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Friday, March 31, 2017
Weekly Analysis of Cryptocurrencies
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Sharing Some Tips and Advice About PCI-E USB 3.0 Extenders
The defacto standard at the moment for building multi-GPU mining rigs are the x1-x16 PCI Express USB 3.0 powered extenders/risers used to connect the video cards to the motherboard and everybody is using them. Due to the high popularity and demand there are already numerous variations available and since everyone wants to save on the costs for the hardware to maximize the profits people may end up with lower quality extenders as a result. Extenders are not the thing you want to compromise with both in terms of quality or in terms of price as they are usually connected and the difference in cost is usually not that much so saving some cents or a dollar per extender may not be the wisest thing you want to do…
We wanted to share some tips and advice on what to choose as well as what are some of the more common issues with these PCI-E to USB 3.0 extenders based on our experience so far. These risers boards essentially move the video cards away from the motherboard and have enough space in between them to ensure good cooling. They consist of a couple of components – main board with the video card slot, smaller PCI-E board for connecting to the motherboard, USB 3.0 cable and an optional power adapter (Molex to SATA Power, SATA Power to Molex, PCI-E Power to SATA Power or some other variation). Starting up with the color of the PCB of the raiser board, it seems that black and blue boards are generally of higher build quality than the green ones, so go for either of the two colors if you have the option to avoid green boards.
Starting up with the main board where most things can go wrong, even though rarely there is an issue with these, you can still get into plenty of trouble. The number one problem we’ve experienced with problematic and non-working extenders is due to poor soldering of elements. So checking out the solder joints is always a good idea even before installing the extenders and not after that when there might be something wrong. Check the solder connections of the connectors and the few elements on the board – if everything is in place and makes a good contact with the PCB.
Especially check the soldering of the voltage regulator as if not properly soldered everything might seem to be working fine, but you may still not get image outputted to the display and the GPU not working properly. We’ve also seen bad batches of extenders with the wrong LDO voltage regulators soldered on the PCB, so you might want to check the markings on these as well and verify that they are with 3.3V output. These do convert the 5V power input to 3.3V output required by the GPU as you are not directly providing that voltage and the GPU does need it to function properly.
Also check for solder leakage that may be shorting things on the board, especially around the power connectors. We’ve had some cases of bad soldering where the ground pins of the Molex power connector were shorting out with the 12V pins of the empty space for PCI-E Power available on the board for the extender as these are pretty close to each other. Power shorts like this one usually do trigger the built-in protection of the Power Supply and it does not want to turn on at all or immediately shuts down when you try to power on the system.
The smaller board that connects to a PCI-E slot on the motherboard rarely has issues and if it does it is a result of bad soldering of the USB connector on it. So far we’ve only seen really sloppy soldering job on some riser boards with green color PCBs where they were literally saving on solder and some of the pins had bad connection. That is easily fixable by resoldering the pins of the connector that are actually being used (not all of them are actually used). Other than that there is not much else that can go wrong here. You can use a multimeter to check the connection points on both boards through the USB cable with a multimeter just to be sure if you are experiencing some issues.
We’ve seen a lot of different USB 3.0 cables being used with the PCI-E to USB 3.0 riser boards, but never had an issue with any of the cables, so he chances that something is wrong with the data cable are pretty slim. These cables are used for data transfer only, no power goes through them from the motherboard to the video card and that is why there is a power connector on the board of the extender. Although the name mentions USB 3.0 and we actually use USB 3.0 cables, there is no USB connectivity or support anywhere with these devices. They only use USB 3.0 cables as good quality shielded wires for extending a couple of data lines from the motherboard to the video card. You are not able to plug in a video card to a regular USB 3.0 slot with these extenders, it will not work, so do not try doing it.
There are a couple of different power connectors available on different PCI-E to USB 3.0 extenders and in order to improve compatibility the package usually contains some sort of a power adapter that usually converts whatever connector is on the PCB to SATA Power. Most modern power supplies have a lot of SATA Power connectors and not as many Molex or other power connectors. Still going for the extenders with the standard 4-pin Molex power connector is probably the best choice, even if you have to use the supplied Molex to SATA Power adapter. Just make sure that you do not connect more than two extenders to a single power line going to the power supply as even though this may not be a problem for the Molex or SATA power we’ve seen many cases where it becomes an issue for the modular power connector on the power supply side resulting in melted plastic of the connector, loose connection and issues with that. A while ago we’ve published some more useful information about power cables and power supplies that you might have missed, but checking it out may also save you some possible trouble in the future.
(+) How to Start Trading Cryptocurrencies
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Thursday, March 30, 2017
Spanish Banking Giant BBVA Now a Member of Hyperledger Blockchain Project & Linux Foundation
The open-source Hyperledger Project's member ranks swells to 129 in total.
The post Spanish Banking Giant BBVA Now a Member of Hyperledger Blockchain Project & Linux Foundation appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
SEC Denies SolidX Bid for Bitcoin ETF Listing
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(+) Daily Analysis: Markets Mixed as Brexit Looms
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Singapore Inks FinTech Cooperation Pact with France
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Monday, March 27, 2017
Newsflash: Bitcoin Rises, US Dollar Sinks
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Sunday, March 26, 2017
(+) 5 Painful Losses In The Stock Market
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Saturday, March 25, 2017
(+) Time To Short The Market?
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Get Bitcoin Unlimited on HitBTC before It’s Too Late
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The post Get Bitcoin Unlimited on HitBTC before It’s Too Late appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
You Can Now Support Us Through the Brave Browser’s Brave Payments
A while ago we have introduced the Brave Payments Feature Powered by Bitcoin as a means for users to support their favorite websites by using the Brave browser and tipping them with Bitcoin. Now it is time to go through the Publisher side of things, guiding you through the steps required from website owners to claim any funds their users have sent them. This is an alternative way for users to support the websites they follow and like with their ads blocked by the Brave browser, because after all ads are usually the main revenue stream for most websites that do not sell products or services, but instead provide information.
Lets get started with what you need to go through in order to start using Brave Payments for your own website and be able to get supported by your readers through Bitcoin tips. You need to start by opening the Brave Publishers Dashboard to initiate the signup process and versification of your ownership of the website you want to register. Just click on the Start Verification button to initiate the website ownership confirmation process…
The first step is to enter your website URL and your contact details, after submitting that information you will receive an email to the address you have entered with a confirmation link. You need to click on that link in order to confirm you are the owner of the email address that you have entered in the contact information form.
The next step is to confirm your actual ownership of the website you are registering in the Publisher program of Brave, there are two options here – wait a couple of days to be contacted by a Brave Publisher Partner to complete the process or add a DNS record to the domain of the website in order to automatically complete the verification process in a couple of minutes. The second option is preferred if you have access to the DNS records of your domain and can add an extra TXT record to finish the confirmation process, otherwise you will just have to wait to be contacted.
Finishing the website ownership confirmation will show you if you actually have some fund pending that users may already sent your way and it also requires you to go through some more additional steps like entering your Bitcoin address where any funds you receive will be transferred on a monthly basis.
After entering your Bitcoin address you will also need to Declare IRS tax status by filling in the respective electronic tax form and submitting the information to Brave depending if you are US or Non-US based individual or a company.
That is it you are ready to get supported with Bitcoin tips by your readers if they are using the Brave browser’s Brave Payments feature and you should now focus on better content than thinking about getting advertisers. Also if you still haven’t tied the Brave browser now is probably a great time to download it and give it a try, the browser is available for Windows, Linux and Mac as well as Android and iOS mobile platforms.
Friday, March 24, 2017
Genesis Mining Now Offering Monero (XMR) Cloud Mining
With the user interest in Monero (XMR) peaking up in the last couple of months it is no wonder that we are now starting to see cloud mining services like Genesis Mining starting to offer cloud contracts for that crypto currency as well. The just announced Monero (XMR) cloud mining offers using the CryptoNight algorithm start at $33.99 USD for 30 H/s, then go for $999 USD for 900 H/s and $2899 USD for 2700 H/s as well as come with an option for any custom hashrate of course. The XMR cloud mining contracts are for 2 year period of time with all costs included in the price of the hahsrate, so no need to pay any extra maintenance fees or anything else for the duration of the mining contract. You can also use our special discount code CryptoMiningBlog5 to get some extra discount and get even better price should you decide to purchase an Monero cloud mining contract from the company. As usual with cloud mining offers, do the math first and the decide should you take up an offer or not.
– For more information about the new Monero (XMR) cloud mining offers from Genesis Mining…
Roger Ver Agrees To Sell BTC For BTU At 1:1 Ratio
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Report: Rise in Bitcoin Related Scams on Social Media
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Looking For The Efficiency Sweet Spot of GTX 1080 Ti
When looking for the best settings for GPUs that will be used for crypto currency mining it is often considered a good practice to optimize them for better efficiency and not for maximum performance. Going for the maximum performance often results is overclocking and thus higher power usage for the extra few hashes, not to mention the additional heat and as a result the overall efficiency may not be as good. If you are looking for the optimal efficiency you will most likely try to reduce the power usage of the GPU to decrease the power usage and heat output and not sacrifice any or at the cost of just a little performance drop. This is exactly what we are going to be doing now with the recently announced Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition video card, trying to find the sweet spot in terms of efficient (best hashrate per Watt of power used)…
For the purpose of our tests we are using the latest NiceHash Excavator v1.1.4a miner running on the Equihash algorithm used by Zcash (ZEC). Do note that other algorithms may need different settings for reaching better efficiency than the one tested here. Currently the Equihash algorithm is among the most profitable to mine on Nvidia CUDA GPUs, so we are focusing on it. Since all recent GPUs from Nvidia have both a base operating frequency and a boost operating frequency and the video card is managing the optimal one based on factors such as TDP and temperature it is easy to look for better efficiency just by lowering the TDP limit. This will essentially result in lowering the maximum boost frequency of the GPU and is an easy and very good thing to start from, if you wan to dig deeper you may also try to lower the operating voltage of the GPU in order to further improve the efficiency by lowering the power usage.
In the table above we start with the GTX 1080 Ti running at the maximum TDP level that is allowed with the +20% increase of the Power Limit meaning 250W default TDP + 50W increase or a total of 300W allowed. At this maximum allowed level you cannot expect to be anywhere near the optimum efficiency, not to mention that the GPU may not be able to reach that power usage anyway without further overclocking. We are however going to stay at the default settings and not overclock, playing only with the boost frequency of the GPU by lowering the TDP. The final result showed that the optimum efficiency in terms of hashrate per Watt is with around 60% TDP or about 150W for the GTX 1080 Ti. With that setting the operating frequency of the GPU stays at just a bit shy of 1500 MHz, or with other words at around the 1480 MHz base operating frequency. What essentially this means is that while the extra Boost frequency may rise the performance you get, the more it scales up, the less efficient the GPU becomes in terms of performance per Watt of power used. No wonder Nvidia has chosen this particular operating frequency as the base one for the GTX 1080 Ti, and the GPU manages to keep it up with a TDP of just 150W for mining the Equihash algorithm. Do note however that other mining algorithms, especially more GPU dependent may need more power for their sweet spot on the GTX 1080 Ti.
Storj Switching from Counterparty to Ethereum for Their SJCX Tokens
The blockchain-based distributed cloud storage service Storj has announced their plan to migrate from the SJCX from Counterparty (Bitcoin blockchain based) to the Ethereum ERC20 token standard. They have summarized the problems and reasons why they consider the switch to the Ethereum blockchain in order to be able to scale up the storage services that they are offering to a much larger number of users than what they currently have with the service just out of beta stage. Their summary is in line with mostly what is currently not Ok for many people using Bitcoin and the issues that need to be addressed in order for the future development and growth of Bitcoin, so do read the quote below.
1. The official Counterparty wallet software, Counterwallet, has had no major updates in over two years, and provides a confusing interface for new users.
2. Last year, multisig ceased functioning because Bitcoin made raw multisig transactions non-standard. Tokens in multisig wallets were rendered inaccessible. There is still no concrete migration path for multisig wallets without direct miner intervention. This makes us worried that other features will cease to function in the future.
3. Because Counterparty uses the Bitcoin blockchain for transactions, which is currently having issues with transaction backlog, our users have experienced extremely long transaction times (hours to days).
4. Because Counterparty transactions create small inputs and are heavier than normal BTC transactions, users have experienced extremely high fees for transactions. For the February farmer payout we paid over $1,600 in transaction fees, or about 13% of total payouts. This is not sustainable or scalable.
5. Our work on micropayment channels for Counterparty offers promising routes to addressing the problems above but is unlikely to be broadly useful. Micropayment networks require broad adoption to be effective and secure. It is unclear whether the Counterparty ecosystem can support a robust layer 2 network.
6. The Counterparty ecosystem is small. Very few other organizations are using it at scale. To create our micropayment tools, we’ve had to fund large upgrades to the Counterparty protocol. It’s not sustainable to finance protocol upgrades while also developing our network and products.
– For more details about Storj’s migration from Counterparty to Ethereum…
Ethereum Is Looking Strong, Bitcoin Is Disappointing
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(+) Securing Bitcoin: How to Use a Paper Wallet
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Thursday, March 23, 2017
Investment Recommendations: March 23rd
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(+) Stocks Bounce Higher As Markets Await Crucial Vote
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Deloitte Accepts Bitcoin for Toronto Office Restaurant
Deloitte's employee-only restaurant in its Toronto offices will now begin accepting bitcoin for lunch.
The post Deloitte Accepts Bitcoin for Toronto Office Restaurant appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
MSI Z710A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard for 7x GPUs
We got a tip about a motherboard that should be capable of driving seven video cards for mining, namely the , so we got one to give it a try. It is a Z170A Intel chipset motherboard for Socket 1151 processors (there are cheap Celerons available for it) and it uses the newer DDR4 memory. The motherboard is even packed with some fancy extras that are of no use for the purpose of mining, but they do increase the price of the product. Also do note that even if a motherboard has 7x PCI-E slots that does not mean that it will be able to work with 7 video cards connected with x1 to x16 PCI-E risers, it only means that there is a chance that it might work. Unfortunately there are actually not that much such motherboards available and the only few are usually high-end boards with a higher price tag and that is making them not so attractive for miners, especially compared to the use of the popular AsRock H81 Pro BTC motherboard for 6x GPU mining rigs.
The first thing you need to do with this motherboard, prior to attaching any external video card, is to make sure it is running the latest BIOS and if not to update it to version 1.7. This motherboard BIOS is just a few months old and is apparently what allows the particular motherboard to be able to run up to 7 video cards, so make sure you have it flashed before continuing.
The next step is to set some things in the motherboard BIOS. You need to go to the Settings \ Advanced \ PCI Subsystem Settings<\b> and switch the PEG0 and PEG1 Max Link Speed to Gen1 as well as set the Above 4G Decoding option to Enabled. These are pretty much the only settings you need to set in order to be able to run 7x GPUs, just make sure you set them in the BIOS before you start connecting the video cards otherwise you may experience instability of the system or it even not properly booting and allowing you to enter the BIOS. So set them first and then everything should be working fine, or almost.
You can see that Windows 10 properly sees 6x R9 390 video cards and a single RX 480 GPU connected in the device manager with the video driver installed and working properly. We actually have a weird issue with this motherboard as after setting up what is needed for it to work with 7x GPUs we are not able to properly get inside the BIOS of the motherboard. If at boot we press F9 to enter the BIOS the system just freezes and needs a restart, if we don’t press the F9 BIOS key it boost into the operating system and works just fine with seven video cards mining or whatever. In order to get inside the BIOS of the motherboard however we’ve had to clear the CMOS memory and redo the settings each time. We thought that it might be a KVM issue, but even with direct PS2 and USB keyboard connection we had the strange F9 freezing issue most of the time, even though a few times it worked just fine actually loading the BIOS and not freezing the system.
Anyway, while we are not entirely sure what is causing the BIOS freezing issue when you try to get inside with F9 after you set the required options to make the motherboard work with 7x GPUs everything else seems to work just fine. The system boots and sees all 7 video cards, even if they are different ones like in out 6+1 configuration, and you can run a miner that will see and start using all 7 video cards. So the MSI Z710A Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard apparently works, though there are still some glitches that may need fixing. The only issue with this motherboard is the higher price and that may be enough of a reason to make you stick with the more affordable and problem free use of AsRock H81 Pro BTC for 6x GPUs instead. Still if you already have a 6x or even less GPUs on some mining rigs and you have a suitable power supply an upgrade to a 7x GPU motherboard might be an interesting choice. Then again you would need to replace not only the motherboard, but also the CPU and the RAM as well, because of the newer chipset used by the MSI motherboard.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
With Bitcoin, the Smart Money Is Staying Put
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US Blockchain Firm Launches Digital Currency IRS Tax Software, Bitcoin Support Next
IRS-friendly tax software Node40 Balance supports Dash with Bitcoin next in line.
The post US Blockchain Firm Launches Digital Currency IRS Tax Software, Bitcoin Support Next appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
The UN’s WFP Uses the Blockchain to Feed Hungry Families
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Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Asian Banks Outline Blockchain Use Cases
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Newsflash: Bitcoin Price Bounces Back Above $1,100
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Bitcoin Unlimited at Almost 40%, Chandler Guo to Join
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IBM Triggers Enterprise-Ready Blockchain Services
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The Dole Food Stock Blunder Makes a Case for Blockchain
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The post The Dole Food Stock Blunder Makes a Case for Blockchain appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Asia’s Largest Stock Exchange Operator Set to Release Blockchain PoC User App
The Japan Exchange Group's blockchain consortium swells to 26 members
The post Asia’s Largest Stock Exchange Operator Set to Release Blockchain PoC User App appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Edgeless Casino Launches Black Jack Beta with 0% Edge
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Monday, March 20, 2017
(+) Blockchains And The War on Cash
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Sunday, March 19, 2017
Interview with IBM’s VP of Blockchain: Jerry Cuomo
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The post Interview with IBM’s VP of Blockchain: Jerry Cuomo appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Experimenting with Bitcoin on Your Honeymoon
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Saturday, March 18, 2017
Newsflash: Bitcoin Price Loses $200, Falls Under $950
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Op-Ed: Can Ethereum Overtake Bitcoin?
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Blockchain to Reshape the Electric Grid?
[…]
The post Blockchain to Reshape the Electric Grid? appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
New Motherboard for 6x GPU Mining Rigs from Biostar
AsRock is without a doubt the most popular manufacturers of motherboards designed for GPU mining rigs thanks to their H81 Pro BTC model, however lately the company is having trouble providing enough motherboards for GPU miners. There have been shortages of AsRock H81 Pro BTC motherboards and the demand is pretty high with new GPU mining rigs getting built a lot once more. The H81 chipset is getting old and there haven’t been more up to date BTC motherboards getting released with a newer chipset from AsRock either and this is apparently opening up some opportunities fro other manufacturers…
Entering Biostar with their new model TB250-BTC that is apparently intended for GPU mining rigs with up to 6x video cards and to additional 4-pin Molex power connectors onboard, just like on the AsRock Pro BTC series. To our knowledge this is the first motherboard intended for 6x GPU mining rigs with an up to date chipset, based on Intel B250 and supporting socket 1151 CPUs and DDR4 memory. The motherboard even has an M.2 slot available for installing onboard SSD modules, a feature that might also be interesting for some GPU miners. The only problem with Biostar as a brand is the limited availability on many markets or the total lack of such, unlike AsRock that is available on much more markets worldwide. The Biostar TB250-BTC in not the first attempt at such a solution from the company, they previously had the Biostar TB85 motherboard that also came as an alternative to AsRock’s H81 Pro BTC, but it never got too popular since it was also hard to find on many markets and was more expensive.
It is not like there are no other interesting alternatives available to the popular AsRock H81 Pro BTC motherboard with more recent chipsets, but since they are not designed for GPU mining rigs specifically they may not all work or may need some special settings and tuning. There are some interesting motherboards with the latest generation chipsets from Intel such as B250/H270 that come with 6 PCI-E slots and at a good price, though they may need some tinkering with the BIOS settings in order to make them work properly for mining. The price is important factor when building up a GPU mining rig and you don’t normally want to spend that much on a motherboard and CPU, especially if you don’t need any of the extra features or performance provided by the more expensive solutions… lower cost means faster ROI.
If you want to take a look at these alternative offers for possible good choices for 6x GPU mining rigs take a look at the offers from AsRock, Asus and MSI with B250/H270 chipsets that do have 6x PCI-E slots. On these however you need to switch the PCI-E to Gen 2.0 or Gen 1.0 and also force the TOLUD or Top Of Lower Usable Dram setting in the BIOS to 3.5 GB manually and not leave it to Auto mode as it is by default. You may want to make sure that the BIOS of the motherboard you go for has this BIOS option available, as otherwise the operating system may have issues properly assigning resources for all 6 GPUs and they many not work.
– For more details about the Biostar TB250-BTC motherboard for 6x GPU mining rigs…
(+) Ethereum smashed expectations
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FinTech’s Influence in Asian Markets Grows
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Friday, March 17, 2017
Ethereum Price Tear Almost Reached $60
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(+) FinTech Adoption Slower Than Expected
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
Ethereum Rises Stratospherically to New All-Time High
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The post Ethereum Rises Stratospherically to New All-Time High appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Online Demo of the xOS Interface of Minebox
The creators of the Minebox NAS storage with support for SIACoin (SC) have made available an online demo of the xOS interface that their devices apparently use, allowing users to get a feel on what to expect from the devices. Minebox is still running their limited pre-order of 200 units with 138 left to go, so you can still reserve yours if you are interested in the project and also want to support it. The sale is running a bit slow with some users not liking very much the higher price of the devices, but then again getting an NAS solution with the same HDDs for storage probably won’t be much different price wise and it will not have the features Minebox has.
– To check out the online demo of the xOS interface of Minebox…
Could Britain Become Cashless by 2043?
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The post Could Britain Become Cashless by 2043? appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Japanese Banks are Building a Blockchain Platform for Money Transfer Tests
Japan's primary banking association is building a blockchain to allow the country's banks to trial applications.
The post Japanese Banks are Building a Blockchain Platform for Money Transfer Tests appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Canadian Police Warns Public of Bitcoin Fraud Schemes
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The post Canadian Police Warns Public of Bitcoin Fraud Schemes appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
What Caused the Bitcoin Unlimited Node Crash?
[…]
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Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Bitcoin Core Developers Attack Bitcoin Unlimited
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The post Bitcoin Core Developers Attack Bitcoin Unlimited appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Japan Jumps Aboard Singapore’s FinTech Train
The financial regulators of Japan and Singapore ink a Fintech pact.
The post Japan Jumps Aboard Singapore’s FinTech Train appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Storj is Now Out of Beta, Get 25GB Free Decentralized Storage
Just about a week ago we have covered our 1 month long test of Storj while the service was still in beta and now they have announced that the Beta stage is over already. Storj, a Blockchain-based encrypted cloud storage service, allows users to get cheaper and reliable storage as compared to traditional storage solutions out there and also allows users with free space to rent it and get some extra income for the data being stored on their computers. It is an interesting concept and Storj is not the only service that is exploring the capabilities of the blockchain for that kind of usage as well as the use of a crypto token.
Since not that much has changed in the last week when we last used the service you can check the previous post linked above with some of our freedback and experience. The main concern we have at the moment is regarding the ease of use for users wiling to store their data on the Storj network… it just isn’t as easy as you’d normally expect. That, combined with the fact that Storj is offering 25GB of space and 25GB of traffic monthly for 12 months is making it harder for users that have some free space on their hard drives that want to make it usable and earn something back for renting it to Storj. Of course the service needs to attract users and their initial free offer sure does seem interesting in getting users to give it a try, but then again they also need to work on making it easier to store and access the data on the network.
If you pass the free space and traffic that you get when you sign up you will be charged at $0.015 USD for extra GB / month and $0.05 USD per GB of traffic, though the free 25GB should be enough for many users. After the initial 12 months promotional period you will need to pay for the storage space and bandwidth you will be using and unfortunately even though Storj has their own crypto token, you are not able to use any SCJX coins to pay for storage currently… you can only earn these tokens if you rent your hard drive space. So this is something that also needs more work in order to close the ecosystem and this is apparently something that is already planned in the future.
– You can check out the official website of Storj for more details…
Acquiring Bitcoin: Alternatives to LocalBitcoins.com
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Ethereum Has Doubled in Just a Few Days
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Monday, March 13, 2017
All Digital Currencies Are Up
[…]
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Bitcoin Casino Player Wins Record 216 BTC, Over $250,000
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Samsung SDS, Blocko Partner over Blockchain For Digital Money, Payments & Identity
Samsung Card, the conglomerate's credit card arm is reportedly set to benefit from blockchain technology.
The post Samsung SDS, Blocko Partner over Blockchain For Digital Money, Payments & Identity appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
A Quick Look Into The Ethereum Powered AKASHA Project
The AKASHA project is dubbed a next-generation social media network powered by the Ethereum (ETH) world computer and embedded into the Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS). It is a project that we’ve been keeping an eye on along with a few similar projects for crypto powered social media platforms and today we got an invitation to check out the latest Alpha version of the AKASHA. It seems however that the alpha has been out for a while already and it seems to be open for everyone interested to check it out, so the email we got was more a kind of reminder that we need to check the status of the project. It seems that the project already has a couple of thousand users and posts with more joining in to give it a try all the time…
We need to start with the fact that AKASHA does not work in your browser, like the similar in concept project Steem for example, instead you need to download and run an application to get access to the network. There are versions available for Linux, Mac and Windows users available, so all major software platforms are pretty much already covered. If you are interested in giving AKASHA a try you might want to head on to their GitHub page where you can download the latest alpha release. There are two separate versions available for each platform, one with an installed and one that is in a Zip archive that you can extract and run directly.
Since AKASHA is based on Ethereum when you first run it and install it you need to wait a bit for it to synchronize, no do not worry it does not need to download the complete Ethereum blockchain from the start or something, though you may still need to wait a couple of minutes while you connect to some peers and get things moving forward.
Once you synchronize AKASHA you will need to create a new identity or essentially a profile on the network. You need to enter a First Name, Akasha ID and a Passphrase as a requirement, the Last Name field is optional and you have some more optional details that you can enter as well is you want to like an short about you or extra links, you can also set an Avatar and a Background image to use. Later on you will be able to edit your Profile details, only the username and password are not available to be changed and there is no password recovery, so make sure you don’t forget your password, even though we are not sure if identities from the Alpha will be available for the launch of the network.
This is the window that welcomes you as soon as you finish with the registration and long in with your profile and is essentially your user interface for accessing the AKASHA network. You may need some time and a bit of tinkering to explore the currently available functionality, even though we are going to show you some of the most basic stuff here anyway. Do note that since this is still an Alpha version of the project not all features are available and working and the whole thing is also running on the testnet for the moment. By default you are being shown the latest posts tagged with the akasha tag, if you want to see the latest publications just switch to the Latest Entries.
The menu is on the left side, starting with a link to your profile page and a number showing the amount of tokens you have available. This is another important part of the whole project, it not only runs on the Ethereum blockchain, but also uses Ethereum tokens to reward users that post content on the network. Since it is still in Alpha the project uses AETH or the so called AKASHA ETH tokens instead of actual ETH tokens and you apparently start up with 5 AETH. As a test token it does not have any value outside the purpose of testing AKASHA, so feel free to spend it voting for posts while you explore the functionality of social network.
Posting content on the AKSAHA social network is one of the key aspects just like with any other social network, as well as reading and voting for content posted by other users of the network. The idea here however is that you get rewarded for your contribution if other users decide to support you with their votes, unlike with traditional social networks where you don’t get rewarded. Posting something is really easy, you start by writing a title of your posts and a content that can be composed of text and images and you can save for later it as a draft or publish it directly.
Before your post appears on AKASHA there are a few more details that you need to add some relevant tags to make your post easier to be found for a certain topic that it covers as well as choose a License for the post. Now, here is the interesting part, on AKASHA you get to choose what type of licensing you want for the content you post… it can be All rights reserved, or Some rights reserved as well as No rights reserved where you get to decide if it is under CC or Public Domain license. Retaining copyright over all your posts or some of them or having everything published and available under Creative Commons license, it is all up to you. The idea is that once you publish something it is not like it you waive all copyright over the content by default, you get to decide and that also gets stored along with your post.
Do note that actually publishing a post on the network does require you to spend some gas for the transaction on the network, so you will essentially be spending some AETH now to do that (ETH in the future). So it is not only earning up, but also spending some tokens to actually use the AKASHA network and “expenses” like these are intended to stimulate users to focus on interesting and useful “good quality” content and not post just about anything they think of. Not sure how many of you actually remember that originally ETH was intended as a crypto token to be spend for executing transactions on the Ethereum network and not to work in the same sense like a more traditional crypto coin such as Bitcoin does for example.
When your post is up you can vote for it as other users can also vote for your post. You can of course also vote for other users posts and you get to decide how much your vote will be worth… the more worth the more AETH you will spend and the more the respective users will get. There is also the option not only to Upvote, but also to Downvote content, however once you vote Up or Down you are not able to retract your vote for that post or change your decision.
You can browse posts by tags, look at the latest publications, or search for posts (cannot yet search for people on the network). You can browse among the users of the network and look for the ones to Follow or see who is Following you, there is a functionality to just tip users directly as well instead of just giving them votes should you decide that you want to do that. There is even a built-in chat in AKASHA, though at the moment there is just a single official channel for the Alpha release. You can of course create your own channel as well, but it will be available for 24 hours and after that all the messages inside it will disappear.
This is pretty much the basic functionality you have available in the current Alpha version of AKASHA, there are more features and functionality on the way as not everything is already implemented. The basic functionality is already there and it works pretty well in our opinion and with some more extra features and improvements this project will have some nice potential. What you will probably notice however is that some things related to posting or reading data may take a bit of time before they finish, this is something that needs some more work is well as nobody likes to wait.
This is an Alpha version of the project and you should remember that should you decide to give it a try at its current state, so things should get better for the final release. The fact that you need to use software that you download and run on your computer to access the AKASHA network might be a bit of inconvenience as compared to other similar projects that you can access directly from your Internet Browser. Aside from slower early adoption this should not prove to be such a problem later on if the project catches on and attracts a lot of user attention and one of the most attractive points here are the rewards for the users of the AKASHA network.
One more thing that needs addressing at the moment is regarding rewards for users that may not have that great and interesting things to post and get a lot of votes for their content or that actually want to contribute in ways different than posting themselves. Getting rewards for good comments or just for voting for interesting content has shown to work well with other similar projects, but here this is not being rewarded. Attracting users initially is one thing, but keeping them on the long run is completely different and for that to happen you need to engage them in different aspects of contributing and communicating with each other, as well as rewarding them for that, especially when the rewards play a key role in the project’s idea.
– If you are interested in more details you should just check out the Alpha of AKASHA here…
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Mining Performance of GTX 1080 Ti with ccMiner 2.0 RC2
Time for another group of tests of the newly released GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition video card by Nvidia. This time we have used the latest released of the ccMiner 2.0 RC2 fork by Tpruvot in order to test how all of the supported algorithms perform on the new GPU. Do note that not all of the supported crypto algorithms by this miner may be performing the fastest, so you should use the results as a reference if comparing results from 2.0 RC2 release only. We have managed to successfully test the hashrate on most of the supported algorithms by this miner, though we still did have trouble making some of them work, but that is to be expected with a new GPU release…
We have used ccMiner 2.0 RC2 by tpruvot in benchmark mode with all of the default settings for intensity on all algorithms supported by the miner. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU was running at the default 100% TDP or with other words a Power Limiter at 250W, though on the Founders Edition GPUs you can increase it by up to 20% all the way to 300W (mind the cooling though). The tests were performed on stock operating frequencies of the video card with the fan set at 100% in order to keep the GPU cool and prevent thermal throttling (dropping of the boost frequency) because of high temperature that might be reached with auto fans.
As you can see in the table with performance results above we have posted the hashrate and the power usage for each algorithm tested (if the test has successfully passed). The power usage values are the ones reported by the video card itself only and are based on its TDP limit, not the actual values measured at the wall (these will be higher). The algorithms pushing the 250W TDP limit might be able to benefit from a power limit increase, though you might want to be careful with that in terms of being able to properly cool down the card. On the other hand forcing the TDP limited down might bring significant power reduction with a little sacrifice in terms of hashrate thus giving you better performance per Watt than the stock settings.
With the BMW algorithm we got an error at the default intensity of 21, and we’ve had to decrease it down to 15 in order to make it work, resulting in very low hashrate. With Cryptonight we got an error at the default intensity of 10.75, but down to 10.25 it worked and you can see the result in the table. With the Jackpot algorithm we also got an error at the default intensity of 20, however lowering it did not seem to help at all and the same thing also applies to the Quark algorithm. With the Wildkeccak algorithm we had trouble making it work properly in benchmark mode due to the specifics of the algorithm needing a scratchpad file.
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ccMiner 2.0 RC2 by Tpruvot for Nvidia GPUs Now Available
The development of some of the ccMiner forks for Nvidia GPU miners didn’t seem very active visually in the last couple of months, especially with coins such as ZCash (ZEC) that came with their own miner releases, but it hasn’t been stopped. A few days ago tpruvot has made a pre-release version of his new ccMiner 2.0 available (source) for people interested in checking it out with probably a few small things left to be ironed out before the final 2.0 release is made available. So if you are using Nvidia GPUs to mine crypto coins then you might want to give it a try and don’t forget to send a tip to your local friendly ccMiner developer for a beer or two to show your support.
ccMiner 2.0 RC2 changelog:
– Handle cryptonight, wildkeccak and cryptonight-lite
– Add a series of new algorithms: timetravel, bastion, hmq1725, sha256t
– Import lyra2z from djm34 work…
– Rework the common skein512 (used in most algos except skein ;)
– Upgrade whirlpool algo with alexis version (2x faster)
– Store the share diff of second nonce(s) in most algos
– Hardware monitoring thread to get more accurate power readings
– Small changes for the quiet mode & max-log-rate to reduce logs noise
– Blake2s fix, variant built with CUDA 6.5 (not usable for lbry)
Do note that this release may not contain the best optimizations and fastest performance on all of the supported algorithms, so depending on what you are currently mining you may need to stick to another faster fork of ccMiner or not. Also the CUDA 6.5 binary release does not work for LBRY mining as noted in the changelog, so either use the 8.0 release or compile with 7.5 for mining that coin.
– To download the latest official ccMiner 2.0 RC2 Windows binaries (32/64-bit)…
Genesis Mining Offering Ethereum Cloud Mining Again
The cloud mining provider Geneis Mining has started offering Ethereum cloud mining contracts again after they were not available for a couple of months with the focus more on ZCash cloud mining with GPUs. The new mining contracts are available at a lower price and with an extended 2 Years period with no additional mining fees (everything is included in the price you pay for the hashrate). There is of course a clause in the contract saying that in case Ethereum switches to Proof of Stake (POS) before the contract period ends your hashrate will not disappear, but will instead be switched to the most profitable algorithm to mine at that point of time. Initially we expected to see Ethereum (ETH) switch to POS at some point this year, but this will most likely be delayed and no official date for the switch has been announced yet… and the interest and price of Ethereum has been going up lately once more.
You can currently get 1 MHS Ethereum cloud mining hashrate for $29.99 USD, 30 MHS for $869 USD of 100 MHS for $2799 USD as a preset packages or any custom hashrate in between with discounts for the more you purchase. The Ethereum cloud mining contracts are with a duration of 2 years and there is no maintenance fee, everything is included in the price you pay for the hashrate. You can also use our special discount code CryptoMiningBlog5 to get some extra discount and get even better price should you decide to purchase an Ethereum cloud mining contract from the company.
– For more information about the Ethereum cloud mining offers available from Genesis Mining…
Saturday, March 11, 2017
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