Archive for the ‘Crypto News’ Category

New ZeusHash Promotion for Winning Various HashBuffs

27, Nov 2014

new-zeushash-promotion

The cloud mining service ZeusHash has started a new promotion for users of the service giving them the chance to get some HashBuffs that may give users of the service some boost in profitability. The new promotion is for collecting HashScore by doing various things and then you can redeem the collected HashScore for HashBuff upgrades. The promotion will run from today November 27th until December 3rd and the HashBuff upgrades you can win during this time via HashScore apply for new orders only and if unused they will expire in 7 days. The way we understand this is that if you for example win a 1 Day double payout and you activate it you will only benefit from it only if you also purchase some hashrate after you activate, it will not double the payout for the hashrate that you already own, the same should also apply for the zero maintenance fee HashBuffs. The only more interesting HashBuffs that should give you a nice advantage are the 5 GHS and 100 GHS extra hashrate, but these are probably the hardest to get and they still need a new hashrate purchase to be activated and the bonus hashrate to be credited to your account.

We have tried the HashScore lottery already just out of curiosity as we’ve had some points in our account, so we’ve decided to spend them and thus try our luck. The result from 6 tries to win HashBuff upgrades were 1x 5GHS Extra Hashrate, 2x 1 Day Double Payout and 1x 1 Day 0 Maintenance Fee. Do note that you need to actually activate the won HashBuffs in order for them to do what they are giving you as an advantage and you have 7 days to do so or you will loose them – this means you need to make a separate purchase of hashrate for each and every HashBuff in 7 days after you’ve won it. The funny thing is that when we try to directly activate our 5 GHS Extra Hashrate HashBuff it does nothing, we neither get extra hashrate, nor we get the HashBuff marked as used. After a bit of digging we have found out that even the Extra Hashrate HashBuff upgrades do require you to purchase new hashrate in order for them to be applied, just like all the other HashBuffs do.

We can say that ZeusHash has been quite active lately in trying to promote their cloud mining service via various promotions like the latest one, and although these could add something fun to the cloud mining thing and engage users, the end result is not so good. What the ultimate goal of all these things is to bring more people to the service and to sell them more hashrate, either for Bitcoin or Litecoin cloud mining. However these do not seem to work pretty well and the actual reason for that is the not overly attractive prices for hashrate, combined with the high maintenance fees that result in pretty low actual profit. Unless that changes whatever clever or fun promotions the service thinks of it will probably not attract that much new users that will be ready to invest into hashrate.

– For more information about the latest HashBuff promotion running now on ZeusHash….

KNCMiner Solar, New 16nm ASIC Chips Coming in 2015

19, Nov 2014

knc_solar_eclipse_logo

KNCMiner has announced that they will have a new 16 nm based ASIC chip called Solar ready in early 2015 (most likely a SHA-256 ASIC for Bitcoin mining). The company expects that their 5000+ core Solar 16nm (FinFET) processor technology will deliver at least a six-fold increase in performance compared to the previous generation 20nm hardware thus achieving 0.07 Watts per GHS. This should allow an increase of up to 10 times in the hashrate with the same power consumption of the previous generation of hardware. Interestingly enough the company only announced the new chips only and no miners that will be based on them, something that may not be so bad as an idea considering the negative opinion miners have on pre-orders including the previous ones from KNC. Regardless, it will be harder for KNC to sell new miners to customers unless they already have the hardware available and ready for shipping and not giving promises that they may not keep on shipping date. So the fact that no ASIC miner products using the new Solar chips are being announced yet could mean KNC can decide to use them in their cloud data centers only and not offer them to end users at all. KNCMiner is not without a competition however, CoinTerra, another ASIC manufacturer has already announced that they are working on 16nm chips and that miners based on them will be available in 2015. The fact that the 16nm production process is not yet widely available and ready for mass production would however mean that the first ASIC chips made using it may be pricier, at least until the yield of good chips is high enough. The development of very complex chips with thousands of cores is another thing that will require a serious financial support, but apparently KNC does not need to make pre-orders this time to get the money required from miners.

ZeusHash With Promotional Prices and Partnership with Gridseed

18, Nov 2014

zeushash-new-price-promotion

It seems that ZeusMiner is now pretty much a cloud mining service provider as the company is apparently moving towards focusing on offering Bitcoin and Litecoin cloud mining hashrate though their service ZeusHash. The company has been announcing multiple partnerships with other ASIC manufacturers, but the focus of these is towards getting mining hardware for their cloud mining service as apparently ZeusMiner has no plans to continue making hardware themselves after canceling their GEN III product plans. A new partnership has been announced with Gridseed as a hardware provider for the cloud mining operation along with a slight reduction of the current maintenance fees from $0.059 to $0.058 USD per MHS for the Scrypt hashrate. Gridseed has been silent for a while now after being the first company to go out with Scrypt ASIC miners earlier this year and they are probably working on the next generation hardware already. Regarding the cloud mining pricing, ZeusHash has also announced a Thanksgiving Promotion on the Litecoin MHS prices that will be running from November 17th to 27th. The new prices might be of interest mostly to people that are willing to invest in more serious hashrates as then the prices become more attractive. The not so good news is that apparently the Litecoin network difficulty is seeing some significant increases lately, so making bigger investments at the moment may not be the wisest idea. Interestingly enough we are yet to see a cloud mining provider offering some great deals for the upcoming Black Friday.

– For more information about the current price promotions from ZeusHash….


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