Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

180 GHS AntMiner S1 vs 180 GHS Cloud Mining Contract

3, Mar 2014

bitmaintech-antminer-s1-asic-miner

Bitmaintech, the company making 180 GHS AntMiner S1 BTC ASIC devices is still pretty much the only company that only sells units that are on stock and are shipped fast to you with express delivery. Currently the price of a single 180 GHS AntMiner S1 is 1.345 BTC directly from the maker and that includes the shipping costs too. But the question that arises is if these devices are worth investing in now with Terahash ASICs right around the corner? That is why we have decided to do a comparison between the 180 GHS AntMiner S1 ASIC and a cloud mining service as an alternative option and we have chosen the PB Mining Bitcoin cloud mining service. We choose that provides of cloud-based hashrate for mining BTC as they currently offer the most attractive price per GHS of just 0.0089 BTC per GHS.

pbmining-5-year-btc-mining-contracts

We choose the PB Mining service for comparison as we have been using the service for a while already and it seems to be running smooth and without issues. Note that what you get there is a mining contract for 5 years, there is no exchange available where you can trade the purchased GHS. This long term contract is the reason why the price is much more attractive as when compared to CEX.io or other similar services.

So what are the raw numbers:
– 180 GHS AntMiner S1 is 1.345 BTC
– 180 GHS Cloud Mining is 1.602 BTC

This you should however add some more to the price of the AntMiner S1 as you will need to buy a power supply for using the ASIC as there is none included. For a good 500W power supply that you will need you should add in about 0.1 BTC more, plus customs taxes for the ASIC as it is shipped from China that are going to be at least another 0.1 BTC and you get 1.545 BTC or a value that is already pretty close… With the current value in two-three days mining you will be able to cover the remaining difference and you may need to wait for about a week for your miner to arrive, and the cloud mining hashrate will start mining for you pretty much right away or in a few hours after you send the payment.

So it seems that the PB Mining cloud mining service seems an option that is not less attractive than purchasing an 180 GHS AntMiner S1 ASIC device. Of course there are other variables as well, like the fact that you can easily overclock the AntMiner S1 to about 200 GHS, but you will also have an extra cost for the power used by the device that will probably be covered by the extra hashrate achieved by overclocking the miner. So you really have an interesting cloud mining alternative than to purchase mining hardware, both will take pretty much the same time for you to break even before starting to make extra Bitcoins. The choice is yours, but you should consider the alternative options you have in the form of cloud mining instead of purchasing ASIC hardware directly from the manufacturer even if it will be shipped immediately to you.

ScryptGuild Scrypt Pool Now in Beta and Open for Users

26, Feb 2014

scryptguild-mining-pool

Earlier this month we have mentioned the announcement of the ScryptGuild pool in their Alfa stage with invite only access and now the pool has moved to Beta stage and is open for free registrations. ScryptGuild is a pool with multiple alternative crypto currencies and an automatic switching algorithm that allows you to mine the most profitable crypto at the moment. It is similar to Multipool and the likes of it, however ScryptGuild offer some extra features that make it more attractive. For example you can set only one mining pool and switch to different cryptos to be mined on per worker basis directly from the web interface, there is also an option to directly sell your alternative coins that you have mined for BTC. Not to mention that the list of alternative cryptos is more up to date based on the more profitable coins at the moment and not keeping coins that you will probably not want to mine anymore like in Multipool for example.

ScryptGuild uses PPLNS system for distributing miners earnings or Pay per Last N Shares. This is a payment method which does not allow for pool hopping because it pays for work done previously, rather than paying for work based on the concept of “rounds”. ScryptGuild applies payments to the 5 most recent shifts: The active shift, and 4 recently finished (“open”) shifts. Payments are applied on a per coin basis, using your score on that coin vs the total pool score on that coin. Shifts are closed every hour, one minute after the hour. The pool fee is 2% and the current hashrate of the pool is already about 2150 MHS. You can set the minimum difficulty level starting from 16 and going up for each worker independently, so it is also a goo d place for low hashrate miners such as Nvidia-based GPUs or small Scrypt ASICs like the USD DualMiners.

We have been using the pool for a few days already and like the stability and ease of use, along with the useful extra features that it offers, including the direct sell for BTC from the pool with a slightly higher fee than if you move your coins to an exchange and sell them there (you can still do that if you wish). So we have said good-bye to Multipool and have switched to ScryptGuild completely for our main alternative profit based mining pool. And our backup pool for a while already is LTC Rabbit, though at the moment the extra altcoin bonus that this pool offers is rarely seen and most of the time we are mining LTC directly there instead of alt coins. Still good for a backup pool though as it is stable and runs reliably, so we would still recommend it as a good backup option. The combination between the two pools works like a charm for us, so we do recommend to try it out yourself if you still hasn’t done so.

– To check out the new ScryptGuild Scrypt-based alternative crypto mining pool…

Trade and Earn Crypto from People Trading at the Mcxnow Exchange

25, Feb 2014

mcxnow-crypto-currency-exchange
We have already mentioned a service called Crypto Shares that gives you the ability to buy shares earn dividends on them in various crypto related services and even some crypto exchanges. But another exchanged called MCXnow seems to have implemented this approach directly in their own system, you can buy the so called mcxFEE in that exchange that is essentially like a shares of the exchange. There are 100000 mcxFEE total out of which 50000 have been released to the public and are traded on the exchange so if you buy 1 mcxFEE you will receive 0.001% of all exchange fees MCXnow generates. The more of these you purchase, the more from the fees that the exchange collects will be credited to you and the more people trade there the more you will earn. Have in mind that this is a long term investment with a relatively low return rate as compared to what you will have to pay for obtaining 1 “share”, but as you probably will not be mining forever it is a wise idea to invest some of the mined coins into something that will bring you profit on the long term. You are going to be credited your share from the owned mcxFEE every 6 hours depending on the traded alternative cryptos and the collected fees you may receive different kind of cryptos and different amounts each time. You can take the help of any financial services that are investing in cryptos and stocks trading online to help you out and clear all your doubts regarding finance.You can check out najlepszy broker for the best stock training advices.

mcxnow-fees-and-interest-rate
The crypto exchange MCXnow also offers another interesting feature that allows you to get more out of your available coins, including the ones you may earn from owning mcxFEE (shares from the exchange). Every 6 hours you will get credited an interest rate on all of your coins that are currently available for trade on the exchange, the interest rate can vary on different coins and can change in time based on how much of these are being traded currently. The reason for the change in the interest rate is that it is something that forms from the collected fees from trades, so the more trades with the coin, the more fees and the higher interest rate you can get. The interest rates you see on the image above are the ones for the last 6 hours and the percentage is an yearly interest rate, so every 6 hours when you get your interest rate it will be a much lower percentage compared to the yearly rate. So even if you don’t actively trade, but do deposit some coins in the exchange you will be earning some interest on top of your deposit. The good thing is that if you buy mcxFEE the interest rate can increase your profits even if you don’t deposit any coins, as the crypto coins you earn from by holding mcxFEE (shares of the exchange) will also get interest rate.

According to the official information published by MCXnow, they do have 31551 registered users at the moment and you can see between 5000 and 6000 people available on the exchange most of the time. The number of alternative crypto currencies is still not that big, but the exchange has the potential for serious growth, so if you decide to invest in it on the long run now may be the change to get into it by purchasing some mcxFEE (shares). The current price of 1 mcxFEE hovers around 0.24 BTC, so it does not come very cheap, but as we’ve already said this is a long term investment with potential for serious growth in what you could be earn in the not so distant feature. The exchange has been available for quite some time already, so it is not something that just popped up, but there is still risk involved in long term investment as the bright future of all crypto currencies is not so certain. We have already invested into 1 mcxFEE in order to try out how are thing moving there and will probably invest in few more soon if everything continues to run smoothly as it has for the moment. After some time we have decided to sell out 1 mcxFEE due to the constantly declining price of the shares and not so good profitability from the share we had.

Crypto Trade is another crypto currency exchange with similar approach, offering users to become shareholders in the exchange by buying shares that earn you percentage of the fees colected from trades executed. At the end of every month, 50% of the website’s net profits are going to be passed onto the public through dividend payments. There are apparently 25,000 shares and each share represents 0.002% of the exchange’s net profits. Currently the price of a single share is 0.195 BTC with over 5000 shares currenty being traded on the exchange. So if long terms investment in crypto currencies is your thing, then you might want to check this option as well.


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