Use Your Old or Slow Bitcoin ASIC Miners as Lottery Devices

If you were early on the whole Bitcoin mining thing and were one of the first adopters of the Bitcoin ASIC miners when they started appearing you may still have some devices lying around that are generally not worth using anymore for mining. Well, maybe you just thought that they are not good for anything anymore, but there could still be some use for them, or at least if you want to test your luck “playing the lottery” for Bitcoin. The concept of Bitcoin lottery device was used along the announcement of the TechnoBit DICE Bitcoin ASIC miner, probably something that the marketing at Spondoolies Tech came up with as they are the actual manufacturer of the ASIC chips used inside the device. But aside from the DICE the concept to solo mine testing your luck to hit a BTC block yourself with a Bitcoin ASIC miner that is unprofitable if you mine at a pool sharing the profit with other miners might actually not be a bad one. It is risky and the chances are not that high thus the lottery reference – you may need a few months or an year and still get no block solved, but if you are lucky and manage to hit one, then you will get 25 BTC as a reward. Depending on the ASIC miner you are going to be using your chances might be better than actually playing the lottery, so you might want to give this idea a go.

The drawback that the use of an older and low hashrate Bitcoin ASIC miner as a “lottery device” is that you need to have a system that is always on and running a Bitcoin node, so that you can point your miner at it. Also setting up solo mining operation at home might not be the easiest thing for everyone, though if you already have and used Bitcoin ASIC miners you most likely should be able to do it. There is an alternative however, you can use a solo mining pool such as TBDice that was apparently prepared for DICE miners, but you can join in with any their miner as well. The idea of this pool is that you get to mine with the added convenience of a mining pool, but if you solve a Bitcoin block you will still get the full reward minus a small fee. Then again you may also decide to run the mining pool software yourself on your own website or a PC, you can get the CKPOOL source and use it – it is freely available. Do note that CKPOOL is designed to be used as a Bitcoin mining pool, but the concept of using your mining hardware as a lottery device applies to pretty much all other crypto coins as well, so you can test it with Litecoin for example or any other altcoin.

– To check out the CKPOOL code if you are interested in running your own Bitcoin mining pool…

Foundation Election Runoffs Concluding

The Bitcoin Foundation runoff elections had a surprise for its members when it started earlier this week. Without warning it had changed the format for the election to the Swam platform. Users had to re-register, download a paper wallet, copy a password from that, and then wait for an email, or not, and then they […]

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Bitcoin Trading Slow This Weekend

Bitcoin trading has corrected yesterday’s advance and is now building the base of the next wave of advance. 1590 CNY and $256 (Bitfinex) remain tough resistance levels and 24 hours later trading has developed a knee-jerk sell reaction to this chart level. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the […]

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TechnoBit DICE Bitcoin ASIC Cooling Performance

We are still playing with our hardware latest toy, the small TechnoBit DICE Bitcoin ASIC miner and today we were checking the cooling performance of the device. When we first saw the announcement the DICE was supposed to be a very silent miner as per the official specifications that stated (and still state) “Noise: ~20 DB at 25 °C ambient temperature”, however the moment we have turned on the unit a few days ago we knew this promise was not kept. If the noise level was just about 20 decibels than the DICE should’ve been so quiet that you would hardly know it is present and working in a quiet room. The reality is quite different though, our sound level meter has detected a noise level of almost 50 dBA and this is really quite noisy and a far cry from the promised noise. So we just had to take apart the device to see what fan it is using and also test to see if the case of the miner could be the culprit that is responsible for the very noisy operation of the DICE Bitcoin ASIC…

When we have opened the case of the ASIC miner we’ve discovered that the cooling fan used inside is a 92mm Evercool EC9225M12CA, a mid range fan that does 2200 rpm with about 1.8W of power usage. Apparently the fan itself was sufficient to cool the miner with its 39.35 CFM of air flow and interestingly enough the specifications of the fan do say less than 25 dBA in terms of noise generated. The fan itself was directly soldered to the pins of the 6-pin PCI-E power connector on the unit, there is no thermal control or variable rpm, it is working at maximum all of the time. Running the miner without its metal casing has show us that it can be quite silent indeed, so the cause of the noise apparently was the metal case of the miner. More specifically the holes at the fan air intake that apparently are responsible for the significant increase of the noise level, so when TechnoBit has promised us a silent Bitcoin ASIC miner they should have modified the case of the device, so that it can really be silent and not the opposite – make a case that will increase the noise level way over what was promised in terms of specifications.

The cooling of the single RockerBox ASIC chip that is at the heart of the DICE miner is sufficiently provided by two large aluminum heatsinks, one on top interfacing with a solid copper block to the ASIC chip and one at the bottom with direct contact to the whole surface of the PCB. There is enough thermal paste in between the heatsinks to provide good heat transfer and the not so powerful cooling fan has no trouble keeping the temperatures low, so that the about 100W of power used at the stock settings are not a problem. The device can also handle a nice boost in performance with some overclocking that is possible via parameters for the ASIC chip voltage and operating frequency, though you should be careful should you decide to clock the unit higher.

In the end we take a look at the operating temperatures of the DICE with the help of a thermal imaging camera, the thermal image you see above shows how hot the top and bottom heatsinks get while the device is working normally. We are getting close to 60 degrees at the top heatsink and a bit over 40 at the bottom at the hottest sports, do note however that the operating temperature of the Bitcoin ASIC chip under the heatsink should be higher with something like 10-20 degrees Celsius over the temperature we have measured on the heatsink. So if you decide to overclock the miner you should proceed with caution and monitor the operating temperatures as the power usage increases along with the hashrate when you increase the operating voltage and frequency of the Bitcoin ASIC chip.

New ccMiner fork with WhirlpoolX Algorithm Support

There is now a Windows binary of a ccMiner fork available for mining Vanillacoin (VNL) that uses WhirlpoolX algorithm on Nvidia GPUs thanks to djm34. There is no source code released for the miner, only Windows binary that supports Compute 3.5 or newer Nvidia video cards. Do note that this version includes a 5% developer fee, so it will mine for the developer of the code to support his work! We are getting about 180 MHS on a stock GTX 980 GPU, though the author reports that is shold reach up to about 200 MHS, probably with some overclock it will. You should expect about 60 MHS on a GTX 750 Ti GPU according to the author of the miner code. Recently there was a boom of interest in VNL even though it has not yet been added on an exchange, though C-Cex is apparently going to add it very soon, meanwhile MRR, Beta Rigs and NiceHash/WestHash have all added support for the new WhirlpoolX algorithm, so apparently the user interest continues to grow. If you are looking for a high performance AMD GPU miner, you can find the latest sgminer fork woth WhirlpoolX support here.

– To download the ccMiner fork for WhirlpoolX by djm34 for Windows OS…

The Curious Rise of the Cryptocurrency Netcoin

A dozen websites could be devoted to the proliferation of alternative cryptocoins and still many would never get any coverage at all. Typically, a coin must do something extraordinary to be considered worthy of press coverage. Media outlets worry about the probability of a coin being a “pump and dump scheme” whose only purpose is […]

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PayCoin Promises Unkept

Last month, I reported that PayBase, the subsidiary of GAW Miners responsible for the administration of PayCoin, would open enrollment for a “buyback program” on the first of February. When that didn’t happen, I decided to give them some leeway – the complexity of it all and the end result of so many people getting […]

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Bitcoin Price Breakout Into The Unknown

Bitcoin Price has made a breakout to the upside and, in doing so, has broken a long-term trendline that has defined decline for over a year. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 05h05 UTC Bitstamp 4-Hour Chart From xbt.social […]

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Updated Windows Binary of the ccMiner 1.5.40-git Fork by SP for Maxwell

Here comes a new update as we have compiled a windows binary from the latest code of the ccMiner 1.5.40-git SP-MOD fork of the Nvidia GPU miner optimized for the latest Maxwell-based video cards by SP (source). This new version as usual includes more fixes and multiple performance improvements in the different supported algorithms with increase in the hashrate for all X-based algorithms since the last binary we published. So if you are mining with Nvidia Maxwell GPUs you might want to be always up to date with the latest version. The SP-MOD fork is designed for running on Nvidia Maxwell GPUs such as the already available GTX 750, 750 Ti as well as the newer GTX 960, GTX 970 and GTX 980. The windows binary release we have made available here is compiled with support for Compute 5.0 and Compute 5.2 GPUs or with other words only for Maxwell-based cards with CUDA 6.5 and VS2013.

– To download the latest ccMiner for Maxwell version 1.5.39-git by SP for Windows OS…

How to Effectively Mine on Multipe Vardiff Pools

If you have a not so powerful mining rig or and ASIC and you want to be able to effectively mine on multiple pools that use variable difficulty instead of a fixed one it might be a bit of an issue. Usually on vardiff pools you start with a lower difficulty that might be right for the hashrate of your mining hardware, but the pool starts to increase the difficulty over time making it hard for your miner to keep up to its maximum performance, especially if using multipool that switches coins or solves blocks quickly. CGminer and the other alternative mining software products do come with strategies for effectively utilizing multipool scenarios, you just make sure you use the right one depending on your situation. By default the multipool strategy used by the mining software is set to failover, meaning that if the first pool stops responding the miner will move on the next one in the list until the higher priority pool is back online.

Obviously the above default scenario does not work for vardiff pools to keep your miner at the recommended lower difficulty level, so you need to use one of the different strategies in order to be able to do that. The right strategy for using multiple vardiff pools is the rotate strategy where the miner will automatically switch between the list of pools based on a user set time interval. So checking what time it requires for the pool to switch from the initial difficulty of lets say 128 to 256 and then to move to 512 will give you an idea on how many minutes you need to set for the rotate rounds. 128 and 256 difficulty is OK for Bitcoin ASIC miners that are in the range of 150-200 GHS for example, so setting lets say 5 minutes for the rotation interval should prevent the pool to go higher than 256 difficulty. What the miner will do is move to the next vardiff pool in the list for 5 minutes and then get back to the first pool for 5 more minutes and so on, keeping a difficulty of 128-256 on both pools. This is a great strategy for using with NieHash and WestHash for selling your SHA256 hashrate for example if you have a not so powerful ASIC miner.

Changing the multipool strategies is possible from within the already running cgminer or another miner forked from it or with support for the same options, but this will not be permanent – it will function until the restart of the miner. You can also set the rotate mode to be activated with a startup parameter of the miner by adding this to the command line --rotate 5, the example is for 5 minute rotation between the list of pools.

How Western Union Rips You Off and Bitcoin Doesn’t

The most recent release of the Bitcoin Core wallet allows the user to define the transaction fee they are willing to pay. The amount that a user is willing to pay does, in the end, affect the speed of their transactions. However, users who pay no fee at all are not necessarily going to be […]

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Bitcoin Trading In Gridlock

Bitcoin trading has again managed to paint itself in a corner. Price is consolidating prior to encountering a long-term trendline from the November 2013 all-time high. At the current trajectory, price should run into the watershed within a week. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. […]

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Want $3 Million? Catch Evgeniy Bogachev

The FBI Office in Pittsburgh has put out the largest bounty in history – three million bucks – for information which results in the arrest or conviction of Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev, who is alleged to be responsible for the largest-scale financial hack ever, GameOver Zeus.

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Bitcoin To Take Center Stage At SXSW Festival March 16 In Austin, Texas

Bitcoin will take center stage at the 22nd SXSW Interactive Festival, March 13 to 17 in Austin, Texas, an annual showcase and brainstorming conference for emerging technology. Bitcoin at SXSW 2015 will present a full day of bitcoin-related content on March 16 as part of Startup Village and as an official SXSW event. Bitcoin at […]

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Overclocking the TechnoBit DICE Bitcoin ASIC Miner

Today we’ve been playing with the TechnoBit DICE Bitcoin ASIC miner to see what is the actual performance we are getting with the default settings as well as to see what is the overclock limit of the device. We were again on a quest to find out how exactly we should overclock the DICE from the options available in the cgminer config file as apparently the version provided for the DICE also contains settings for other ASIC miners, but the ones we need to tweak are the “hexminerr” settings as they are the ones for the 1-chip DICE as well as the other 4-chip RockerBox ASIC miner that TechnoBit has. Below you can find the description about the available options that are available as description.

Rocker (HEXR) new cgminer config options:

–hexminerr-asic-diff – Use at least 16 here and make sure your pool worker min difficulty is configured accordingly in order not to loose hash rate

–hexminerr-pic-roll – Default: 60 or 90. MicroChip PIC work internal roll count – Reduces dramatically USB load – Range 0-255. Please use at least 10 or 20 here

–hexminerr-chip-mask – 255 enable all chips

–hexminerr-voltage – core voltage Default: 690

–hexminerr-options chip_count:frequency – Default: 4:650

Apparently the description is referring to recommended values for the 4-chip miner as does the default settings in the config file set for the DICE version of cgminer provided by TechnoBit, though they will work with the single chip DICE as well. By default the values set in the config file are 720 mV (0.72V) for as voltage instead of the “default” 0.69V value and the operating frequency is 915 MHz. With these settings we’ve managed to see a hashrate of about 170-175 GHS as reported by cgminer and the mining pool averaged for a long period of time.

With the standard settings for operating frequency and voltage the DICE miner does manage to consume about 98.4W of power, though with some additional overclock the power usage does rise. Overclocking the device does take some time and effort as it seems that even though it may start running at a higher voltage and frequency that you set in a few minutes it may stop responding and you need to unplug and then plug the USB connector and restart the miner. IF you experience such a problem you might want to try increasing the pic-roll value a bit and see if that will help with the USB issue when working at a higher operating frequency. Do not that rising the pic-roll value may be just a temporary solution that will extend the time before the miner stops responding again. Some guidelines for overclocking, 1000 MHz should be possible with a voltage of about 0.74V with a power usage of about 115W and expected average hashrate of about 190 GHS. You may also try going for a maximum of up to about 1150 MHz with up to 0.8V that should get you at around 135W of power usage and expected hashrate in the range of 200-205 GHS, but be careful and try not to go for higher as it may be dangerous to try and push the miner more. Do note that your results may vary from unit to unit, also do note that the power usage values we cite here are for the actual power consumed by the miner on the 12V line and not the power usage at the wall. The total power usage measured at the wall may depend based on the power supply you are using and what efficiency it will have, but you need to add additional 10-20% to the cited figures to get the expected power usage at the wall.

Telebit, the Telegram Bitcoin Wallet

Former co-Director of SatoshiPoint, Jonathan Harrison, and Eric Goforth of cexstar.io (now defunct), have teamed up and developed Telebit, the bitcoin wallet for telegram. Telegram is an open source instant messaging application that boasts over 50 million users, citing a free privacy orientated, open API, distributed servers, cloud-based messaging application. It is available for Android, […]

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Bitcoin Price Approaching A Breakpoint

Bitcoin price, today, bounced off support once again, but the lack of higher highs and lower lows leaves continuing consolidation as the only likely option. A few breakpoints lie in price’s path, and the first is approaching within the next 24 hours. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the […]

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BitGO’s Bitcoin Wallet Now Backed by World-Class Insurance

BitGO were the first to pioneer the multi-signature transaction back in August, 2013. Now they’re pioneering in security again, with this week’s unveiling of a partnership with one of the largest underwriters in the world, XL Group. All users of the hosted wallet service will now be covered up to $250,000 for covered theft claims. […]

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Al-Jazeera Obtains Confidential Spy Cables from MI6, Mossad and the FSB

In what some are calling the “largest intelligence leak since Snowden” Al-Jazeera has obtained hundreds of confidential files from some of the world’s most well-known intelligence agencies. They are calling the leaked information “Spy Cables.”

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JP Morgan to Charge for Bank Deposits: Bitcoin 1 – Banks 0

The nature of a bank is to secure and lend money. Or that is the supposed nature, anyway. Sometimes banks get so large that they can manipulate the entire economy. When the seas get rough, no matter how much they have in deposits, some banks refuse to lend and, therefore, stimulate the economy. Clearly, this […]

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Bitcoin Gambling Site SealsWithClubs.eu Chairman Starts New Operation in Antigua

An epic story unfolded this past week in the gambling capital of North America surrounding the shutdown of Bitcoin‘s oldest gambling site, SealsWithClubs.eu. “Math Does Not Bow to Guns” Officially, the site was shut down for rather vague reasons. On approximately February 11th, 2015, several events occurred related to operational security that we consider to […]

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Bitcoin Value Is Indestructible Regardless of Price

While reading the interesting response by CCN journalist, Evander Smart, to a recent vote-of-no-confidence in Bitcoin value, it struck me that so many know so little about the block chain innovation. Price chart analysis and a brief value analysis are presented in today’s article. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. […]

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Updated Vanillacoin (VNL) Sgminer Fork for WhirlpoolX Algorithm

The GPU minig of Vanillacoin (VNL) is picking up and more miners are checking out the previously CPU only coin. We now have an updated sgminer fork with optimized OpenCL kernel for the WhirlpoolX algorithm that the coin uses that almost doubles the performance on AMD GPUs compared to the previous miner. With the new sgminer fork we are getting a bit over 130 MHS as compared to about 75 MHS that the previously available version on AMD Radeon R9 280X video card with no overclock. So if you are mining Vanillacoin you might want to update to the new miner to get better performance. The sgminer fork will work on Nvidia GPUs as well, but the performance that it will have in terms of hashrate there makes it pretty much pointless, but hopefully there will soon be a ccMiner fork optimized for Nvidia CUDA mining of the coin.

– To download and try the new sgminer fork for AMD GPU mining WhirlpoolX algorithm coins…

Bitcoin Exchange FinCCX Lets Users Earn Commission When Trading

A group of Finland-based traders has launched a cryptocurrency exchange, FinCCX, to allow users to exchange bitcoins for regular money and vice versa. FinCCX claims by offering lower fees and providing the chance for traders to earn commissions while trading, it delivers an improved user experience to bitcoin traders. Traders can exchange funds in bitcoin […]

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DDoS Attacks Land 51-Year-Old UK Hacker Under Arrest

It’s all fun and games until you get caught, right? Well, in the eyes of the United Kingdom it’s never just fun and games when it comes to hacking. A 51-year-old man from Merseyside is now facing serious jail time for his distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that happened in 2013.

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First Impressions from the TechnoBit DICE ASIC Miner

If you remember back in December last year we have mentioned the announcement of the 150 GHS TechnoBit Dice Desktop USB Miner / Blockchain Lottery Device

The DICE was well packaged, we have ordered the version that is only the miner and not the other model that includes a controller, so this one connects directly to a computer via USB and you need to run cgminer. You can of course also use Raspberry Pi or TP-Link controller with custom software if you manage to get them work which brings us to one of the important things regarding the DICE. It is no way a product that is easy to use by novice users and the reason for that is the lack of installation/setup manual and clear details about how to make things work including the miner software you need. So a bit of a disappointment on the ease of use side, here TechnoBit are not doing well at all and you need to look for information on forums, including details of the parameters you need to understand in order to tweak the performance or overclock the device. Another thing that we have noticed as soon as we turned on the DICE is that it is not very silent, though the noise coming from the cooling fan is still quite acceptable. Other than that the build quality seems to be good and the miner looks and feels like a solid product, apparently more suited for advanced users than for normal or novice users. Though once you get the hang of things there should be no more problems using the DICE, we have tried running it on the NiceHash service for a bit already and we are getting higher performance than the initially promised 150-160 GHS, the service reports an average hashrate for 5 minutes in the range of 200-250 GHS and so does cgminer locally.

Quick setup guide for TechnoBit DICE on Windows:

– Download the Windows version of cgminer with support for DICE

– Modify the cgminer.conf file with the pool settings for the pool that you want to mine at

– Download Zadig and run it to replace the unrecognized USB device that you get when you plug the miner with WinUSB driver

– Run the DICE cgminer and it should detect the device and start mining using your pool settings

There is no official source for cgminer with support for DICE available, you need to download the official release and apply a patch to it to add support for the DICE miner. This is for the Linux users as well as the ones that want to use a Raspberry Pi controller for the miner instead of a Windows PC. There is also an official firmware available for the TP-Link controller that you can use as a miner controller, though you probably would want to get a version of the DICE miner with the controller already packaged – this one should in theory be easier to setup and use for novice users. This are pretty much our first impressions from the TechnoBit DICE ASIC miner that we just got and plugged in to test it out if it works. In the next few days we are going to be doing some tests of the device, so stay tuned for additional details and more information in our full review of the unit.

5 Reasons Why the Bitcoin Revolution has only just Begun

Over the weekend, I ran across a link to a Sputnik International opinion piece about Bitcoin called “Five Reasons the Bitcoin Revolution is over.” Never heard of Sputnik International before (it’s a multinational media corp that was just created last November). And this article doesn’t seem well-received, with eighty-nine “thumbs down” to just nine “thumbs […]

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WordPress is Still a Big Believer in Bitcoin

WordPress accepting Bitcoin for its premium services was big news throughout the tech world at the end of 2012, garnering coverage in magazines like PCWorld. The popular blogging platform is many people’s first introductions to content management systems. Over the years, it has managed to keep up with the times, and even with the advent […]

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Novice’s Guide to Setting up a Crypto-Currency Mining Pool

If you want to try to make up your own crypto currency mining pool, but are not a Linux sysadmin or too much into crypto currencies you may have a hard time figuring out how to do it as it is not as easy as it may seem. Thankfully there are resources that are as detailed as they can get to guide you through all of the basic steps you need to take to setup your own mining pool even if you are a novice with some very basic Linux knowledge. We are going to direct you to a detailed step by step guide on setting up a MPOS (Mining Portal Open Source) mining pool using NOMP as stratum (Node Open Mining Portal) on Linux, then another guide on how to do some basic things to harden your server and secure it and in the end another guide on how to setup Cloudflare as a DNS server for your pool. You can thank a user called profall for writing up these detailed guides suitable for novice users that are willing to setup their first crypto mining pool server and the links for the guides are below. These detailed guides will help you get a good start in making your first mining pool a reality, but then again you will have to be ready to learn more on the go as a pool operator, so be ready for that as well.

– Novice’s Guide to Setting up a MPOS/NOMP Crypto-Currency Mining Pool…

– Novice’s Guide to Hardening/Basic Security for your Mining Pool…

– Novice’s Guide to Utilize Cloudflare as a DNS Server…

Earn Free Bitcoins Visiting Websites, Is It Worth It

There are quite a lot of sites offering to give you free Bitcoins in return for something that you do, such as visiting websites for example. These are alternative to the so called pay to visit or pay to click services, but instead of giving you USD or another currency in return they pay you in Bitcoin. Since we are getting some questions about such services we have selected three different services that offer their users to pay them BTC in return for visiting websites to check them out and share our experience using them. The services that pay you to visit other websites do work two ways – get advertisers that want to have visitors sent to their websites and are willing to pay for that and pay a percentage of the amount they receive from advertisers to the users visiting the sites. So if you are a normal user that wants to try to earn some free Bitcoins you can try them and if you are advertiser that needs more targeted traffic from people interested in Bitcoin and crypto currencies in general you can become an advertiser. The question however is that if you as an user can actually earn something that is worth the time you will spend, or you as an advertiser if the traffic you get will be what you need. Time to find out…

BitVisits

This seems to be the most professionally looking and working service that pays you to visit websites from the ones we have checked out (not only the listed here), both in terms of look and features. It offers more advanced options to advertisers such as to have a unique campaigns that can be visited only once by user or that can be revisited again in 24 hours as well as more advanced stats. As a user you need to make a minimum of 0.00005000 BTC before you request what you have earned to be sent to you and with the currently available 22 campaigns we’ve managed to earn 6000 satoshi in less than 20 minutes and send a request to withdraw them. With the number of sites available for revisiting in 1 day however you may not be able to earn enough to withdraw them again in 24 hours, but that of course depends on the number of advertisers. The revisitable campaigns available paid about 200-400 satoshi per visit and each campaign needs to be viewed between 10 and 60 seconds before you can continue to the next one – the longer the time the more you will be paid and the advertiser charged for your visit. Have in mind that with this service you need to sign a message with your wallet address to verify your account before you can request a cashout – you need an online BTC wallet or local Bitcoin wallet to do that and that can be a bit of a problem for some users that are not too familiar with Bitcoin.

VisitBit

An easier to be used and less advanced in terms of features service as compared to the one above that will get you on the track of getting paid for visiting websites faster. Here you get paid between 30 and 200 satoshi per visited website depending on the time you need to spend before going to the next website (10 to 60 seconds per website). The minimum amount you need to get before you can get paid is 0.00005825 BTC and it took us a bit over an hour to reach that amount and be on the track to get paid. The service relies on Microwallet for the transactions and there is a small fee that you will be charged by that additional service for the payment. What we don’t like however is that you don’t get information on how much you have collected so far and how much each website will earn you directly, you need to go to microwallet’s website to check your current balance using the same wallet address on both sites. If you are interested in advertising on the service you can get a visitor for as low as 100 satoshi for a 10 second limit on the visit. There seem to be quite a lot of campaigns so you can continue earning by visiting websites for quite a while if you have the time.

BitVisitor

A simple to use pay to visit websites service giving you Bitcoins in return that can get you stared quickly on your way to earn some free BTC, but we don’t like very much the way what you are getting paid for each visit is realized and the time you need to spend before you can visit another website. The first one to two websites can reward you with a few hundred satoshi for the visit, but then each next visit lowers the value and you quickly get below 100 and going down to 10. In 24 hours you can “start again” with a higher payout and go to lower again, but what makes it even worse for the visitor not being able to earn that much per day is the fact that you need to stay 5 minutes on a website before you can go to the next one. In order to get paid you need to meet a minimum of 6000 satoshi, but in two days we have managed to reach just about 4000 satoshi, we of course gave up visiting websites when the payment goes too low. This on the other hand is good for advertisers who want to have some crypto users who will have enough time to look at the websites they visit with just 100 satoshi as a minimum bid for a visitor.

Now, for some general conclusions about the services above and other similar ones. As you can see the minimum amount of BTC you need to collect before it can be sent to your wallet is hovering around 6000 satoshi or 0.00006000 BTC. This may not seem very little if you are looking it this way, but if you convert that amount to USD with the current exchange rate for BTC you will get something like just $0.015 USD, yes, this is 1.5 cents. Spending like 20 minutes as an experiment to get back this may seem OK, even an hour once may still be acceptable as an experience trying things out, but doing it day after day seems really pointless and still a lot of people do seem to be doing it. So the ones that actually make money are the service operators of such websites and the advertisers that get cheap targeted traffic to their websites.

Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong: Bitcoin is Way Too Far Ahead

For all the press Bitcoin has received, many contrarians are still attracted to sub-contrarians derived from the original contrarian. Many see Bitcoin’s glass as half-empty, instead of half full. That doesn’t apply to Coinbase head Brain Armstrong, who made news Monday morning with his Twitter commentary on the state of the digital currency universe. Coinbase […]

The post Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong: Bitcoin is Way Too Far Ahead appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Freebitcoins.com Giving Away Bitcoin to First 1 Million Takers

If you’ve heard of Bitcoin but don’t know where to start, visiting Freebitcoins.com is step 1. The exciting new website freebitcoins.com is giving away bitcoins to the first million visitors to their site in a groundbreaking effort to introduce the increasingly popular currency to those who want to own some, completely free. Those interested simply […]

The post Freebitcoins.com Giving Away Bitcoin to First 1 Million Takers appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Bitcoin Trading Hammering Downside Support

Bitcoin trading has reverted to selling behavior, and the bears are clawing down the chart for all they’re worth. Buyers have set up strong buy orders between $225 and $237. The past 24 hours of decline have eaten into these. Will support at $230 hold? This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour […]

The post Bitcoin Trading Hammering Downside Support appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Achilles Labs Massive 33% Off Sale

Achilles Labs, a Bitcoin mining hardware provider located in China, Is offering a huge 33% discount sale on AM-6000, AM-3400, and AM-1700 Bitcoin miners. While fluctuations have affected the Bitcoin mining industry as a whole, a drop in sales volume for Achilles Labs means that you can pick up some serious hardware for a big […]

The post Achilles Labs Massive 33% Off Sale appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Private Investigators Hire Hackers to Gain an Edge in Civil Court

Five people, including a former San Francisco police officer were indicted by a federal grand jury in San Jose on charges that they had hacked into computers to gain an advantage in civil lawsuits. The case focuses around private investigators Nathan Moser and Peter Siragusa. The two men hired Trent Williams, a 24-year-old, and Sumit […]

The post Private Investigators Hire Hackers to Gain an Edge in Civil Court appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Assembly Uses the Bitcoin Block Chain to Monetize Development

In a recent interview with John Light’s podcast, P2P Connects Us; Matthew Dieters said of the project he helped start, Assembly.com: Assembly is a platform that allows people all over the world – designers, developers, community people, people that want to do marketing – to collaborate together on building real products. […] At the end […]

The post Assembly Uses the Bitcoin Block Chain to Monetize Development appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Bitcoin Price Drops In Market Frustration

Bitcoin price took a $12 plunge today as the market became exhausted with the lack of upside progress. The bears saw their opportunity, and a mini sell-off in the style of the previous decline ensued. Support near $230 halted the decline. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full […]

The post Bitcoin Price Drops In Market Frustration appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

GeoCoin (GEO) Qubit Based Crypo Coin

GeoCoin (GEO) is an alternative crypto currency that uses the Qubit algorithm for mining, it is already a month old and comes with the ambitious goal of bringing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to the blockchain. Some of the upcoming interesting features that are planned include geocaching implementation with geocoins as a rewards and that should come on a global and not local scale. A geominer that should performs useful GIS analysis instead of using a Qubit crypto algorithm that currently is being used, that one should be implemented when ready, hopefully before the coin is mined. But these are features that we are yet to see implemented as they are currently on the roadmap of the coin. Recently the coin was added to some of the bif altcoin exchanges and this brought it to our attention as something that is developing well and seems promising, especially if they manage to deliver on their promises. Do note that the Qubit algorithm is working better on Nvidia GPUs, so you will be getting higher hashrate mining the GEO with Nvidia than on AMD GPUs.

Website

http://geocoin.cash/

Block Explorer / Crawler

http://ift.tt/1wdsOIV

SPECIFICATIONS

• Qubit Algorithm


• PoW-only coin


• 1 minute block time


• 5,000,000 GEO coins total


• 0.5% initial premine


• Block reward halves every month, starting at 10 coins per block

DOWNLOADS

Windows

Source Code

at GitHub

POOLS

http://ift.tt/1CZBqjg

http://ift.tt/1wdsQjX

EXCHANGES

BitTrex

Poloniex

C-Cex

Cryptopia

Earn Free Bitcoin Games, What is the Catch

As the popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies continues to rise more and more new services appear, including various ones that offer you to earn Bitcoins by playing them for free. Initially this may sound like a good idea, to spends some time playing a simple game for example and earn some Bitcoins in return, but things are actually not that easy and of course there is a catch. The developers of games and apps that seem to give out free Bitcoins to people playing them are not running a charity here, it is a business that runs on a very simple and proven model that works and in the end they end up making profit by “giving BTC for free”. How is that possible and what is the catch and can you actually make some Bitcoins for free? We are going to answer these questions using the free Bitcoin game BTC Flow as a real world example to demonstrate how things work.

The general idea here is that we have a simple web-based game where you need to only enter your Bitcoin wallet address to start playing and collecting Bitcoins by operating a virtual business. The game is designed in a way that you need to wait a certain period of time for a fraction of coins to collect and then to claim them and you need to keep claiming them over and over again until you reach a certain limit before you can actually withdraw them. By default you have an earning rate of 0.0000015 BTC per minute and you need to keep claiming the accumulated satoshi’s each time they reach a maximum of 0.000012 BTC or before that. When they reach that amount you stop getting new coins until you claim them and in order to do that you need to click on a button and enter a captcha and then you start collecting more. The idea here is that you will not just leave your computer running with the browser open and earn Bitcoins just from that, you need to be active pretty much all the time. The catch here is that you need to reach 0.01 BTC collected before you can request the BTC you have collected in the game to be sent to you and that is actually not an easy task, so lets do some math to see why:

You are earning: 0.00000150 BTC per minute

The maximum collected before claiming manually: 0.00001200 BTC

Interval needed to manually claim to continue earning: 8 minutes

Number of times you need to collect accumulated coins to reach 0.01 BTC: ~833

Time needed to reach 0.01000000 BTC to get paid your earned coins: ~111 hours

What you would actually have earned in USD in almost 5 days of non-stop play: ~$2.5 USD

Total BTC you can earn playing non-stop for one full month (impossible): about 0.06 BTC

So after doing the math you see there is no much point to spend almost 5 days 24/7 non-stop earning free Bitcoins playing a game that will reward you with just about $2.5 USD for the time spent. In the end this seems to be really a waste of time for nothing, and if you don’t calculate things you may start playing just to give up some minutes or hours after that in which case the game operator does not loose anything as you will not be able to withdraw any coins. If you don’t give up easily and are very persistent and continue and spend 2-3 weeks just to get a single payout out of the game as playing non-stop for 5 days is not something that would do you will realize that this time was literally wasted seeing what is the actual return.

Here however we get an attractive option that makes the game no longer free – the ability to upgrade your business earning you free Bitcoins by spending some actual BTC that you already own with the idea to earn back more. This is the catch that actually brings the profit to the service operator as unless you do that the game is not earning anything, but it is hardly loosing any Bitcoins that are given for free either. When you get discouraged by the calculations above or after playing for a bit and you want to actually earn something you see that the only way is to deposit some coins to speedup your earning level. You get multiple levels of upgrade that cost you between 0.05 BTC to 100 BTC that supposedly make it easy not only to get back your investment, but earn much more, or at least that is what it may seem at first sight. So let us see what happens with the math after you decide to pay 0.05 BTC for an upgrade:

You are earning: 0.00000600 BTC per minute

The maximum collected before claiming manually: 0.00018000 BTC

Interval needed to manually claim to continue earning: 30 minutes

Number of times you need to collect accumulated coins to reach 0.01 BTC: ~56

Time needed to reach 0.01000000 BTC to get paid your earned coins: ~28 hours

What you would actually have earned in USD in 1 day plus of non-stop play: ~$2.5 USD

Total BTC you can earn playing non-stop for one full month (impossible): about 0.26 BTC

Things do seem to look a bit better now, but in reality the situation is not much different. You need over 1 day of non-stop playing just to reach the minimum withdraw limit, and close to 6 days of non-stop playing just to cover what you have invested in the form of the 0.5 BTC to actually increase your earning rate. You also need to claim your earnings every 30 minutes instead of every 8, so it is not much more convenient as your attention is required every half an hour. And the upgrades do come with another catch, they are not indefinite, but only last for a certain period of time and that changes things. If after an upgrade you might earn in theory maximum 0.26 BTC playing non-stop for 1 month, something that is hardly even possible, but the theoretical maximum earnings will be close to 0.17 BTC instead as you only get the upgrade for a bit less than 20 days. That is possible only if you play non-stop and do not waste any time for sleeping or other things, and if you spend 8 hours a day (a more reasonable and actually doable thing) carefully monitoring the game and playing it in about 20 days you would barely be able to get back your 0.05 BTC that you invested and maybe a bit less than another BTC cent on top.

Is it worth to spend so much time and effort just to end up with $2 USD actually earned? In fact a lot of people that would spend some Bitcoins for upgrades to try to earn more will easily give up or will play in a way that they will not be even able to earn back what they have spent as a deposit. And even if some that are very determined and strong willed players do end up earning some BTC the number of people that will just give up and have spent some coins for upgrades will be higher. So in the end it is simple math and human psychology that makes such games and services offering free Bitcoins profitable for their operators and not for the users that are trying to earn something from them. You don’t believe us, why don’t you give it a try and see for yourself?

– To try to earn some free Bitcoins from the web-based game BTC Flow yourself…

Hackers use Cryptoware Against Police for Bitcoin Ransom

Computer hackers have been attacking government offices and private industry for decades in the pursuit of extorting millions of U.S. Dollars. Now, the digital crime is gaining a new digital treasure for the a more advanced 21st century criminal underworld. Cryptoware Attack Nets Over 2 Bitcoins South of Chicago, Illinois, the small Midlothian police department […]

The post Hackers use Cryptoware Against Police for Bitcoin Ransom appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

EFF Wants a Fair Use-style DMCA Provision

“When you buy a video game, you expect to be able to play it for as long as you want. You expect be able to play it with your kids many years from now if you want (well, maybe not Grand Theft Auto),” writes Harvard law student Kendra Albert. She, with the backing of the […]

The post EFF Wants a Fair Use-style DMCA Provision appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Supcoin (SUP) sgminer Fork for Pluck Algorithm Now Available

Initially Supcoin (SUP) was only mineable on CPU, though quickly an Nvidia GPUminer was released and now we also have an AMD GPU miner available all thanks to djm34. The initial release is only in the form of a binary for Windows, no source code available yet, and the miner may have some issues with the Pluck algorithm, but these will most likely be resolved in the next few days. We have tested the sgminer fork for AMD OpenCL GPUs on a Radeon R9 280X and the results were a little over 5 KH/s on a non-overclocked video card, so the performance is quite good compared to what the Nvidia miner provides at this moment.

– To download and try the new sgminer fork for AMD GPU mining Pluck algorithm coins…

Bitcoin Price Grinding Higher On Uncertainty

Bitcoin Price continues a slow jagged ascent as resistance above price prevents deliberate advance. Duality in the market does not help, and the Bulls and Bears are at loggerheads. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 13h54 UTC Bitfinex 1-Hour […]

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Idle Tapper Bitcoin Billionaire (Review)

I downloaded the free game Bitcoin Billionaire by Michael Stockwell (published by Noodlecake Studios) expecting to be unimpressed or annoyed. The more serious Bitcoin miners among us might still have that experience in spite of its ability to grow on you. Take comfort in the fact that it didn’t cost anything (except time) to play, […]

The post Idle Tapper Bitcoin Billionaire (Review) appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Gold from an ATM and a Growing Courtship With Bitcoin

For some of us love has been in the air this past weekend. And it is on that note that I would like to begin this article. On Friday last week, Quantified Assets announced to the world that they had launched a bitcoin vending machine that would dispense gold and silver. The vending machine is […]

The post Gold from an ATM and a Growing Courtship With Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Vanilacoin (VNL) Sgminer Fork for WhirlpoolX Algorithm

Vanilacoin (VNL) is not a new altcoin, it has been available for a few months already, but up until recently it was only a CPU coin and now there is an sgminer 5.1.0 fork with support for the WhirlpoolX algorithm that the coin uses for mining on AMD OpenCL GPUs. You can still CPU mine the coin, but with the kind of performance that the GPU miner offers it will be a bit pointless as an Intel Core i7-5820K 6-core processor gets you around 4.4 MHS while with the GPU miner on a Radeon R9 280X you can expect to get something like 75 MHS with the default setup. Do note that the coin still does not have an exchange where it is traded, but soon after the release of the AMD GPU miner MiningRigRentals has added support for the WhirlpoolX algorithm and there are currently 6 mining rigs available for rent, BetaRigs also did that but still nobody selling hashrate there. There are currently two official pools available with no need for registration, but be aware that if you mine with more than 10% of the pool combined hashrate then 90% of your earnings will be sent to the Vanilacoin faucet. You can download and try the GPU miner for Vanilacoin’s WhirlpoolX algorithm from the link below.

– To download and try the sgminer fork for AMD GPU mining WhirlpoolX algorithm coins…

CNN Starting to Believe in Bitcoin? Adds Bitcoin Ticker

If there was any doubt in your mind that Bitcoin is going places, then it may be time to banish them for good. This past Wednesday, CNN Money announced on its Twitter account that they were going to introduce a Bitcoin ticker on their show. Bitcoin has come of age. It was just last month, […]

The post CNN Starting to Believe in Bitcoin? Adds Bitcoin Ticker appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

New ccMiner Fork for Nvidia GPU Mining Pluck Algorithm Coins

The Supcoin (SUP) is a new altcoin that has just recently launched as a CPU only coin using a new algorithm called PLUCK, but it has quickly gotten a ccMiner fork from djm34 (source) adding support for GPU mining on Nvidia-based GPUs. The ccMiner fork with Pluck support for mining Supcoin (SUP) is available for download below, it is compiled for Compute 3.0 or newer Nvidia-based graphics cards, so it will not work on older. We have taken the ccMiner for a quick test to tee what hashrate you can expect to get from it and compare it to what the Pluck CPU miner from Wolf0 currently provides in terms of hashrate. There is still no AMD GPU miner available, but most likely we are going to soon seen one available considering that the algorithm was quickly ported on Nvidia it is apparently not very GPU resistant. The results cited below are for the hardware (CPU and GPU) running at their stock frequencies with no additional user overclock, do note that only the GTX 960 is an ASUS Strix card that is factory overclocked.

CPU miner hashrate:

Intel Core i7-5820K Processor – 1.2 KH/s (6-core with HT)

Nvidia GPU miner hashrate:

Nvidia GTX 750 Ti – 1.89 KH/s (with throughput 3)

Nvidia GTX 960 – 3.38 KH/s (with throughput 3)

Nvidia GTX 980 – 5.25 KH/s (with throughput 3.5)

– To download and try the djm34 ccMiner fork for Nvidia GPU mining Pluck algorithm coins…

Bitcoin Trading Pushing the Price Higher

Bitcoin Trading has been pushing price higher in jittery trade today. Small buying spurts are interjected with frequent bouts of selling. It is as if the market is not sure about advance, or fears a return to decline. A look at a larger timeframe chart sheds some light on which way trend is pointing. This […]

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CNN Show Inside Man: Morgan Spurlock Lived on Bitcoin for a Week

Morgan Spurlock, most famous for his documentary Super Size Me, spent a week last year living on nothing but Bitcoin (instead of McDonald’s food) for his show CNN show Inside Man. The episode aired last night and covered all the basics of Bitcoin with relative accuracy. Also read: CNNMoney’s Jose Pagliery Talks ‘Bitcoin: And the […]

The post CNN Show Inside Man: Morgan Spurlock Lived on Bitcoin for a Week appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Supcoin (SUP) Pluck based Cryptocoin

Supcoin (SUP) is a new alternative crypto currency that was just launched using a new algorithm called Pluck that is SHA256-based with more load on the memory and was supposed to initially be mined with CPU only, but we saw a very quick release of a ccMiner fork that added GPU mining support for Nvidia from djm34. The coin has small pre-mine that will mostly go for bounties and already has a few pools available for mining, though exchanges are not yet available. It is an interesting new project that you might want to check out and there is definitely an interest since you can already even rent hashrate from MiningRigRentals with the new Pluck algorithm. Betarigs has also apparently added the new algo, but there are no mining rigs available to rent there yet. So it is a project that you might want to check out as it might turn out to be an interesting alternative crypto coin.

Website

http://supcoin.com/

Block Explorer / Crawler

Not yet available.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Pluck Algorithm


• PoW-only coin


• 5 minute block time


• 10 Coins per block


• Block reward halves every 100 days, starting at 10 coins per block


• Reasonably small premine of 100 blocks worth, with bounties

DOWNLOADS

Windows

Linux

Mac

Source Code

at GitHub

Miners

Pluck CPU miner (source)

Pluck Nvidia GPU miner (source)

POOLS

http://ift.tt/1MDXEiD

http://ift.tt/1Dy2Phh

https://sup.rnova.cc/

EXCHANGES

Not yet available.

MyCoin Bitcoin Scam – The Sequel to a Bitcoin Nightmare

When the first major bit-heist, Mt. Gox, happened, many in the crypto community might have been forgiven for thinking that it had been but a minor case of arrhythmia. However with the latest incident involving MyCoin, a bitcoin exchange in Hong Kong, it appears that we might soon have a full-scale coronary. There will have […]

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Bitcoin Trading Platform Coinarch Expands To Growing Chinese Market

Coinarch, a Singapore-based online trading platform, has recently expanded to China with support services for that market. CEO Jeremy Glaros said in an announcement that they have received interest from the Chinese market. “All the evidence globally points to the Chinese being leaders in the bitcoin trading space,” said Kimberley Silva, chief marketing officer. “This […]

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Porn Site RedTube Transmits Digital STDs

Malware Bytes has an article detailing the compromise of top tier ad-supported porn site, RedTube. RedTube is one of the most popular free porn sites on the internet, and indeed one of the more popular sites, in general, boasting 300 million visitors per month. That much traffic for any content will eventually attract hackers thirsty […]

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DarkLeaks: Where the Hidden Truth can be Bought For Bitcoin

The truth, in 2015, will set you free. Of some Bitcoin. It’s a poorly kept secret that the U.S. Government has waged war against the whistleblowers President Obama once swore to protect. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been on the run for years. Heroic government whistleblower Edward Snowden has left the U.S. out of fears […]

The post DarkLeaks: Where the Hidden Truth can be Bought For Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Bitcoin Value And The Ghost of Silk Road

During yesterday’s session news of the US Marshall’s auction of 50,000 BTC belonging to Ross Ulbricht, caused the market to abandon the remaining few dollars to a $250 wave conclusion and to start selling into wave C early. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Bitcoin […]

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Mt Gox Trading Bots Manipulated the Bitcoin Price

Magic the Gathering Trading Exchange. Better known as Mt. Gox, once, the world’s largest and most known bitcoin exchange. MtGox was primary an online card trading platform. A few years back it got taken over by Mark Karpeles and its platform got turned into a bitcoin trading platform. As bitcoin grew in 2012, and most […]

The post Mt Gox Trading Bots Manipulated the Bitcoin Price appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Updated Windows Binary of the ccMiner 1.5.39-git Fork by SP for Maxwell

We have compiled a new windows binary from the latest code of the ccMiner 1.5.39-git SP-MOD fork of the Nvidia GPU miner optimized for Maxwell-based video cards by SP (source). This version includes some more fixes and multiple performance improvements in the different supported algorithms with increase in the hashrate for all X-based algorithms since the last binary we have compiled some days ago. So if you are mining with Nvidia Maxwell GPUs you might want to be always up to date with the latest version. The SP-MOD fork is designed for running on Nvidia Maxwell GPUs such as the already available GTX 750, 750 Ti as well as the newer GTX 960, GTX 970 and GTX 980. The windows binary release we have made available here is compiled with support for Compute 5.0 and Compute 5.2 GPUs or with other words only for Maxwell-based cards with CUDA 6.5 and VS2013.

– To download the latest ccMiner for Maxwell version 1.5.39-git by SP for Windows OS…

Ledger Wallet Closes 1.3 Million Euros In Seed Funding

Ledger Wallet, a Paris, France-based provider of bitcoin security solutions, has raised 1.3 million euros in seed money to accelerate the development of its product line and expand its global reach. XAnge Capital, a French private equity and venture capital group, led the seed funding. Accompanying XAnge Capital are Pascal Gauthier, the former Criteo chief […]

The post Ledger Wallet Closes 1.3 Million Euros In Seed Funding appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Dell to Expand Bitcoin Acceptance to UK and Canada

It was big news for Bitcoin and crypto currencies in general when last summer Dell announced that they are going to start accepting Bitcoin payments in the U.S. and another good news just came from the company. Today Coinbase, the payment processor that Dell uses for Bitcoin payments, announced that they are working with Dell to expand Bitcoin as a payment option for Dell’s customers in the United Kingdom and Canada. Although it is still very limited in terms of international markets that will be supported, the fact that Dell is willing to expand the support for crypto payments is a positive sign that it is apparently working for them generating extra profit for the company. And if large companies such as Dell find Bitcoin payments useful (profitable), then this is really positive recognition of the BTC.

US Marshals to Auction 50 000 Bitcoins: Who Will Buy Ross Ulbricht’s Bitcoins This Time?

Last July and December, Tim Draper played a big role in scooping up the orphaned Bitcoins of Ross Ulbricht. In the first auction, he bought nearly 30,000, but in the second he was only able to acquire 2,000. Since then, the market price of a Bitcoin has dropped roughly another $100, and this could have […]

The post US Marshals to Auction 50 000 Bitcoins: Who Will Buy Ross Ulbricht’s Bitcoins This Time? appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Get Bitcoin for your Miles

Interested in converting your reward miles into bitcoin? Go to bitcoinformiles.com, fill out a request for quote and hit “submit.” Within a few hours, you should expect a bitcoin offer for your miles. Bitcoinformiles.com was recently launched by Bitcoin Brands Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company that also sells bitcoin ATMs and bitcoin processing tablets. […]

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Vermont Loses its only Bitcoin ATM

Bitcoin ATMs have been a growing market worldwide as Bitcoin slowly and consistently gains popularity, and many parts of the United States have joined the technology revolution. Some states in the union are more interested and accommodating than others. New Hampshire has been very pro-Bitcoin within their state’s regulatory framework. It appears that their western […]

The post Vermont Loses its only Bitcoin ATM appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Memex Is Indexing The Dark Web

The dark web sounds foreboding, but it refers to the parts of the internet not crawled and indexed by popular search engines like Google. Sites aren’t indexed for a number of reasons and Google only indexes 10 percent of the Internet This leaves the majority of the Internet falling into the category of the “dark […]

The post Memex Is Indexing The Dark Web appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Canadian Bitcoin Exchange Cavritex To Shut Down Over Security Issues

Cavritex, a Canadian bitcoin exchange, announced it will cease operations after discovering its database may have been compromised. The company urged customers to change their passwords immediately, noting that funds will be returned to customers and that it has maintained 100 percent reserves. In a notice posted on the company website on Feb. 17, Cavritex […]

The post Canadian Bitcoin Exchange Cavritex To Shut Down Over Security Issues appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Buy Marijuana with Bitcoin via Vending Machines in Seattle

The next-generation of vending machines is one of the many new frontiers Bitcoin is entering as it slowly becomes more mainstream. This is embodied in the newest, and somewhat historical vending machine to hit the market. The first vending machines to legally dispense marijuana flower buds debuted in the state Oregon Tuesday in Seattle. Legally […]

The post Buy Marijuana with Bitcoin via Vending Machines in Seattle appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

US Marshals to Auction Another 50000 Bitcoin

The USMS has announced that they are going to be holding another auction for 50000 more Bitcoins from the BTC seized as a part of the Silk Road bust. The auction will be held on March 5th, but the bidders that are interested to participate in the BTC auction need to register not later than March 2nd. This will be the third and most likely not the last auction that the US Marshals Service will for confiscated Bitcoins associated with the Silk Road case now that Ross Ulbricht has been found guilty as the operator of the Silk Road black market. It will be interesting to see what will be the interest this time and to see what will be the price of the winning big now that the Bitcoin exchange rate is not that high, especially compared to the first auction where the price per BTC was probably in the 700 USD range.

– For additional details and requirements to participate in the new BTC auction by USMS…

Bitcoin Trading: Correction Due Before Advance

Bitcoin Trading is proceeding in slow price action as the chart slowly unfolds wave a of an abc wave to the $250 area. Our overall target is $300 / 1900 CNY, but it seems likely price will first correct to the $220 area before advance commences. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 […]

The post Bitcoin Trading: Correction Due Before Advance appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Kentucky Church Now Accepting Bitcoin

According to Tim Totten, the chair of the finance team at Fern Creek United Methodist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, who has been an active Bitcoiner for about two years now, he had been considering implementing Bitcoin donations for quite some time. We had a chat with him. Also read: How Churches Are Starting to Evangelize […]

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NiceHash and WestHash with New Fixed Order Price Option

NiceHash and WestHash has introduced a new option for people that are using the services for renting hashrate for various crypto currency algorithms – fixed order price. Up until now you had to set the price you are willing to pay for the hashrate you need and if the current market price, if the current market price was higher you either needed to pay more or wait for cheaper hashrate to be available. On the other hand with fixed order price you are going to get all the hashrate you need for the time-frame you need guaranteed, however this may end up costing you more than with standard orders using the current market price. We have checked the new feature and currently it seems that not yet all of the algorithms are useable with the new fixed order price option as you get an error that not enough hashpower is available, but probably in a few days there should be no problems with hashrate availability. It is interesting to see if the introduction of fixed order price option will also lead to increase in the profit for the people that sell their hashrate using the service in the following days…

Lyrabar (LYB) Lyra2RE based cryptocoin

Lyrabar is a new alternative crypto currency using the Lyra2RE as a proof-of-work algorithm. It is an altcoin for hobbyists by hobbyists designed to be fair, successful, community-driven cryptocurrency. It does not come with big promises that will never be met, does not come with premine and is not traded on large exchanges from day 1, so the idea is to build an user community and slowly expand along the way. The coin can be mined using CPUs, or AMD and Nvidia GPUs and a VTC merged mining support should come at some point in the future. If you haven’t beeing interested in the altcoin launches lately like many of the “older” GPU miners that got tired of scam coins, then you might want to check out the Lyrabar (LYB), though there is nothing guaranteed here either.

Website

http://lyrabar.com/

Block Explorer / Crawler

http://ift.tt/1Aj1irR

SPECIFICATIONS

• Lyra2RE Algo


• PoW-only coin


• 2.5 minute block time


• 5 Coins per block


• 1971000 total LYB coins


• Block reward will half at blocks 210240, 420480, 630720 (one year between each)


• Last PoW block is 840960


• Difficulty retargeting with Kimoto’s Gravity Well


• Stealth addresses (experimental, use at own risk)

DOWNLOADS

Windows

Linux

Source Code

at GitHub

Additional nodes:

addnode=95.215.46.10

addnode=95.215.46.87

PORTS

• RPC Port: 4047


• P2P Port: 4046

POOLS

http://ift.tt/1Aj1kzM

http://ift.tt/1Mv6bEr

http://ift.tt/1Aj1iIh

http://ift.tt/1Mv6bEt

EXCHANGES

AlcurEX

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Winklevoss Twins Creating Gemini – The NASDAQ for Bitcoin

The tortoise or the hare. The timeless Aesop fable has been applied to many situations, over and above the abilities of the animal kingdom. And it certainly can be applied to the quest in the United States to create a domestic Bitcoin exchange for the 2nd largest Bitcoin market in the world. 2014 saw many […]

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Bitcoin Price Advancing Through Bumpy Chart Area

Bitcoin price is advancing steadily toward $240 and 1500 CNY. The market quickly abandoned ideas of trading to the downside as this attack on the previous area of price resistance reveals. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 11h19 UTC […]

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Bitcoin Price Smash Down

Trading pulled the Bitcoin price from $268 to $228 (1665 to 1407 CNY) on Sunday after an exuberant high was achieved earlier in the day. Profit-taking changed into cynical short selling until price reversed from support near $230, as discussed below. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full […]

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Ultra Fast Block Chain with New Bitcoin Wallet

The Bitcoin Core development team released version 0.1 of its wallet software packages for all platforms this morning. The wallet was made available via the BitTorrent protocol, specifically to better serve regions of the world where Bitcoin.org official servers are either banned or hard to access. Among the goodies bundled in the new release were […]

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Bitcoin Tumbling: For Privacy Advocates or Money Launderers?

Can you make solid parallels between accounting or financial practices in the fiat currency world and the digital currency world? In a less and less private world, is seeking privacy in your digital financial transactions wrong? Can you “launder money” in the digital realm if Bitcoin is not actually, legally money? These grey area questions […]

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Apple’s Lightning Connector Reverse Engineered

Since the iPhone 5 was first introduced in 2012, all iOS devices have switched to Apple’s Lightning connector, replacing the older 30-pin dock connector.

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Darkcoin Now Supports Instant Transactions

With the release of wallet version 11.1.25, Darkcoin again delivers on its promises. Instant transactions suitable for day-to-day living; the ability to hardfork without permanently breaking the blockchain (if something goes wrong); and being able to make money by supporting the blockchain (without mining). All these add up to an explanation of why Darkcoin is […]

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New Hampshire Bitcoiners Testify to State Regulators

New Hampshire has a well-earned reputation for being one of the most libertarian, progressive, and affluent municipalities in the United States. And we have covered its natural love of the revolutionary digital currency Bitcoin here at CCN. Now, the one of the smallest states in the Union is looking to take a leading step in […]

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Bitcoin Value Climbing The Fibonacci Ladder

Bitcoin trade seems to be targeting every Fib extension religiously this weekend with the price ladder even and patterned. The price wave topped out near $270 and 1660 CNY and has since fallen back to chart support near $250 and 1560 CNY. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the […]

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Chinese Crypto Exchange Bter Has Been Hacked

The Chinese crypto currency exchange Bter has apparently been hacked and is currently down. Th website notes that 7170 BTC apparently got stolen from the exchange’s cold wallet and they are offering 720 BTC bounty giving the transaction Id for the stolen coins. It seems that this could be the end of Bter as this is not the first time that the crypto currency exchange is having such problems getting hacked and coins stolen. It is not yet clear if what will happen with the exchange this time, after a few months ago they were able to get back on track after getting hacked and a lot of NXT coins getting stolen. Even if they manage to get back online again after this issue it will be hard to earn back the trust of the users and we would still recommend to avoid using it in this case anyway.

BREAKING: Bter Freezes Accounts After 7170 Bitcoin Theft, Offering ~10% Bounty

At time of writing, all trading at Chinese cryptocurrency exchange Bter.com has halted. The reason? The usual. 7170 BTC Missing Bter has released no further details than the above screenshot indicates, as of yet. The transaction they are pointing to took place around 4:30 this morning (CST), which was about 6PM in Beijing. The exchange […]

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Most Effective Bank Robbing Tool? The Keyboard, Apparently

Russian security company Kapersky Labs, which was hired by a Ukranian bank in 2013 to investigate an ATM that randomly dispensed cash without even an ATM card present, is credited with discovering one of the biggest bank robberies in history.

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Unable to Vote in the Bitcoin Foundation Elections?

There has unfortunately been recent confusion with the Bitcoin Foundation Elections. We attempted to highlight the new criteria in our first article covering the Foundation elections and at the end of each following candidate article, gently nudged people that they might want to read the initial election article. That due to a recent change in […]

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The Bitcoin Foundation Elections Have Started

The Bitcoin Foundation elections have started. Up to the 19th of February, Bitcoin Foundation individual members will vote for two new Individual Directors who will be elected to represent the individual members. We spent some time contacting each candidate and asked them all exactly the same questions. We published the responses of those that replied […]

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Bitcoin Trading Up For a Rally

Bitcoin trading rallied price through resistance in the $240 / 1500CNY area earlier today and achieved a high of $252 (Bitfinex) and 1578 CNY (BTC-China). During the past few hours, a retracement has returned price to earlier resistance for a retest accompanied by strong reverse divergence. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 […]

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Facebook Bug Let Security Researcher Delete Anyone’s Photos

Security researcher and white hat hacker Laxman Muthiyah recently discovered a serious vulnerability in Facebook that would have allowed a malicious user to delete anyone’s public photos with just a few lines of code. Using Facebook’s Graph API, Muthiyah was able to trick the social network into believing that he owned the photos, allowing him […]

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Bitcoin Exchange Bittrex Will Remove 36 Cryptocurrencies on Sunday

Bittrex sent out an announcement to its users that it will be removing three dozen coins from its platform on Sunday the 15th of February. Pointing to the fact that they have “flagged and warned on these wallets for at least 30 days,” Bittrex will make no exceptions for funds remaining at time of execution. […]

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Bitcoin Price Rising From Support

Bitcoin price pushed higher toward a 2.618 Fib extension at $240 / 1,500 CNY without hitting the target convincingly. Another push may follow and how the market negotiates the resistance layer at $240 / 1,500 CNY will determine the course of price action in the coming days. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a […]

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NiceHashBot Tool for Easier Order Management

The NiceHash service for leasing and for purchasing crypto mining hashrate has released an useful tool for people that use NiceHash or WestHash for purchasing hashrate – NiceHashBot. The tool is in an open source and simple standalone Windows application for automatic order and profit management on NiceHash/WestHash. It is meant to ease the management of your orders on NiceHash/WestHash by automating some common operations which you would else have to carry out manually as well as to provide a basic platform for further development by anyone who would like to extend this bot into fully featured bot with advanced functionality thanks to the open source code. The tool uses the NiceHash API, so you need to enter your API key that you can find in the Account settings when you login in your NiceHash account and then you are ready to use it. If you are only using NiceHash or WestHash for selling your mining hashrate, then at the moment you don’t need the NiceHashBot tool, but you might want to check out the Miner Control tool instead. The source code of the NiceHashBot tool is available on GitHub and you can also find the compiled Windows package as well under the Releases tab.

– To check out the NiceHashBot tool and to download the application or source code…