Bitcoin VR, a Virtual Reality Bitcoin Block Explorer

Bitcoin VR is an interesting Virtual Reality application available for the HTC Vive VR headset as well as for the Google Cardboard VR platform available to Android mobile device users. It is essentially a visual gamified VR Blockchain explorer where you can can see real time Bitcoin transactions fall from the sky in the form of gems you can grab a gem to see the transaction details or shoot them with a Bow and Arrow.

Bitcoin VR has been developed by MandelDuck, the same guys that did the Sarutobi Bitcoin game that we have covered a while ago. Bitcoin VR is a free application for both the HTC VIVE and the Google Cardboard platforms, so you can download and try for either VR Blockchain explorer if you have any of the two at your disposal. It is interesting and fun to see a different perspective of the transactions that is taking advantage of VR technology, even though it is not terribly useful it is still worth checking out. Do note that the applications for the two platforms are not exactly the same in terms of functionality due to the specifics of the capabilities that they do provide to the user and especially due to the extra level of interactivity provided by HTC VIVE.

SiaCoin (SC) To Get a Dedicated Mining Hardware ASIC Device

The people behind the development of SiaCoin (SC) have tweeted an interesting, but very brief post about an upcoming release of a dedicated ASIC mining hardware intended for mining the SiaCoin tokens. The Obelisk SC1 is supposed to be the first ASIC built for Sia mining according to the official tweet from Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ). There are no more details revealed at this point, though more information should be made available by the end of the week.

SiaCoin has been getting more attention lately and the price of the crypto tokens has been rising, though releasing a mining ASIC for a token that is intended to be used for renting and leasing file storage is an interesting decision. Having a dedicated NAS device tied to SiaCoin like the MineBox makes much more sense for a service like that. SC can currently be mined using GPUs and not only being earned by providing free space to users that need to host some data and getting paid in SiaCoin tokens in return.

We are going to see what SiaCoin will actually announce and what their upcoming Obelisk SC1 will offer, but the initial user feedback is not that positive as one would expect. Switching to ASIC mining can actually result in negative results with GPU miners moving away switching to other altcoins and not getting into ASIC mining SC. As far as we are aware there are no other altcoins based on the same algorithm and mining like SiaCoin so essentially an ASIC miner will be very limited in terms of usability and may actually reach its end of life cycle much faster than other ASIC miners that can be used for multiple crypto coins that use the same algorithm.

Crypto Ping Telegram Crypto Monitoring Bot

A new and interesting service for the occasional or more serious crypto traders – Crypto Ping Telegarm Bot that tracks crypto prices and gives you trading signals. Do note that the service is not a trading bot that gives you advice on crypto trading, the goal is to provide you only with early warnings about increasing demand on the crypto markets. One more tool to help people with monitoring and analyzing the crypto market to predict price movements and give you a good timing to get in or get out of a crypto currency trading position. Currently the service is in beta mode and free to try, so we do recommend that you give it a go and see if it works for you or not…

Currently the Telegram bot supports monitoring for the following exchanges: Poloniex, Bittrex, Cryptopia and Yobit and gives you signals for the coins traded on them hinting at profitable trades before any pumps actually start. Although the Crypto Ping service is free to try at the moemnt it is also in the process of running an ICO to secure some funds in order to continue the development of the bot and add new features to it. After the ICO is over the tokens that will be distributed will be traded on exchanges and will also be a means to be used for the subscription fee that will be introduced for users willing to continue using the full functionality of the bot.

There aren’t a lot of such services available to the average crypto user that may not be too good at trading or may actually be too afraid to even try doing some trades on crypto exchanges. Should you decide to use a service like that one that gives you trading signals based on market analysis you should still be careful and not go all out You can just check the reliability of the signals by just doing some virtual trades and monitoring the outcome without actually doing some real trades. There is always risk involved, so some signals may not end up that good while others may be really profitable. Again, give the service a try while it is still in beta and free to use and see if it works for you or not.

– For more information and to check out the Crypto Ping Telegram Bot yourself…

Ethereum Hashrate Drop for Radeon RX400/RX500 GPUs is Incoming

Do you remember how last year AMD Radeon R9 280X GPUs started dropping in terms of mining hashrate for Ethereum due to the growing DAG file size? Well, it seems that we are in for the same thing happening with the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs in the next couple of months. We are currently at DAG epoch #129, but in the next 30-35 or so DAG epochs we are going to be seeing gradual drop in hashrate resulting in up to about 30% decrease from the current hashrate on the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs. It seems that other more powerful GPUs such as R9 290(x)/390(x) as well as Nvidia Pascal GPUs will not be affected or the drop in performance will be much smaller to a level considered pretty much insignificant compared to what will happen with AMD’s Polaris GPUs.

You can easily check what will happen with your existing GPU mining hardware and if it will be affected in terms of performance and how much by adding the option -benchmark 130 to the Claymore ETH miner. Change the number 130 (the next Ethereum DAG epoch) to the DAG epoch you want to test with such as 140, 150, 160 and see how your hashrate will change or if it will change. The Ethash DAG changes every 30000 blocks which is roughly every 4-5 days and with Ethereum this is called a DAG epoch, so every few days we move to the next DAG epoch. As DAG epochs move further on they also grow in size and put more stress to the video cards that are being used for mining and as a result there is also some performance drop observed over time. The more powerful the GPUs is and the more video memory it has, the more likely it is to be bale to handle better long term mining Ethereum.

Update on the Merito App for Gamers Who Want to Profit from Mining

A quick update on the Merito service that is intended to help gamers not yet into crypto currencies to easily make some extra cash from their gaming computers’ hardware. We’ve been keeping an eye on the service and everything seems to be progressing pretty well with new updates and fixes getting released and more users joining. Since Merito is targeted at gamers it allows you to use your computer hardware and mine in order to get a new game as a reward, vouchers for game purchases from G2A or get your earnings paid with PayPal. We have tried cashing out our earnings while testing to PayPal and in a couple of hours after requesting the payment they were transferred in our account. This makes it easy not to care about what crypto you are mining or what is the exchange rate or how to convert them to cash if you are a gamer. Of course this is intended for gamers, not for the regular crypto miners that actually do care about all these things.

– For more information and to download and try yourself the Metrito application…

The Cryptonomos Platform and the Giga Watt (WTT) Token

If you have been following us for a while already you have probably noticed that we are not big fans of ICOs and we aren’t covering much of these, even though lately there is a boom of Initial Coin Offerings and it seems that pretty much everyone is releasing tokens for something. There are however some that we do mention and take part into, mostly in serious ICOs that are being pushed by entities that already have some good product or service available and have some background and not just promises that might as well turn out to be empty. Once in a while there are some that are really worth talking about and that goes not because they have generated a lot of noise or have managed to secure insane amount of funding, but because they are really something worthwhile, different, disruptive and so on. A recent such example is Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT) that we have covered as we’ve been following the development of the Brave browser for a while already.

Another interesting ICO that we think is worth talking about and taking a part in is the Giga Watt (WTT) Token that is currently ongoing and will continue until July 31st or until all of the 30 Million tokens are sold. The Giga Watt WTT token are being issued on the Ethereum blockchain like many others that we have seen recently, but what is different here than most other ICOs is the fact that the launch of the ICO is together with a whole platform to support the token (as well as other future tokens). One of the issues with Ethereum ERC20 tokens we are seeing is that normally they are not very easy for people that are not more into Ethereum to take part into… the process is just really not that easy for not so technical or “into crypto” type of people.

The WTT tokens are being distributed via the new Cryptonomos platform for token sales as well as management. The Giga Watt (WTT) Token is essentially the first token launched together with the platform for easy purchase and management of the available tokens by the user. This eliminates the need for the user to look for compatible Ethereum wallets and to do complex things in order to take part into an ICO based in a crowdsale essentially significantly lowering the requirements and removing many of the obstacles. Thanks to the Cryptonomos platform you can easily transfer Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) or cash via a wire transfer and use them to purchase WTT tokens, and probably other tokens in the future as well. You should be also able to transfer tokens in and out of the platform when they are abvailable just like you would do if using a compatible Ethereum wallet for interacting with smart contracts. Of course there is the other point of view regarding the use of a dedicated platform – you are not in full control of your tokens like you can with an Ethereum wallet for example where you hold the private keys for the wallet.

Let us get back to Giga Watt (the former MegaBigPower), a USA-based company offering crypto mining hardware as well as hosting for it and of course enough electricity to power it and keep it cool. The company offers also users to host their own existing miners and even an add-on paid option of emergency equipment repairs in case of an issue in order to minimize downtime. The release of the WTT token allows the token holders to gain access to Giga Watt’s facility at a lower hosting rate, which in turn significantly increases the mining rewards. Each Giga Watt Project Token (WTT) represents the right to use the Giga Watt processing center’s capacity, rent-free for 50 years, to accommodate 1 Watt’s worth of mining equipment power consumption. Token owners can use the capacity they purchase to accommodate their own miners or if they don’t own or plan to purchase any miners to takr advantage of the hosting offer to just rent it out to other users. The idea that Giga Watt has is to use the token sale to be able to expand their capacity and to reward token holders that help them achieve that, so a win-win for both sides. For all the details about the Giga Watt (WTT) token and the plans of the company issuing it you should take a look at the detailed WTT token whitepaper (PDF) where everything is explained in much more details and all your questions should be answered.

– For more details about the Cryptonomos platform and the Giga Watt (WTT) Token sale…

AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13 GPUs Under Windows and Linux

While AsRock has not yet released for sale their new motherboard AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13 GPU support we already got confirmation that it is working with 13 video cards for mining under Linux and Windows. The sale of the new Pro BTC+ mining motherboard will probably not start before next month, but we already hope to be able to get an in-depth review hopefully by the end of this month or early next month.

Running 13 GPUs on a single mining rig might be a bit of a challenge as it is not only the motherboard that needs to provide you with the base, but you also need to take care of other hardware as well. Hardware such as power supplies that will handle 13 GPUs, we are talking about multiple PSUs for sure. There are also other possible challenges associated with more GPUs such as higher requirement towards the memory/swap as well as maybe even faster CPU to handle additional load coming from the mining software.

We have seen proof of 13 AMD GPUs running on the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard under Linux using the ethOS distribution for mining as well as 13 Nvidia GPUs recognized and working under Windows 10. We are yet to confirm this ourselves by testing the motherboard, but what we are seeing as results already is reassuring that we are going to get a real and working solution for more GPUs per mining rig than what is currently available in terms of 6, 7 and even 8 GPU mining motherboards. Since the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard is designed with crypto mining in mind it should be easy and problem free to setup, unlike some other motherboards that people are using at the moment that need some special settings or tweaks in order to make them work with more video cards than they are originally designed for.