Archive for the ‘Crypto News’ Category

Upcoming JASMINER X16-Q High Throughput 3U Quiet Server Ethash Miner

28, Nov 2022

A few days ago, Jasminer has teased with an upcoming new Ethash/ETChash miner called X16 and now there is more information regarding the specifications and pricing of the new device available. Jasminer and their X4 chips are currently one the most efficient solution for mining ETH-based DAG coins and their upcoming X16 chips should be capable of delivering even better performance. The newly released information form Jasminer states that their new Jasminer X16-Q (an upgraded version of their X4-Q quiet miner) is supposed to be capable of 1845 MH/s hashrate for Ethash/ETChash with 630 Watts of power usage or 2.93 Megahash per Watt (0.34 J/MH efficiency). As comparison the X4-Q does offer 2.17 Megahash per Watt power efficiency (1040 MH/s at 480 Watts or 0.46 J/MH efficiency), so a nice improvement in power efficiency and is is not only higher hashrate with lower power usage apparently. The new X16 miners should also come with 8GB of memory available for larger DAG coins as compared to the just 5GB available with the current generation of X4 devices.

The price cited on the official Jasminer website for their upcoming JASMINER X16-Q High Throughput 3U Quiet Server is $2799 USD, though there is no stock and you cannot apparently pre-order the device… it has not been released for sale yet. The device is rated at just 40 dB as noise level thus it continues the legacy of the X4-Q for a quiet miner that can be used at home as a space heater, however the release timeframe for the new model does not make it very attractive for such use as it will apparently miss the cold winter days. According to Jingle Mining, an official Jasminer reseller, the expected delivery date for the new X16-Q devices is somewhere in between May 1st and May 31st next year, so quite a bit of time before these make it on the market apparently.

There is currently no word regarding support for Nicehash and Dual-Mining Ethash/ETChash coins with Zilliqa (ZIL) however for the new X16 products as currently one of the main drawbacks of the Jasminer X4 devices in realizing their maximum potential and profitability is the lack of support for these. It will be nice to see a solution for Nicehash and Dual-Mining with ZIL as they can improve profitability of the existing and upcoming devices significantly at the moment and make them more interesting for miners in the current not so favourable mining conditions where even being able to cover for electricity costs is a challenge. Guess we’ll have to wait a bit more and see if these will be addressed or not, and by the time the new miner is released on the market it is also possible that even without these available the profitability might make them not much of a problem like they are currently.

– To get more details about the Jasminer X16-Q on the official website…

Bitcoin Has Officially Been Added to the Guinness Book of World Records

18, Oct 2022

Another first for crypto and Bitcoin (BTC), now an official world record as Bitcoin has been officially added to the Guinness Book of World Records as the first decentralized cryptocurrency.

The first decentralized cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, which was described in a white paper published online by “Satoshi Nakamoto” on 18 August 2008. A working implementation of the concept was completed by 3 January 2009, when Nakamoto mined the first block on the blockchain, and the open-source client was released to the public on 9 January 2009.

Bitcoin was developed as a solution to the challenge of regulating a digital currency without any centralized organization, or “trusted third party”, to oversee transactions. Earlier attempts at creating digital currencies used similar cryptographic techniques to identify users and log transactions, but still required a trusted third party (acting like a bank) to make sure that people didn’t “double spend” – that is, spend the same money more than once.

– More on the Bitcoin’s addition to the Guinness Book of World Records….

Nvidia Has Removed the LHR Lock in the Latest Driver 522.25

14, Oct 2022

It seems that the latest video driver from Nvidia version 522.25 just released with support for the new Nvidia RTX 4090 GPUs does also come with a removed LHR, so no more the need to use a miner that unlocks the GPU’s full performance for mining (if you have a LHR video card that is). One would argue that after Ethereum switching to PoS and not being minable anymore is a reason enough for this move from Nvidia to remove the hashrate limiter on their RTX 30xx series of GPUs. We have tested the latest video drivers on LHR locked RTX 3070 Ti GPUs with PhoenixMiner 5.9 that does not yet support any kind of LHR unlock and they are doing 80 MH/s mining. Other LHR locked GPUs should also be capable of their full hahsrate without the need of special unlocking miner, though we have not been able to test and confirm other GPUs for the moment.

It is not the mining part; it is the sales part that is the reason for the LHR removal. The current situation with no profit for most miners means that there is no need to have software that implies further hashrate limiter like the LHR mode in place as it will further decrease the interest from miners for Nvidia GPUs with the current market situation. And while Nvidia was really enjoying the last bull run with huge demand for their video cards, the situation at the moment is not very favourable for the company even with the launch of their new RTX 4090 GPUs. Miners are not buying new GPUs, in fact many are not only not buying, but are actually starting to sell their RTX 30 series video cards on the second-hand market at lower and lower prices as they don’t see a point using the for mining at the moment…

So, is Nvidia trying to “make things right” with the crypto miners one more now that they need to be brought back buying GPUs in time for the next crypto bull run? It probably is, and if not, they can always say the lack of LHR lock in the 522.25 drivers was a developer mistake that will be fixed in a future driver update!


top