Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 and 980 Are a Great Choice for Both Mining and Gaming

29, Nov 2014

gigabyte-gtx-980-gpu

The GPU mining is still not dead, however the part where people would go on building new mining rigs with multiple video cards like they did with Radeon R9 280X, 290 and 290X is kind of in the past, or at least for the moment. The community working on AMD mining software has not been very active lately, not like the Nvidia where we have seen a lot of improvement in the miners in terms of hashrate and functionality over the past few months. It was started with the release of the GTX 750 Ti and then the new Maxwell-based GTX 970 and GTX 980 cards, but with the new more powerful cards from Nvidia you can just upgrade and use a single card for gaming and when you are not playing games to leave your system mining some crypto coins. Sure, using a single card will not make you rich from the miner coins, but you can keep the hobby mining part and still have a great gaming video card when you want to play games on it. You can go with two cards in SLI for even better gaming performance and more mining power and the idea is that over the course of time you could at least get back the money you paid for the cards back via the mining. So it all might not be a bad deal for people that are mining as a hobby and are also gamers, unlike GTX 750, the GTX 970 and GTX 980 are much more powerful and perfect choice for the more demanding games. We would recommend to go for non-reference design cards such as Gigabyte’s G1 GTX 970 and GTX 980 cards or other models with Windforce cooler for example, the non-reference high performance coolers do well with overclocking while still remaining pretty silent while operating under load.

If you have been following our updates lately you would have seen a lot of activity from developers on various forks of ccMiner going on and a lot of performance improvements for all Maxwell-based GPUs from Nvidia. There are also useful tools like the NiceHash Control Tool and the new and improved Miner Control that can make things easier for you if you do not want to always be on the lookout for new altcoins and still be able to maximize your profit mining at the right and profitable places. Having just a single or a few GPUs and mining as a hobby does not mean that things should be hard for you, you can go the easy way and sell your hashrate for the best price you can get at services sch as NiceHash. Now may not be the best time to be GPU mining or mining with ASICs for that matter unless you already have made a big mining farm, but if the history repeats itself and Litecoin continues to go the same way that Bitcoin already went through mining with GPUs might yet again become a profitable thing to do in the near future, but we’ll have to wait and see…

GAW Miners Moving From Cloud Mining to Cloud Staking with the HashStaker

29, Nov 2014

gaw-miners-hashstaker

Yesterday, during the Black Friday, when everyone was looking for discounts GAW Miners have introduced something new – the HashStaker. The successor of the Hashlet you may say, but instead of cloud mining the HashStaker will be doing colud staking, generating you profit from the PayCoins that you will store in it over time. So it all sounds like an wallet for a PoS coin that you need to hold in your wallet to get additional revenue in the form of staked coins over time. So HashStakers are essentially cloud based wallets and they require coins to start staking, but you need to purchase space for the specific amount of coins in your cloud wallet that you will store for staking at $9.95 USD per PayCoin strage space in the HashStaker for 3 months or $17.95 for 6 months. The first HashStaker is for PayCoin, GAW’s own crypto currency, but apparently they do plan to add HashStakers for other crypto currencies as well. In order for you to use the HashStakers you would also need to purchase some PayCoin and then leave the coins inside the staking wallet for the duration of the period you have choosen – 3 or 6 months. So you will not only have to get a HashStaker, but also get some PayCoins either from the ICO or when the PayBase platform launches and then store them inside the HashStaker, so that it will start to stake for you. Also there will be an option available for Hashlet owners to upgrade to HashStaker announced soon.

GAW Miners have been getting some criticism when they have announced the Hashlets earlier this year as a different form for cloud mining, and now they will probably be getting some for the HashStaker. What they are doing however is not just announcing some random products hoping that they can make miners happy with them by giving them the chance to make some profit, they are creating a whole ecosystem for the miners and users of their crypto currency. You can think about the PayCoin as an altcoin that comes with the services and support it needs to actually succeed and not only with empty promises about a bright future by some random new developer. Now, do note that there are no 100% guarantees for that, but the chances that PayCoin has to actually be a successful one and take space among top crypto currencies compared to many other altcoins, especially ones with very short lifespan, are much higher. Unfortunately it all comes with the cost of some centralization, but that could be the necessary evil to make thing run smoother and problem free in the case of PayCoin. If everything works out fine we could see PayCoin ranking among the top crypto currencies, but we don’t think that it would be able to replace BitCoin, but why not be a viable alternative. Bitcoin has a different philosophy and goals behind it, very different from what PayCoin is and promotes, but that does not mean you should ignore PayCoin if you are in crypto currencies just to make profit. It is up to you to decide what will you do with PayCoin, like it or not, invest in it or not, but don’t dismiss it without first checking out what it is all about and not just PayCoin, but the ecosystem that GAW is building around it to support it such as the HashStaker and PayBase. Try to look at the whole picture and not just to focus on the marketing messages.

One thing that is clear already regarding the mining of Bitcoins and what is also happening with Litecoin mining is that it is getting centralized in the hands of large mining farms and is getting harder and harder for the average small home miner to make it. So looking for other alternatives is not a bad idea and as usual the recommendation not go all in for a single thing as crypto currencies are still risky investments and you better be safe than sorry. We are going to be checking out the PayCoin, HashStaker and PayBase to see how well they will work out together, so stay tuned for more information from our experience with them.

Black Friday Deals on Cloud Mining and ASIC Miners

28, Nov 2014

spondoolies-tech-sp-20-deal

It is Black Friday and there are a few nice deals that you might want to check out if you are looking to buy an ASIC miner at a better price or invest in cloud mining with a higher discount. Unfortunately there are not as much deals as we expected to see, but still a few that do look promising and that you can take advantage of. Spondoolies Tech has an even better price for their 1.7 THS SP20 JACKSON Bitcoin ASIC miner that is now available for $695 USD instead of $795 USD as previously and the deal is available not only for the Black Friday, but will continue until the end of monday spanning for the Cyber Monday. BitCrane, another ASIC manufacturer has also lowered their prices down to $648 USD from $998 USD for their 1THS T-110 and T110S Bitcoin ASIC miners as well as the 5-7 THS T-720 Bitcoin ASIC miner that is currently available for $3420 USD down from $4668 USD.

Among the cloud mining services more notable promotions are currently ran by Genesis Mining with 10% off of regular price for their hashrate. Unfortunately at the moment only Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate is available as the Scrypt one has been out of stock for a few days already. The good thing is that our 5% discount code for the service is applicable on top of the 10% Black Friday promo price, so you can actually get a total of 15% discount by entering the promo code CryptoMiningBlog5 when checking out. Bitcoin Cloud Services is running a 10% promotion off their regular price for Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate by using the promotion code BTCBLACKFRI10, do note that it will be valid only for the Black Friday. Chabat Mining has a preorder hashrate promotion for 100 MHS Scrypt cloud mining hashrate at $460 USD ($4.6 USD per MHS), but the catch here is that the hashrate you purchase will start mining for you on December 16th.


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