Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

SaruTobi, a Game That Gives Real Bitcoin Tips to Players

4, Mar 2015

sarutobi-the-game
SaruTobi is a free mobile game for Apple’s iOS devices such as iPhone or the iPad (not yet available for Android devices) that utilizes a simple yet fun and an addictive concept and comes with a Bitcoin theme. You essentially play a monkey called Tobi and there are two modes that you can choose between – either swing your character on his vine to build up momentum and then release him to fly, or swing and jump from vine to vine. In both modes you collect some coins that are called guess how – Bitcoins, but these are only in-game coins and not real Bitcoins like the ones at bitcoinsentralen.

Also, through a reliable platform like immediate connect, traders can explore various investment options, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple, among others. This expansive range empowers users to diversify their portfolios and take advantage of emerging investment trends.

You can use these Bitcoins in-game to purchase some power ups to help you and add some fun while you play, and then there are other coins called Black Coins that you can also collect while you play. These coins can be redeemed for actual Bitcoin Tips, once you have collected at least 12 Black coins you can exchange them for a Bitcoin tip that will be sent to your Bitcoin wallet (you need to enter the address inside the game) and you can also use an email that is registered as a Xapo online Bitcoin wallet as the game apparently has an integrations with that service as well.

sarutobi-bitcoin-wallet-pot
Sarutobi is actually the first game for the iOS platform to actually have a feature that rewards players with actual Bitcoins for playing the game, unlike for example the game Bitcoin Billionaire that we have reviewed a while ago. Now, don’t expect too much, you will not get rich playing SaruTobi and earning Bitcoin Tips as a reward, what you are going to get is equivalent to just a few cents. When trying out the game we have concluded that it takes about 15-20 minutes of game play to gather 12 Black Coins that can be redeemed for Bitcoin Tips. The tips you can expect to get are something in the range of between 50 bits and 120 bits, or at least we’ve seen such a rewards so far (5000 to 12000 satoshi). On the other hand this is much better than what many free Bitcoin faucets give you and with SaruTobi you get to have some fun playing an actual game, ideal for wasting some free time.

sarutobi-power-ups
While playing SaruTobi you can also purchase some in-game content, namely in-game Bitcoins (not real ones) with the cash spent for these going for the Bitcoin Tips that you actually get rewarded with. The rewards wallet also gets filled in from donations and advertisements, though the only advertisement you are going to see for the moment is that of Genesis Mining who have apparently donated 15 THS of Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate to mine directly to the game’s rewards wallet.

If you are interested you are welcome to check out the game yourself, but a bit of warning – we already mentioned that it is a fun and an addictive game, so be careful and don’t spend too much time on it!

– For more information about the free game SaruTobi for Apple iOS mobile devices…

Use Your Old or Slow Bitcoin ASIC Miners as Lottery Devices

28, Feb 2015

tbdice-solo-mining-pool

If you were early on the whole Bitcoin mining thing and were one of the first adopters of the Bitcoin ASIC miners when they started appearing you may still have some devices lying around that are generally not worth using anymore for mining. Well, maybe you just thought that they are not good for anything anymore, but there could still be some use for them, or at least if you want to test your luck “playing the lottery” for Bitcoin. The concept of Bitcoin lottery device was used along the announcement of the TechnoBit DICE Bitcoin ASIC miner, probably something that the marketing at Spondoolies Tech came up with as they are the actual manufacturer of the ASIC chips used inside the device. But aside from the DICE the concept to solo mine testing your luck to hit a BTC block yourself with a Bitcoin ASIC miner that is unprofitable if you mine at a pool sharing the profit with other miners might actually not be a bad one. It is risky and the chances are not that high thus the lottery reference – you may need a few months or an year and still get no block solved, but if you are lucky and manage to hit one, then you will get 25 BTC as a reward. Depending on the ASIC miner you are going to be using your chances might be better than actually playing the lottery, so you might want to give this idea a go.

The drawback that the use of an older and low hashrate Bitcoin ASIC miner as a “lottery device” is that you need to have a system that is always on and running a Bitcoin node, so that you can point your miner at it. Also setting up solo mining operation at home might not be the easiest thing for everyone, though if you already have and used Bitcoin ASIC miners you most likely should be able to do it. There is an alternative however, you can use a solo mining pool such as TBDice that was apparently prepared for DICE miners, but you can join in with any their miner as well. The idea of this pool is that you get to mine with the added convenience of a mining pool, but if you solve a Bitcoin block you will still get the full reward minus a small fee. Then again you may also decide to run the mining pool software yourself on your own website or a PC, you can get the CKPOOL source and use it – it is freely available. Do note that CKPOOL is designed to be used as a Bitcoin mining pool, but the concept of using your mining hardware as a lottery device applies to pretty much all other crypto coins as well, so you can test it with Litecoin for example or any other altcoin.

– To check out the CKPOOL code if you are interested in running your own Bitcoin mining pool…

How to Effectively Mine on Multipe Vardiff Pools

26, Feb 2015

cgminer-pool-management-strategy

If you have a not so powerful mining rig or and ASIC and you want to be able to effectively mine on multiple pools that use variable difficulty instead of a fixed one it might be a bit of an issue. Usually on vardiff pools you start with a lower difficulty that might be right for the hashrate of your mining hardware, but the pool starts to increase the difficulty over time making it hard for your miner to keep up to its maximum performance, especially if using multipool that switches coins or solves blocks quickly. CGminer and the other alternative mining software products do come with strategies for effectively utilizing multipool scenarios, you just make sure you use the right one depending on your situation. By default the multipool strategy used by the mining software is set to failover, meaning that if the first pool stops responding the miner will move on the next one in the list until the higher priority pool is back online.

Obviously the above default scenario does not work for vardiff pools to keep your miner at the recommended lower difficulty level, so you need to use one of the different strategies in order to be able to do that. The right strategy for using multiple vardiff pools is the rotate strategy where the miner will automatically switch between the list of pools based on a user set time interval. So checking what time it requires for the pool to switch from the initial difficulty of lets say 128 to 256 and then to move to 512 will give you an idea on how many minutes you need to set for the rotate rounds. 128 and 256 difficulty is OK for Bitcoin ASIC miners that are in the range of 150-200 GHS for example, so setting lets say 5 minutes for the rotation interval should prevent the pool to go higher than 256 difficulty. What the miner will do is move to the next vardiff pool in the list for 5 minutes and then get back to the first pool for 5 more minutes and so on, keeping a difficulty of 128-256 on both pools. This is a great strategy for using with NieHash and WestHash for selling your SHA256 hashrate for example if you have a not so powerful ASIC miner.

Changing the multipool strategies is possible from within the already running cgminer or another miner forked from it or with support for the same options, but this will not be permanent – it will function until the restart of the miner. You can also set the rotate mode to be activated with a startup parameter of the miner by adding this to the command line --rotate 5, the example is for 5 minute rotation between the list of pools.


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