Archive for the ‘Crypto Coins’ Category

Report on Mining Burst and Using SIA for 5 Days

6, Feb 2016

burst-mining-earnings

Earlier this week we have checked out the current status of Burst, an interesting altcoin that uses free HDD space for mining as well as started using SIA – a Blockchain-based cloud data storage service that has its own crypto currency token used to pay users sharing their free hard drive space (also mineable). So now it is time to share what we have earned or should earn for 5 days of mining Burst coins and sharing our free space using the Sia and also to compare to what we have earned as a rewards for testing the Storj DriveShare service that we have posted about yesterday.

We are starting with Burst, for 5 days mining the coin with 100 GB plot size (rather small) in a mining pool we have managed to earn a little short of 180 Burst coins. These coins are immediately available in our wallet once they are confirmed, unlike with DriveShare where rewards are currently distributed on a monthly basis for the previous month and when the contract ends for hosing files on Sia. Looking at the current exchange rate for Burst is 19 satoshi per coin, so for 5 days this means we have managed to mine just about 3420 satoshi. An estimate for 20 days based on these earnings in order to be able to compare to the earnings from Storj means we should expect to mine the Burst coin alternative of about 13680 satoshi. Just as a comparison, for 20 days sharing the same 100 GB size of data on the DriveShare in the current beta we have earned as a reward a little over 12 SJCX coins or about 115000 satoshi. So even with the not so high rewards in the current Storj DriveShare beta you can earn more than mining Burst with the same shared free space. The catch with Storj however is that you need to invest in at least 10000 SJCX coins and have them in your wallet in order to be eligible for receiving rewards.

sia-usage-earnings

Moving on to Sia that is similar to idea to Storj’s MetaDisk and DriveShare services, however unlike with Storj’s services Sia is already operational and you can purchase contracts ans share files or host files of other users and pay or get paid for your services. After 5 days of running the Sia wallet and client sharing 100 GB of free space on the network we are at an estimated 520 Sia coins to be earned once our current contracts are over. This is with a set price of 100 Sia coins per GB of space per month which is below the average usually floating in between 130-160 Sia coins per Gigabyte per month price that can even go up to about 200. The current price of Siacoin is about 7 satoshi or this means that when we fulfill our hosting contracts we would have earned 3640 satoshi for 5 fays or an estimate of about 14560 satoshi for 20 days in order to compare with the Storj rewards.

The catch with Sia is that even though we are sharing 100 GB of free space for 5 days we have managed to get contracts for hosting only about 3.5 GB of user data. Interestingly enough with just 3.5 GB we have managed to get an estimated earnings of slightly more than when mining for Burst coins, but still significantly less than we have earned from Storj’s DriveShare beta rewards. IF we multiply the rewards for the 3.5 GB shared data to estimate what would the full 100 GB earn if we have sold the full size result in about 14872 Siacoins in earnings. That would mean that for 20 days if we managed to immediately sell the full 100 GB free space that we decided to dedicate to Sia we could have earned nearly 105000 satoshi. This would be significantly more than form Burst, but still lower than the DriveShare rewards estimated for the same time and with the same amount of free space shared.

So it seems that Storj’s DriveShare beta service and the rewards that are being distributed for helping in testing and developing the service is more profitable at the current exchange rates and the potential for even more earnings s there once the service is ready for official launch. The drawback however is that you need to invest a significant amount in at least 1000 SJCX coins in order to be eligible for rewards. Also once again the service launches it may face the same problem as Sia at the moment – not enough users to quickly take up all of the offered free space by hosters. Sia has good potential to develop and compete with the likes of Storj, but it needs more users and needs to address some important things that we have covered in our initial impressions. The advantage that Sia has is that you are able to mine Siacoins in a more traditional way, however this also needs work as currently it is only solo mining and there are quite a few inconveniences present there as well.

Then comes Burst, it also needs more work to become more user friendly and easy to get into by novice users. Burst has a lot of extra features, however they are not that well described or easy to be used or whatever, making their presence insignificant if they do not attract users or are being used just by very few people. Then again you may also say that the coin is undervalued at the moment, another possibility that results in low profit for mining Burst at the moment…

Decred (DCR), a New Hybrid PoW/PoS Altcoin Launching Soon

5, Feb 2016

cgminer-decred-dcr

Decred (DCR) is a new open, progressive, and self-funding crypto currency with a system of community-based governance integrated into its blockchain. At its core is a hybridized proof-of-work proof-of-stake (PoW/PoS) consensus system that aims to strike a balance between PoW miners and PoS voters to create a more robust notion of consensus. The project is a result of the theoretical proposals brought by proof-of-activity (PoA) and MC2 in 2013. Decred development started in April, 2014 with a single developer and expanded to include developers from btcsuite shortly thereafter.

Decred is currently running on testnet preparing for the launch of the mainnet on 12:00 PM CST February 8th, 2016. There crypto currency uses Blake256 14-rounds algorithm for mining and there is a cgminer fork (source) already available for testing, though currently only getwork is supported and not stratum. The cgminer for Decred GPU mining is available below compiled for 64-bit Windows ready for testing on some of the few currently available mining pools that also run on the testnet (will be switching to mainnet after the official launch). The cgminer works on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs as the currently available ccMiner forks from tpruvot and sp do not currently work with Decred even though they do have support for Blake256 14-rounds mining.

Trying out the cgminer for Decred (DRC) on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 has shown an average hashrate of about 1.3 GHS and trying the miner on an AMD Radeon R9 280X has shown a hashrate of about 1.3 GHs as well with both runningn at stock frequencies. There is already quite a lot of interest and a large community forming around the Decred crypto currency even before the official launch, so this is something that is worth checking out if you still have not heard about it. Also make sure you get ready for the official launch of the coin on Monday. Some good places to trade Decred (DCR) include Bittrex, Binance and Livecoin.

– Download and try the cgminer fork for mining Decred on Windows (64-bit miner)…

Interesting Proof of Stake Crypto Coins For Investment

3, Feb 2016

crypto-chips
A lot of people do not like much Proof of Stake (PoS) coins as quite a lot of these do not have a long lifespan and are generally considered a loss of time and money, however there are some coins that have endured the test of time. Some of these coins might be an interesting option to invest into by buying and making some profit from the staking and future increase in their value, below we have compiled a short list of some such coins with a bit more details about each one and a link to the announcement thread on Bitcointalk where you can get additional information to help you make a decision. The focus of the list are coins with higher annual interest rate as if there is just 1% or less per year you can only hope to gain profit by long term increase of the value of the coin. When considering PoS coins that might be interesting for long term investment you should look for ones with higher interest rate that start at about 5% annually, but be careful with ones that have a very high interest rate as that might not be that good. Other things to look for include an active and bigger community of users, the coin being traded on larger altcoin exchanges such as Bitttrex or Poloniex with a decent volume. Check our list below with some such coins that we consider that are worth checking out in more detail if you are interested in making investment in Proof of Stake coins, the list may be missing some coins, so feel free to point additional ones in the comments below. If you prefer long-term physical investments, you can invest in pink diamonds. In fact, many investors prefer to invest in jewelry more because it is less risky than other markets.

List of PoS coins to check out:
– BlackCoin (BLK/BC), currently PoS only, fixed stakign reward of 1.5 BLK + fees time dependent, traded on Bittrex and Poloniex with big volume, active community.
– CoinMagi (XMG) – M7M, PoW and PoS, up to 5% annual interest rate, traded on Bittrex and Poloniex, small volume, active community.
– Diamond (DMD), Diamond-Groestl, 0.2 DMD PoW, 25% annual interest rate for PoS, decreasing further in time, traded on Bittrex, active community.
– Mintcoin (MINT), currently PoS only, 10% annual interest rate to further decrease to 5%, traded on Poloniex, large volume, active community.
– OKCash (OK), currently PoS only, 20% annual interest rate to decrease further to 6%, traded on Bittrex, small volume, small community.
– HyperStake (HYP), currently Pos only, up to 750% annual interest rate with limitations on how much coins you can stake driving actual rate lower, traded on Poloniex, small volume, active community.
– Hyper (HYPER), currently PoS only, 5% monthly interest rate to further decrease to 2% annual, traded on Bittrex, small volume, active community.
– Quotient (XQN), currently PoS only, 1618% annual interest rate for PoS (max reward cap?), traded on Bittrex, small volume.
– Reddcoin (RDD), currently PoS only, 5% annual interest for PoS, traded on Bittrex and Poloniex with big volume, active comunity.
– ZeitCoin (ZEIT), currently Pos only, 15% annual interest rate to further decrease to 5%, traded on smaller exchanges only, small volume, active community.


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