It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
In the last few days things about Ethereum were moving pretty quick and we have posted a lot of information, so we have decided to summarize things to make that information easily accessible to people that are new the Ethereum or are just starting with ETH. Our focus was mostly on the mining and trading Ether (ETH), but there is much more to Ethereum than that, so if you still haven’t looked into it, then you probably should as it is much more than just another altcoin.
Mining Ethereum’s Ether (ETH):
– Quick Guide on How to Mine Ethereum on Windows
– Quick Guide on Solo GPU Mining Ethereum on Windows
– ETH Nanopool, One More New Ethereum Mining Pool
– Ethereumpool, Yet Another New Mining Pool for Ethereum
– Pooleum, a New Ethereum Pool In Pre-Alpha Phase
Useful information regarding Ethereum:
– Ethereum Mining Profitability Calculator
– Where You Can Buy and Trade Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) Coins
– Track Ethereum (ETH) Prices with Ethereum Wisdom
– Blockchain Explorers for the Ethereum Network
Other useful information about Ethereum:
– How to Backup Your Ethereum Wallet and the Blockchain
– Use Ether Wallet To Generate Online and Paper Wallet for Ethereum
It seems that Ethereum has managed to bring back a lot of GPU mining hardware that was taken offline and has managed to sparkle the interest of miners that were fed up with all the different altcoins. It is good to see that the project is finally moving forward and we are expecting to see a lot of good things in the future as well coming from the decentralized apps built on top of the Ethereum network such as Augur for example.
Time for an updated look on what cloud mining services are currently using, both older ones that have been available for quite some time as well as new ones that we’ve started checking out more recently. This quick overview will also cover some recent developments around the various services listed below that we are following. Also it seems that lately there is also a new alternative to traditional cloud mining that is gaining some interest from services such as HaoBTC or Bter that pay users interest based on deposited coins, interest that is generated by mining. These services offer lower profit over a longer term, but also the risk is lower than that of investing in a cloud mining operation. Also these services pay you interest on an hourly or daily basis and your deposited coins are not locked, so you can use them at any time you need them. Hashnest also tried something like an alternative to traditional cloud mining with their PACMiC offers, but their new v2 is not as attractive as their initial offer. But back to the traditional cloud mining services…
– Genesis Mining is the preferred Bitcoin cloud mining service in terms of transparency and reliability and we’ve been using it for about a year already. The company is open, their teams frequently take part in crypto currency events and they have published information on their mining operations including their hardware suppliers. Daily payouts, transparency, multiple ways to purchasing cloud mining hashrate, probably not the fastest ROI out there, but less riskier. Here is a special promotional code that you can use to get a 5% discount for hashrate purchases – CryptoMiningBlog5.
– ZeusHash is a bit controversial with their cloud mining offers over time that have been unprofitable, but with their more recent offers they seem to be doing much better. Their partnership with the large Halley China mining farm has allowed them to offer a good price for their cloud mining hashrate and their most recent offer for 30 day cloud mining contracts with the users getting back what they have paid initially plus what they have mined at the end of the contract was also an interesting opportunity.
– GigaHash is still one of the smaller Bitcoin cloud mining farms that we see a good opportunity for growth in. Started as a private mining investment and after that offering cloud mining services to broader audience with their mining farm expanding all the time, lately based on AntMiner S5 ASICs. Daily payouts, useful and clean custom interface, good and timely support when there are some kind of issues, so worth checking out even though we’ve started using the service more recently.
– Mining Sweden is another relatively new entry in the cloud mining scene, starting as a smaller mining operation with plans to grow with the help of its users. The service offers Mining Shares (currently sold out) that are only for cloud mining and VIP Shares that give you not only cloud mining hashrate, but percentage of the profits of the mining operation. The service also offers users to buy BitMain AntMiner S5 ASIC miners and have them hosted in their data center. Could be a good long term investment as things seem to be working pretty well so far. Here is an extra 10% discount code from the regular prices that you can use, just enter ms10 during checkout.
– HashFlare is another more recent service apparently operated by a bit controversial Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer. So far it seems that the service is working just fine and is paying out without any problems, but still you might want to be careful with larger investments just in case. If you want to try it out, here is a promo code for 5% off for purchases over 250 GHS – HF15SMMR5P2 or 20% off for purchases over 2500 GHS – HF15SMMR20P2.
– Eobot is a service that has been available for quite some time already, according to their website since 2013, but we’ve just recently decided to check it out and so far it seems everything seems to be running fine and as promised. Initially it did not consider their offers of much interest, but their GHS 2.0 Bitcoin cloud mining contracts do not seem so bad at the moment with the current market situation. They also do have some other interesting services such as Cloud Folding and their own mining pool, so you might want to take a look, just stay away from their mining app.
A bit of warning in the end, stay away from the Bitcoin Cloud Services as they have suddenly stopped paying about a month ago, but their website is still online and they are still “accepting” payments form new users that never get hashrate or any payment in return, so do not throw your coins there! Another service that has been available for quite a while called Scryptcc has also had trouble recently claiming to have been hacked and a few hundred Bitcoins stolen from them and although they have returned and seem to be back online we would advice to stay away from the service for the moment, as they have lowered the mining income users are getting in order to get back what was apparently stolen from them. Until they resume normal operation with normal mining rewards for their users we would advice to stay away from them.
The Quark and Qubit crypto algorithms continue to be quite profitable, but until recently these algorithms were mostly in the Nvidia domain as the ccMiner for Nvidia GPUs was faster than the available performance on AMD hardware. There is however a new sgminer fork with compiled Quark and Qubit kernels that was sent to us that brings up the hashrate significantly on Pitcairn and Tahiti AMD GPUs. We have tested this particular sgminer on a Radeon R9 280X and we are getting about 11.22 MHS on Quark with a non overclocked GPU and about 12.3 MHS on Qubit and you can get higher with OC and increase in the Intensity. Quark is apparently quite profitable at the moment on NiceHash and WestHash due to the interest in SharkCoin or so it seems, so if you have some idle AMD GPUs that you are wondering where to point them there. Do note that the sgminer is not compiled by us and it comes with the standard OpenCL kernel files, so you need to use the binaries for the higher performance. Since we have not compiled this sgminer from source and it was sent to us already compiled we would recommend to be cautions and not run it on systems with wallets installed, just in case!
– To download and try the sgminer 5.1.1 with optimized Quark and Qubit kernels for Windows OS…