMI cable to it, attach any mining devices and boot it up.

There is not a lot to see on the monitor, as Minera is mainly controlled via the web interface. But it shows you an important detail: The IP address where Minera is reachable. So go to your computer and type in the following URL

http://<RaspberryPi IP>/minera

The default password is “minera”. There you go; welcome to your mining dashboard.

In the next article we look at how to configure Minera:

  • How to add your mining pool
  • select your favourite mining sftware (cgminer, bfgminer)
  • and explore some other features

Minera Settings

Minera Settings

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.