xbox_one_mining_ethereum

Mining Ethereum Just Got Easy. Runs on modern Windows desktop machines with AMD and NVidia graphics cards. Windows 7, 8.1, 10 (64-bit only) One or more GPU capable of OpenCL or CUDA with 3GB ram or higher An Ethereum wallet address for payouts. Automatic Eth mining pool configuration through NanoPool or Ethermine. Zero configuration required Provide wallet address and get paid automatically Dev fee 1% Now supports ETC (Ethereum Classic) as well. Easy to use. Integrated automatic update system Background mode for low-power mining Ability to run only when machine is idle Digitally signed and validated by Digicert. Download the auto-updating installer for Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. Direct Download. Get started now by following our Guide. Help us make WinEth better by reaching out with problems you encounter. If you have an installation problem or a mining problem just send us the details and we will try to help right away. Be sure to mention your Windows version and the type of graphics card you have. Ethereum mining @ 1GH/s: 40 x GPUs = $5000+ per month. Heading Down the Mine. It has now been 14 days since I started my Ethereum journey, and how far I've come. I started out with a single 4-way GPU system that I turned into two PCs with seven graphics cards between them, and then into four systems with 12 graphics cards, and then it all went a little blurry. I'm now sitting with 12 systems spread out across 40 graphics cards, thanks to the biggest asset of them all: PCIe x1 to PCIe x16 risers. Without these, I would be stuck at closer to 20-25 graphics cards. There's a mix of NVIDIA and AMD in there, with a bunch of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060s because of their great power efficiency - mixed in with GTX 1070s, GTX 1080s, and GTX 1080 Ti cards. Spread throughout their own, and intertwined systems are also the cryptocurrency beasts: Radeon R9 Fury series cards, and the impossible to find Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series cards. There's a heap of RX 470/480/570/580 cards, but the R9 Nano, R9 Fury, and R9 Fury X cards are still Ethereum mining behemoths. They have special places in three different systems, with one dedicated to Fiji-based GPUs, while another two systems are dedicated to Radeon RX series graphics cards. For the systems with 750W/850W PSUs, I've used the power efficient GTX 1060s thanks to their single 6-pin PCIe power connector. The Last Two Weeks. I started on June 6, and by June 7, you can see I was hitting 300MH/s without a problem. At that point, I wrote the " I'm making $900 per month mining Ethereum, I want MORE! " article, which has since blown up. This was when the bug started, and off I went on this adventure. After reaching 300MH/s, I was keen to double it within a few days and slowly venture up to the peak of 1GH/s of Ethereum mining. The price was rising every day, and so was the difficulty - timing was key. I had three more systems to use, so I filled them with the fastest hardware I had - but it was too much for my small three bedroom house and its weak power delivery. I reached just shy of 500MH/s within 24 hours of adding new systems but had to switch out the 1200W/1500W PSUs with smaller, more power efficient PSUs. Another 48 hours later and some PSU shuffling around, without additional hardware purchases, I hit another wall @ 600MH/s with the last system I had in parts assembled. PRICING: You can find the product discussed for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link below to see real-time pricing for the best deal: Recommended for You. Ethereum Mining is Dead: Price Drops, Difficulty Booms. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Benchmarked: CPU & GPU. GTX 980 Ti SLI vs. GTX 1080 Ti SLI on AMD Ryzen 7. Imagination has big plans for its Ray Tracing Wizard. TechSpot. Although they are often shrouded in mystery and technical details, you've probably heard of cryptocurrencies. Whether it's Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Ripple, or most recently Ethereum, the list goes on with different types of digital currency. A few years back, we wrote a guide on mining Litecoin, that was around the time Bitcoin was already too hard to mine using a home computer, and Litecoin was being pushed as the next viable alternative for using traditional desktop graphics cards. If you've ever tried getting into cryptocurrencies, you were probably met with a barrage of technical terms and buzzwords. I heard I can make easy money by mining on my home computer; how does that work? Why are there so many types of coins? How do I get started buying and selling cryptocurrencies? In this article we'll focus on the state of mining, exploring the practical side of it, as we hopefully demystify some of the world of digital currencies. Cryptocurrencies, like standard fiat currencies such as the US Dollar, don’t have any inherent value, meaning they're not backed by a physical commodity. Currencies such as the Euro or US Dollar are backed by the strength of the government that issues it and the relative stability of its value. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are governed by the network of Bitcoin operators (miners) who agree to use the same algorithm. In other words, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is only worth something because people agree that it is worth a certain value and that value is accepted for exchanging goods. Then cryptocurrencies take the form of a digital contract accepted by those who exchange it. In another similarity to fiat currencies, there are numerous different cryptocurrencies, each with their own exchange rate. The three most commonly referenced are Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Things start to differ from standard currency when you consider competition and how each currency is maintained. Bitcoin has been the de facto standard of cryptocurrencies for years. It's the most widespread, has the largest user base, and has the highest market cap. Lately there's been some conflicts between factions in the Bitcoin development community. Some want to add certain features, while others want to create a fork and go in a completely opposite direction with the currency. This is one of the reasons that we've seen so many alternative coins (altcoins for short) pop up recently. Since most of the code is highly transparent or even fully open source, anyone can make their own cryptocurrency and blockchain implementation. The blockchain is a distributed database that contains the transaction records for the full network. This is at the heart of how Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency works. Blockchain technology is so innovative that numerous high profile companies have started developing commercial products based on it. This includes Disney, IBM, the Big Four consulting firms, Microsoft, and more. What is mining and can I make money by doing it? The inner details of how and why cryptocurrencies work can easily turn into a college-level math course. At a simple level, their stability and resistance to fraud is thanks to very large numbers. The process of mining is essentially guessing random numbers until you find one that is the solution to a particular problem. If you correctly guess that number, the network (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) will reward you with a block (a certain number of brand new coins). This is how cryptocoins are created. The act of guessing these numbers helps verify transactions to maintain the security of the network, and add recent transactions to the blockchain. But why is mining so popular now all of a sudden? It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes, but currency value has exploded in the past year which at least explains the amount of attention Bitcoin is receiving again. After trading for about $400 a year ago, a single Bitcoin went for. $750 by year's end, and it is currently exchanging for as much as $2,600. The Ethereum coin has also gained tremendous popularity and is the current coin of choice for miners, having also exploded from less than $50 in mid-2016. Current prices are going for $300+. Cryptocurrency mining has followed a rather interesting timeline as trends and technologies change. Many years ago, it was possible to mine hundreds of Bitcoins by yourself using just your CPU. Eventually people figured out that a graphics card (GPU) was able to mine hundreds of times faster that the CPU due to the number of instructions per clock (repetitive math problems) it could execute. When people got tired of dedicating an entire GPU to mining, they came out with FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based miners. These were general purpose circuit chips that were specially designed for mining Bitcoins. By this time, Bitcoin was gaining traction and value. Since there was a decent amount of money to be made, hardware developers started producing ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) which could mine thousands of times faster than a GPU. This incredible advance in mining speed effectively left out all of the hobbyist miners who couldn't spend a fortune on gear. This led to the rise of altcoins like Litecoin and Ethereum, which were designed to be resistant to ASIC miners. That means you can mine Ethereum right now at your house on your gaming computer. No promises, but you might even make some money in the process. Before you get into mining, it's important to understand some basic realities. First and foremost, there's no guarantee you will make money. The price could plummet leaving you with nothing for all of your hard work (and electricity bill). Secondly, mining is expensive to get into. Depending on what hardware you have, you may not even be able to get the parts you need. With this new wave of mining popularity, graphics cards are in very short supply. A Radeon RX 480 that retailed for $240 at launch is sold out on every major retailer and will set you back $500+ on the secondary markets. Finally, even if you do make some money now, it likely won't be a steady source of income or last that long. In order to protect against inflation, cryptocurrency mining employs a "difficulty" feature. This changes the complexity of the math problem to ensure that coins are always created at a constant rate. The more people that start mining, the higher the difficulty for that coin. Eventually the difficulty will be so high that it is no longer profitable to mine anymore. At this point, your hardware that was dedicated to mining will essentially turn into an expensive paperweight. Previously with Bitcoin and Litecoin, only AMD cards were suitable for mining. Nowadays though, Ethereum can be successfully mined with Nvidia cards as well. A Quick Guide to Ethereum Mining. Now that you've been warned, we can start mining. First you want to make sure you can actually make a profit doing it. Otherwise you're just wasting electricity. There are plenty of great calculator tools, I personally like this one over at MyCryptoBuddy. To use the tool, you need to figure out the hashrate of your graphics card. Search Google for "*graphics card name* ethereum hashrate." For example, an RX 480 will produce 25MH/s and a GTX 1070 can produce around 35MH/s. These numbers are different for each card and can change depending on overclocks and binning. Once you have that, the basic steps are as follows: Get an Ethereum wallet Download some mining software Join a mining pool Configure and run your miner Profit? A wallet is a place to put your freshly mined Ethereum (referred to as Ether). There are two main types of wallets, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The first and most popular is the standard Ethereum wallet available from the project's website. Download the client, wait for your computer to fully sync up with the network (this can take days), then start receiving Ether in your very own wallet. This method is simple and stores your coins on your computer. The downside is if your computer crashes or your hard drive breaks, you will have no way of recovering your coins unless you keep rigorous backups. The second method is a keeping an online wallet through services like Coinbase and MyEtherWallet. This stores your coins in the cloud allowing you to access them from anywhere. Coinbase is extremely popular with Bitcoin and is what I use personally to store my coins. You can set up a wallet for free and you don't have to worry about downloading dozens of gigabytes worth of blockchain data like desktop wallets require. Coinbase allows you to link a bank account which allows for easy conversion between BTC, ETH, USD, and more. The disadvantage to an online wallet is if the service goes down or if your account is compromised, you can lose your coins. There are lots of people trying to scam you, so be careful and stick with trusted organizations here. After you have the wallet of your choice, you'll want to download some mining software. The vast majority of miners work in pools. This allows a bunch of people to combine their hashing power as opposed to each person mining individually. Solo mining is possible but unless you have thousands of GPUs, realistically you will never make a single penny. With pool mining, the problems are split up and distributed to each member. Your profit is proportional to the amount of work you contributed to each round of mining. Pools do charge a small fee (1-2% usually), but they're the best way to maximize your profit. Be careful of scams here again in both the miner and the pool you choose. I went with NanoPool as my mining pool and Claymore as my miner. Other pools include Ethermine and MinerGate. There are also other miners such as Genoils and QtMiner. Once your wallet is set up, you will need to find your Ethereum address. It will be a long string of random characters starting with 0x. For example, mine is 0xac98477308aceAa4cFb2062032fcc60f4068d3ee. Each variety of mining software will be different, but generally they have three main settings: the address to send the coins, the pool address to send and receive instructions, and some variables depending on your hardware setup. The pool you mine on will have an address that you will connect to when mining. For example, Nanopool's address is eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999. You probably won't have to change mining variables, so just keep those as you find them. You'll want to put everything together into a .bat file that starts the actual mining. It should look something like this: setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0. setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100. setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1. setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100. setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100. EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal 0x02FeE7C9F9ADfe4279907fe2c2d8c02290867ea8.Worker2 -epsw x. The top 5 lines are the variables that you don't need to touch. EthDcrMiner64.exe is the actual mining program. -epoll eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999 is the address of the pool I am using. -ewal 0x02FeE7C9F9ADfe4279907fe2c2d8c02290867ea8 is my Ethereum address where I will receive my earnings. Worker2 is the name I have given this miner. You can usually name it anything want or even leave it blank if you only have 1 rig. Finally, -epsw x is the Ethereum pool password. It is usually just "x" and if it isn't, they will say. When you have everything ready to go, you can just let it run. Now for some quick tips. You'll probably want to set your mining script to automatically run when your computer starts up. This can help in the event of a power outage or system crash. Next, pay close attention to your GPU's temperature. Mining is really hard on your components, so be sure to keep everything adequately cooled. If not, you will likely decrease the lifespan of your GPU. Finally, since mining only really uses your GPU, you can feel free to use your computer as you normally would. You won't be able to play games and mine at the same time, but everything else should be fine. And that's about it. With some basic skills, it should only take a few minutes to set up a GPU miner. I would hesitate to go out and spend thousands of dollars on graphics cards, but if you want to make some extra cash, mining is an easy way to do it. Depending on how the price and difficulty fluctuate in the future, GPU mining of Ethereum could stay profitable for another week or another year. There's no way to tell. Unless you have dozens of cards sitting around, this isn't a get rich quick scheme. I see mining as a fun hobby that can also make a bit of money on the side. Essential Apps You Should Install on a New PC Running Windows or macOS. Apple overtakes Samsung in smartphone market. FAST MEMORY. New UFS 3.0 flash storage standard could double smartphone data transfer speeds. Rockstar confirms release date for Red Dead Redemption 2. AUGMENTED REALITY. Intel's Superlite AR glasses are nearing production stage. User Comments: 22. Add your comment. it takes 30 seconds. Already have an account? Login now. ethereum. 5 963 пользователя находятся здесь. МОДЕРАТОРЫ. vbuterin Just some guy nickjohnson Ethereum - Nick Johnson heliumcraft Ethereum / Embark Framework - Iuri Matias insomniasexx 😻 MEW - Taylor 5chdn Afri avsa Ethereum - Alex van de Sande etherpropeller rzurrer publicmodlogs Souptacular Ethereum Foundation - Hudson Jameson . и ещё 2 » Welcome to Reddit, the front page of the internet. and subscribe to one of thousands of communities. отправлено 1 год назад , изменено * автор bobsummerwill Sweetbridge - Bob Summerwill. Want to add to the discussion? 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REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc. π Rendered by PID 52208 on app-433 at 2018-02-02 19:12:59.309690+00:00 running 1cce75d country code: RU. How to mine Ethereum on a Windows PC? Ethereum is quite difficult to get mining on windows - although with a bit of help and following the tutorial below you can get it up and running and start your own ethereum mining project in 15 mins. We're going to show you how to start mining Ethereum on your GPU and CPU with Windows 64 bit in this guide. You will need to download two programs and need to have a decent GPU with more than 1GB of memory to get the most bang for your buck in terms of mining as Ethereum works on a memory hard hashing technique which GPU's are best at. Running a CPU you might be able to generate 0.15 Mega Hashes whilst with a decent GPU with enough memory you could be doing upwards 25 Mega Hashes ( you can choose a GPU to mine ether here and use our guide on how to choose a GPU to mine ether ). So in terms of total efficiency, taking into account electrical costs, a GPU is definitely worth it even if it costs you $200. You can also try buying a cloud mining contract with Hashflare or Genesis Mining . Part 1 - Installing GETH, Syncing the Blockchain & creating your own address! Step 1 : The first thing you need to do is go to this link download Geth . Geth is the program that communicates with the Ethereum Network and acts as the a relay between your computer, its hardware and the rest of the ethereum network computers so if a block is mined by another computer your Geth program will pick it up and then pass on the new information onto your GPU or CPU for mining. Step 2 : You need to unzip the GETH file and move it to a location on your hard drive. In this case we'll move it to the hard drive, usually ( C: ) - which will make the next step easier. All you need to do is copy the file you have downloaded and unzipped and move it to the hard drive folder. Step 3 :Now you need to run the program you just downloaded. To do this you need to run Command Prompt . You can do this by searching in the search function in Windows for " CMD " and then clicking on it when it shows up. Step 4 : Command Prompt is now open - and can look terrifying to people who aren't familiar with it. The Command Prompt box usually has C:\Users\Username> showing in it - where Username is your username - so if you log into your computer with the username cryptocompare then the command prompt box will open with C:\Users\cryptocompare> . You need to tell the computer to look in another place Type cd / into the newly opened command prompt. You should now see " C:\> ", You have just used the cd command or " change directory " command to make command prompt look at the C:/ drive . Step 5 : You need to tell your Geth program to create a new account. As you have installed it in your user directory in Step 2 then it is just a simple case of typing in " geth account new " and then pressing return/enter. This should look like this " C:\>geth account new ". Step 6 : After hitting the enter button in Step 5, you will be asked to enter a password - N.B. you will not be able to see what you are typing in so type it carefully. This is the password that locks your account and keeps your Private key safe - if you lose this password you will lose all your Ether attached to the wallet held by that Private key . Once you have entered your password and confirmed it by entering it a second time you will have created a new account! Congratulations your about a third of the way there. Step 7 : You need to tell your Geth Program to start communicating with the rest of the Ethereum network . You do this by typing in " geth --rpc " - this should look like " C:\>geth --rpc " (on the latest version you should try: geth --rpc --fast --cache=1024 ) Press enter and the screen should start downloading the blockchain for Ethereum - at this point you are synchronising with the rest of the Ethereum network. This can take a while depending on your internet speed and the current size of the blockchain, anywhere between 20 min and multiple hours. Sometimes your firewall can block this process - just click allow access . Keep this cmd open, you will need this to run in the background in order to be able to mine. Also make sure you start mining only after your blockchain is synchronised , not before. Due to The DAO hard fork you will have to specify if you want to mine on the hard fork chain or on the chain without the hard fork. To mine Ethereum (ETH) use geth --rpc --support-dao-fork in order to mine Ethereum Classic (ETC) use: geth --rpc --oppose-dao-fork. Part 2 - Installing the Mining Software and Starting to Mine. Step 8 : Now you need to download Ethminer which makes your GPU or CPU run the hashing algorithm that is integral to securing the Ethereum network through proof of work. You can download this here and be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page to get the right version - the latest and most up to date one is right at the end. Step 9 : Click on the download and click install. Your firewall can cause issues but just click allow if it does so - the same is true of windows that doesn't recognise or approve the software - tell windows its ok when asked. Click through the installation process until Ethminer is installed. Step 10 : You need to open up another command prompt as in step 4 - so your going to get two scary looking boxes. Simply click right click on your already open command prompt in the taskbar at the bottom of the page and click on command prompt in the menu that appears. A new command prompt should open with " C:\users\username> ". This is the wrong place to look for etherminer so you need to tell it the right place to find it. Step 11 : Type " cd / " into the newly opened command prompt which should look like this " C:\users\username>cd / " and then press enter. You should now see "C:\>", You have just used the "cd" command or "change directory" command to make command prompt look at the C:/ drive - not your user file. Step 12 : Type in " cd prog " and then press the tab button. This should look like this C:\>cd prog and then press "tab" which will automatically complete the phrase for the closest fit found in the C: drive just like autotext does on your Iphone. After pressing "tab", you should see C:/> cd "Program Files" and press enter which should give you a new line saying "C:\Program Files>". Step 13 : Type in cd cpp and then press tab and then enter . This is taking you into the newly installed Ethereum Mining software folder. And this should look like this after pressing tab C:\Program Files>cd cpp-ethereum and pressing enter gives you C:\Program Files\cpp-ethereum> . Step 14 GPU mining ( only do this after your blockchain is synchronised ): Type in ethminer -G and press enter and then you should start mining with your GPU after building a DAG file which can take around ten minutes. There can be problems at this point. For example the program might say that you have insufficient memory on your Graphics card to mine the with Ethereum's Ethash algorithm . If this is the case you can still mine with your CPU or go out and buy a new graphics card! You can see our graphics cards and compare their return on investments here and check out our guide on how to pick an ethereum mining graphics card here . We've also added a guide on how to build your ethereum mining rig . If you get an error message press Ctrl and c together to cancel the process. Then you can either retry it - or alternatively move onto step 16 and mine with your CPU rather than your GPU . Step 15 CPU mining: Type in ethminer and press "enter" and you will start mining with your CPU . Again you will need to create a DAG file the first time you do this which can take some time. But after that is complete your Geth program downloaded in step 1 should start talking to your ethminer program and you should start mining! Step 16 Hashing Power benchmark: If you want to get an estimation of your hashing power you can run ethminer -M (for CPU mining) or ethminer -G -M ( for GPU mining). The command will run and you should get a result similar to the image bellow. Step 15 and 16 possible error : If you are not patient is " JSON-RPC problem. Probably couldn't connect. Retrying in 1. " As you can see in the screenshot bellow this happens when you don't have the blockchain synced yet. If you are having issues getting your GPU to mine type ethminer --opencl-platform 1 to fix it for Nvidia. This usually happens when you have an integrated GPU as well as a dedicated one. If you are having issues finding peers, try to use: geth --nat=none. If you are using ATI cards, in order to optimize your mining open a cmd prompt and run: setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0. setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100. setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1. Also when you run ethminer, try using the extra params: --cl-global-work 16834 --cl-local-work 256. Good luck and if there are any problems type a comment in at the bottom of this article and the community will help you get started! And that said if anyone has any ideas to make this guide simpler please let us know and we'll update it as soon as possible! And if this is too difficult you can always follow our other guide on how to cloud mine Ethereum but this might not be as profitable as it initially looks - the no hassle easy method to mine ethereum ! This guide shows you the basics of solo mining, it should give you a good idea of how everything is connected, if you would like to use a mining pool instead you can try our How to connect to an Ethereum mining pool guide . If you want to transfer funds from you wallet to an exchange or to another account, check out our guide on how to do an Ethereum transaction . Want to Mine Ethereum? Choose Your Graphics Card Wisely. Cryptocurrency is a hot topic right now, allowing anyone to use their computer to "mine" for digital assets, which can then be used just like cash to buy things. It sounds simple, and setting up to start mining is, but doing so efficiently enough to make it worthwhile is becoming ever more difficult. In order to generate currency, your computer's resources are used to process transactions. Doing so is very energy intensive and therefore the mining needs to be as efficient as possible to be worthwhile. Choosing the right hardware can make all the difference; in particular, your choice of graphics card is key. Get your setup wrong and mining could cost you more than the currency you are managing to generate. Over at HotHardware, they decided to focus in on mining Ethereum and figure out the best graphics card to use. Remember, this is all about how much a card costs and its energy draw offset against mining performance rated in millions of hashes per second (MH/s). In terms of performance, AMD's Radeon RX Vega 64 and Vega 56 came out on top, managing 36.48MH/s and 35.22MH/s respectively, but both cards draw around 400 watts under full load. The top Nvidia card HotHardware tested is the MSI GTX 1080Ti Gaming X 11G, which managed 34.15MH/s and draws 333 watts while mining. The sweet spot right now looks to be the GeForce GTX 1070 Founder Edition . It achieves 31.079MH/s when optimized and draws 225 watts. Running a PC 24/7 for mining using this card works out to a profit of around $1,676 per year taking power costs into account. However, that doesn't include the initial hardware costs and of course the volatility of the market that sees the value of Ethereum regularly change. If you're interested in mining, the best advice is to do your homework first before spending any cash on hardware or mining any coin. It can be profitable if you make the right choices. About the Author. Matthew is PCMag's UK-based editor and news reporter. Prior to joining the team, he spent 14 years writing and editing content on our sister site Geek.com and has covered most areas of technology, but is especially passionate about games tech. Alongside PCMag, he's a freelance video game designer. Matthew holds a BSc degree in Computer Science from. See Full Bio. More From Matthew. Sony Patents Tip Redesigned PlayStation VR Controller. Report: New Wireless Charging iPhone SE Expected by June. 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Although they are often shrouded in mystery and technical details, you've probably heard of cryptocurrencies. Whether it's Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Ripple, or most recently Ethereum, the list goes on with different types of digital currency. A few years back, we wrote a guide on mining Litecoin, that was around the time Bitcoin was already too hard to mine using a home computer, and Litecoin was being pushed as the next viable alternative for using traditional desktop graphics cards. If you've ever tried getting into cryptocurrencies, you were probably met with a barrage of technical terms and buzzwords. I heard I can make easy money by mining on my home computer; how does that work? Why are there so many types of coins? How do I get started buying and selling cryptocurrencies? In this article we'll focus on the state of mining, exploring the practical side of it, as we hopefully demystify some of the world of digital currencies. Cryptocurrencies, like standard fiat currencies such as the US Dollar, don’t have any inherent value, meaning they're not backed by a physical commodity. Currencies such as the Euro or US Dollar are backed by the strength of the government that issues it and the relative stability of its value. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are governed by the network of Bitcoin operators (miners) who agree to use the same algorithm. In other words, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is only worth something because people agree that it is worth a certain value and that value is accepted for exchanging goods. Then cryptocurrencies take the form of a digital contract accepted by those who exchange it. In another similarity to fiat currencies, there are numerous different cryptocurrencies, each with their own exchange rate. The three most commonly referenced are Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Things start to differ from standard currency when you consider competition and how each currency is maintained. Bitcoin has been the de facto standard of cryptocurrencies for years. It's the most widespread, has the largest user base, and has the highest market cap. Lately there's been some conflicts between factions in the Bitcoin development community. Some want to add certain features, while others want to create a fork and go in a completely opposite direction with the currency. This is one of the reasons that we've seen so many alternative coins (altcoins for short) pop up recently. Since most of the code is highly transparent or even fully open source, anyone can make their own cryptocurrency and blockchain implementation. The blockchain is a distributed database that contains the transaction records for the full network. This is at the heart of how Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency works. Blockchain technology is so innovative that numerous high profile companies have started developing commercial products based on it. This includes Disney, IBM, the Big Four consulting firms, Microsoft, and more. What is mining and can I make money by doing it? The inner details of how and why cryptocurrencies work can easily turn into a college-level math course. At a simple level, their stability and resistance to fraud is thanks to very large numbers. The process of mining is essentially guessing random numbers until you find one that is the solution to a particular problem. If you correctly guess that number, the network (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) will reward you with a block (a certain number of brand new coins). This is how cryptocoins are created. The act of guessing these numbers helps verify transactions to maintain the security of the network, and add recent transactions to the blockchain. But why is mining so popular now all of a sudden? It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes, but currency value has exploded in the past year which at least explains the amount of attention Bitcoin is receiving again. After trading for about $400 a year ago, a single Bitcoin went for. $750 by year's end, and it is currently exchanging for as much as $2,600. The Ethereum coin has also gained tremendous popularity and is the current coin of choice for miners, having also exploded from less than $50 in mid-2016. Current prices are going for $300+. Cryptocurrency mining has followed a rather interesting timeline as trends and technologies change. Many years ago, it was possible to mine hundreds of Bitcoins by yourself using just your CPU. Eventually people figured out that a graphics card (GPU) was able to mine hundreds of times faster that the CPU due to the number of instructions per clock (repetitive math problems) it could execute. When people got tired of dedicating an entire GPU to mining, they came out with FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based miners. These were general purpose circuit chips that were specially designed for mining Bitcoins. By this time, Bitcoin was gaining traction and value. Since there was a decent amount of money to be made, hardware developers started producing ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) which could mine thousands of times faster than a GPU. This incredible advance in mining speed effectively left out all of the hobbyist miners who couldn't spend a fortune on gear. This led to the rise of altcoins like Litecoin and Ethereum, which were designed to be resistant to ASIC miners. That means you can mine Ethereum right now at your house on your gaming computer. No promises, but you might even make some money in the process. Before you get into mining, it's important to understand some basic realities. First and foremost, there's no guarantee you will make money. The price could plummet leaving you with nothing for all of your hard work (and electricity bill). Secondly, mining is expensive to get into. Depending on what hardware you have, you may not even be able to get the parts you need. With this new wave of mining popularity, graphics cards are in very short supply. A Radeon RX 480 that retailed for $240 at launch is sold out on every major retailer and will set you back $500+ on the secondary markets. Finally, even if you do make some money now, it likely won't be a steady source of income or last that long. In order to protect against inflation, cryptocurrency mining employs a "difficulty" feature. This changes the complexity of the math problem to ensure that coins are always created at a constant rate. The more people that start mining, the higher the difficulty for that coin. Eventually the difficulty will be so high that it is no longer profitable to mine anymore. At this point, your hardware that was dedicated to mining will essentially turn into an expensive paperweight. Previously with Bitcoin and Litecoin, only AMD cards were suitable for mining. Nowadays though, Ethereum can be successfully mined with Nvidia cards as well. A Quick Guide to Ethereum Mining. Now that you've been warned, we can start mining. First you want to make sure you can actually make a profit doing it. Otherwise you're just wasting electricity. There are plenty of great calculator tools, I personally like this one over at MyCryptoBuddy. To use the tool, you need to figure out the hashrate of your graphics card. Search Google for "*graphics card name* ethereum hashrate." For example, an RX 480 will produce 25MH/s and a GTX 1070 can produce around 35MH/s. These numbers are different for each card and can change depending on overclocks and binning. Once you have that, the basic steps are as follows: Get an Ethereum wallet Download some mining software Join a mining pool Configure and run your miner Profit? A wallet is a place to put your freshly mined Ethereum (referred to as Ether). There are two main types of wallets, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The first and most popular is the standard Ethereum wallet available from the project's website. Download the client, wait for your computer to fully sync up with the network (this can take days), then start receiving Ether in your very own wallet. This method is simple and stores your coins on your computer. The downside is if your computer crashes or your hard drive breaks, you will have no way of recovering your coins unless you keep rigorous backups. The second method is a keeping an online wallet through services like Coinbase and MyEtherWallet. This stores your coins in the cloud allowing you to access them from anywhere. Coinbase is extremely popular with Bitcoin and is what I use personally to store my coins. You can set up a wallet for free and you don't have to worry about downloading dozens of gigabytes worth of blockchain data like desktop wallets require. Coinbase allows you to link a bank account which allows for easy conversion between BTC, ETH, USD, and more. The disadvantage to an online wallet is if the service goes down or if your account is compromised, you can lose your coins. There are lots of people trying to scam you, so be careful and stick with trusted organizations here. After you have the wallet of your choice, you'll want to download some mining software. The vast majority of miners work in pools. This allows a bunch of people to combine their hashing power as opposed to each person mining individually. Solo mining is possible but unless you have thousands of GPUs, realistically you will never make a single penny. With pool mining, the problems are split up and distributed to each member. Your profit is proportional to the amount of work you contributed to each round of mining. Pools do charge a small fee (1-2% usually), but they're the best way to maximize your profit. Be careful of scams here again in both the miner and the pool you choose. I went with NanoPool as my mining pool and Claymore as my miner. Other pools include Ethermine and MinerGate. There are also other miners such as Genoils and QtMiner. Once your wallet is set up, you will need to find your Ethereum address. It will be a long string of random characters starting with 0x. For example, mine is 0xac98477308aceAa4cFb2062032fcc60f4068d3ee. Each variety of mining software will be different, but generally they have three main settings: the address to send the coins, the pool address to send and receive instructions, and some variables depending on your hardware setup. The pool you mine on will have an address that you will connect to when mining. For example, Nanopool's address is eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999. You probably won't have to change mining variables, so just keep those as you find them. You'll want to put everything together into a .bat file that starts the actual mining. It should look something like this: setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0. setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100. setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1. setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100. setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100. EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal 0x02FeE7C9F9ADfe4279907fe2c2d8c02290867ea8.Worker2 -epsw x. The top 5 lines are the variables that you don't need to touch. EthDcrMiner64.exe is the actual mining program. -epoll eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999 is the address of the pool I am using. -ewal 0x02FeE7C9F9ADfe4279907fe2c2d8c02290867ea8 is my Ethereum address where I will receive my earnings. Worker2 is the name I have given this miner. You can usually name it anything want or even leave it blank if you only have 1 rig. Finally, -epsw x is the Ethereum pool password. It is usually just "x" and if it isn't, they will say. When you have everything ready to go, you can just let it run. Now for some quick tips. You'll probably want to set your mining script to automatically run when your computer starts up. This can help in the event of a power outage or system crash. Next, pay close attention to your GPU's temperature. Mining is really hard on your components, so be sure to keep everything adequately cooled. If not, you will likely decrease the lifespan of your GPU. Finally, since mining only really uses your GPU, you can feel free to use your computer as you normally would. You won't be able to play games and mine at the same time, but everything else should be fine. And that's about it. With some basic skills, it should only take a few minutes to set up a GPU miner. I would hesitate to go out and spend thousands of dollars on graphics cards, but if you want to make some extra cash, mining is an easy way to do it. Depending on how the price and difficulty fluctuate in the future, GPU mining of Ethereum could stay profitable for another week or another year. There's no way to tell. Unless you have dozens of cards sitting around, this isn't a get rich quick scheme. I see mining as a fun hobby that can also make a bit of money on the side. Essential Apps You Should Install on a New PC Running Windows or macOS. Apple overtakes Samsung in smartphone market. FAST MEMORY. New UFS 3.0 flash storage standard could double smartphone data transfer speeds. Rockstar confirms release date for Red Dead Redemption 2. AUGMENTED REALITY. Intel's Superlite AR glasses are nearing production stage. User Comments: 22. Add your comment. it takes 30 seconds. Already have an account? Login now. Ethereum Mining Hardware. Do you want to mine Ethereum? Using an efficient Ethereum mining hardware will significantly reduce your electricity bills and cut down your costs. This article will help you learn more about the best Ethereum mining hardware. If you just want Ether then just buy Ethereum. Mining has a lot of setup costs and some technical knowledge is required. What is a GPU Ethereum Miner? In order to mine Ethereum, you will need specialized hardware known as graphics processing unit (GPU). Ethereum’s developers originally intended for it to be mined on computer CPUs but miners later discovered that GPUs gave them more hashing power. So, in the most simplest of terms: a GPU is a specialized Ethereum mining computer. How can you find the best GPU and rig? Some GPUs have a higher hash rate than others, while some use more electric power as well. In choosing the most efficient GPU the most important thing is striking a balance between how powerful you want your rig to be and how much you are willing to spend on the GPU itself and the electricity. Many of these costs will vary by country. Is it cheap to buy GPUs in your country? Since most GPUs are sold on Amazon and eBay, if you live in a country where those retailers ship to then you will likely have an easier time getting the GPUs. Also, what is the cost of electricity in your country? Electricity costs are the deciding factor for most miners. As we have seen with Bitcoin mining, miners in China, Iceland, and other places with cheap electricity have a huge advantage! Most efficient GPUs on sale. Now that you understand the factors that make GPU rigs good, here is a list and brief description of the most efficient GPUs on sale. Note that the power costs per day numbers used below were based on the global average cost of electricity and the price of Ether on September 16, 2016. Radeon R9 295X2. The Radeon R9 295X2 has by far the highest hash rate (46.0 MH/s) of the Ethereum GPUs on the market and will cost you $600. It has a power cost per day of about $1.44, a return per day of about $1.61 and a cost per MH/s of $13.04. This gives a return per year of $586.43. Radeon R9 HD 7990. A Radeon R9 HD 7990 will cost you $680. Its power cost per day is lower than the R9 295X2 at $1.08 but its hash rate is significantly lower at 36 MH/s. Its return per day is $1.29 while its cost per MH/s is $18.89, giving it a return per year of $469.40. Radeon RX 480. The Radeon RX 480 is most arguably the most economical in terms of cost and saving electricity. Its power cost per day is significantly lower than the two that I have mentioned at $0.4320. Its hash rate is 25.0 MH/s, meaning its cost per MH/s is $7.96. This gives a return per day of $1.21 and therefore a return per year of $440.91. Radeon RX 480 will cost you $199. Radeon RX 470. A Radeon RX 470 has a modest hash rate of 24.0MH/s. Its power cost per day is exactly the same as the Radeon RX 480 at $0.4320. Its cost per MH/s is $9.13, giving it a return per day of $1.15 and a return per year of $418.16. Radeon RX 470 will cost you $219. Now that you know the best Ethereum mining hardware, get a secure wallet for your Ether. If you don’t want to mine you can always just buy some Ether online. Just Want Ether? If you just want ether, mining is NOT the best way to obtain coins. Buying ether is the EASIEST and FASTEST way to get ether. Get $10 worth of free ether when you buy $100 or more at Coinbase. Ethereum mining @ 1GH/s: 40 x GPUs = $5000+ per month. Heading Down the Mine. It has now been 14 days since I started my Ethereum journey, and how far I've come. I started out with a single 4-way GPU system that I turned into two PCs with seven graphics cards between them, and then into four systems with 12 graphics cards, and then it all went a little blurry. I'm now sitting with 12 systems spread out across 40 graphics cards, thanks to the biggest asset of them all: PCIe x1 to PCIe x16 risers. Without these, I would be stuck at closer to 20-25 graphics cards. There's a mix of NVIDIA and AMD in there, with a bunch of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060s because of their great power efficiency - mixed in with GTX 1070s, GTX 1080s, and GTX 1080 Ti cards. Spread throughout their own, and intertwined systems are also the cryptocurrency beasts: Radeon R9 Fury series cards, and the impossible to find Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series cards. There's a heap of RX 470/480/570/580 cards, but the R9 Nano, R9 Fury, and R9 Fury X cards are still Ethereum mining behemoths. They have special places in three different systems, with one dedicated to Fiji-based GPUs, while another two systems are dedicated to Radeon RX series graphics cards. For the systems with 750W/850W PSUs, I've used the power efficient GTX 1060s thanks to their single 6-pin PCIe power connector. The Last Two Weeks. I started on June 6, and by June 7, you can see I was hitting 300MH/s without a problem. At that point, I wrote the " I'm making $900 per month mining Ethereum, I want MORE! " article, which has since blown up. This was when the bug started, and off I went on this adventure. After reaching 300MH/s, I was keen to double it within a few days and slowly venture up to the peak of 1GH/s of Ethereum mining. The price was rising every day, and so was the difficulty - timing was key. I had three more systems to use, so I filled them with the fastest hardware I had - but it was too much for my small three bedroom house and its weak power delivery. I reached just shy of 500MH/s within 24 hours of adding new systems but had to switch out the 1200W/1500W PSUs with smaller, more power efficient PSUs. Another 48 hours later and some PSU shuffling around, without additional hardware purchases, I hit another wall @ 600MH/s with the last system I had in parts assembled. PRICING: You can find the product discussed for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link below to see real-time pricing for the best deal: Recommended for You. Ethereum Mining is Dead: Price Drops, Difficulty Booms. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Benchmarked: CPU & GPU. GTX 980 Ti SLI vs. GTX 1080 Ti SLI on AMD Ryzen 7. Imagination has big plans for its Ray Tracing Wizard. The Xbox and Ethereum’s Dual Mandate. Introduction. Joseph Lubin. the project. The Xbox and Ethereum’s Dual Mandate. The Necessity to Build and Launch an Ecosystem on Genesis Day. Imagine if Microsoft released the Xbox and there were no games. On the day on which the Ethereum genesis block is created, many of the elements of the ecosystem — core infrastructure, mining network, user app browser and applications — will be in place. Granted there will be an enormous amount of development to do beyond the genesis to craft Ethereum into a sophisticated, decentralized consensus (decentcon) application platform. But on day one, there will be “launch titles.” Originally, when the idea behind Ethereum was conceived in November, the intent was for it to be a simple “altcoin” (in fact, a meta-protocol on top of Primecoin) with a scripting language built in. Over time, however, as we realized the project’s potential our scope necessarily grew, and our current intent is to release a flagship product called the “EtherBrowser:” a browser that can browse both the old-school Internet and the decentralized web (Web3.0). From the moment of inception of the Ethereum network, the following elements in the EtherBrowser and the ecosystem will be operational: a fully functional implementation of the Ethereum blockchain which enhances the Bitcoin technology with one-minute block times and stronger security (GHOST protocol), which decentralized applications (“ÐApps”) can use for anything that requires consensus (eg. currency and token systems, name registries, proof of existence, etc., …) a fully functional peer-to-peer protocol, which ÐApps can use to send messages between users. For example, a decentralized messaging ÐApp will use this protocol for actual message sending, but the blockchain for registering user accounts. an elegant, browser-and-app-store user interface for using ÐApps network nodes (miners) that process transactions and computations, secure the network through a consensus process and are compensated by fees and the issuance of new ether a standard set of “built-in” utility-level ÐApps: distributed wallet, distributed ID system, distributed reputation system, distributed messaging system, distributed name registry service, distributed catalog of distributed applications, etc., will serve as just a few of the low-level utilities on the system a standard set of built-in tools for both developer and end-user: blockchain explorer, contract explorer, transaction constructor, encrypted messaging tool, signature tool, authentication tool, …. And a debugger will be available for the hard core. And soon after the genesis we hope to see a rich set of third-party distributed applications, e.g. distributed storage services, distributed notary services, distributed exchange services, distributed escrow and arbitration services, financial contracts, insurance contracts, lending services, purposed reputation systems, games, entertainment services, etc., … Each of the ÐApps in the different business verticals will be able to make use of the lower level, system utility ÐApps like the ID and reputation systems. Without operational distributed applications, Ethereum is a hollow shell. In order to have a broad offering of distributed applications from day one, non-profit, public-good elements must be built in conjunction with commercially driven applications in competitive markets. From this requirement, Ethereum takes its dual mandate. It can be argued that certain elements within an ecosystem should be developed for the common good, and do not benefit from a profit motive. Certain other elements, are better developed in a competitive, for-profit context. For instance, it makes some sense to develop a coherent, large-scale, systematized road system for the public good, using public tax dollars. But it probably does not make sense to build cars with public tax dollars, since development under the pressures of free market competition forces the design and production of better products and benefits the market as a whole. Dual Mandate: Collaborative Non-Profit and For-Profit Development. Two hub organizations will lead the Ethereum Project under dual mandate: a for-profit entity based in Zug, Switzerland, and a non-profit organization, based in Toronto, Canada. Both of these organizations will be constructed in a fashion that will enable each to remain strong and financially independent to ensure years of development and growth of the ecosystem. The Ethereum ecosystem will initially be constructed by the non-profit and for-profit entities in partnership, ideally with broad participation from many other independent entities. The founding leadership will put into place mechanism that ensures that the foundational elements of the ecosystem are built and maintained in a fashion that adheres to the founding principles. Funding and independence will be guaranteed to the organizations (either state-registered businesses or eventually blockchain-registered businesses) that guide the various avenues of development of the core infrastructure. At the same time, human economies are largely about free market commerce (or should be), so the non-profit organization, to some extent — and especially the for-profit entity — will assist independent business efforts in the space to launch and flourish. This assistance can take a variety of forms from providing resources and guidance, to maintaining support channels, to the creation of joint ventures. The Hybrid Organization Model. “MOZILLA IS ONE SUCH [HYBRID NON-PROFIT/FOR-PROFIT] ORGANIZATION AND, AS I LOOK AROUND, I SEE OTHERS. THERE IS ALOT [SIC] OF UPSIDE TO HOW THESE ORGS WORK, ESPECIALLY THE POTENTIAL TO MOVE MARKETS TOWARDS THE PUBLIC GOOD AT A GLOBAL SCALE. “…THE MORE I DIG, THE MORE I AM CONVINCED THAT ORGANIZATIONS LIKE MOZILLA, WIKIPEDIA, KIVA, MIRO AND SO ON THAT MASHUP MISSION, MARKET AND THE CULTURE OF THE WEB REPRESENT A NEW PATTERN WORTH UNDERSTANDING. “MISSION + MARKET + WEB HYBRIDS MATTER BECAUSE THEY CAN WIELD THE POWER NEEDED TO MOVE MARKETS AT A GLOBAL SCALE, WHILE STILL LOOKING OUT FOR THE SMALL GUY, TAKING THE LONG VIEW AND STAYING TRUE TO THEIR PUBLIC BENEFIT MISSION. THEY SHOW US HOW ORGANIZATIONS COULD — AND MAYBE SHOULD — WORK IN THE FUTURE.” MARK SURMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MOZILLA FOUNDATION. Trolltech/Digia (Qt), WordPress, Red Hat, Google Android and the Open Handset Alliance, The Mozilla Organization and several others have pioneered the dual mandate approach and built thriving ecosystems and successful companies. The model that Sun developed in the late 90s is also instructive. Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) developed the Java computer language and libraries in house. As innovative as it was, it is likely that it would not have acquired such large market share, had Sun not realized that they, as a for-profit company, could not control a foundational aspect of software development that it, and many of its competitors, were expected to use. To address this conflict of interest, Sun open sourced Java and developed the Java Community Process to shepherd growth of the platform in a nonpartisan fashion. Ethereum is an open source project and will remain open source. And the Ethereum Project, under the auspices of its non-profit foundation will create a community development process philosophically similar to the Java Community Process. In fact, Ethereum, thus far has been developed under a less formalized community development process. The Ethereum non-profit entity will specify and guide the development of the core Ethereum infrastructure. It will employ a non-partisan community development process and will develop, conduct and support research initiatives in the general cryptocurrency space. The non-profit will have a membership composed originally of the Ethereum founders, and soon will add other independent leaders in the emerging space. The Ethereum for-profit entity will be charged with the task of developing certain elements of the core infrastructure in collaboration with the non-profit entity and building out the Ecosystem with distributed application services and businesses that it develops itself, funds, or otherwise supports. We believe this to be the most effective structure in the near term. That said, we are DAOists (where DAO means Distributed Autonomous Organization). We will look to move as much infrastructure and governance as soon as possible onto the blockchain. Our OpenSalary system will probably be the first component to move to the blockchain. Please stay tuned for more on the topics of OpenOrganization and DAOification of the two organizations. Our goal, if we do our jobs properly, is to put ourselves out of (state-registered) business.