It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
The popular service for leasing and renting mining rigs for different crypto algorithms – Mining Rig Rentals has just added support for the two of the latest and trending mining algorithms – X16r used by Ravencoin (RVN) and X16S used by Pigeoncoin (PGN). There are already more than a hundred mining rigs that support the X16r mining algorithm and about a third of that number with support for the more recent X16S, so if you are looking for some extra hash power to mine RVN or PGN at the moment you might want to check out the new sections. Both new coins and the algorithms they are using are generating a lot of attention at the moment, though it might be a bit of a gamble to go full on mining for either of them it may pay out very well in the end. Remember that with this service some people are leasing their mining hashrate while others are renting the available rigs, so you might want to try either of the sides and not just only one of them to see what works best for you…
It seems that the new craze is to make crypto coins named after birds, after Ravencoin comes Pigeoncoin and that is not a coincidence. PGN and its new X16S mining algorithm were in fact inspired by RVN and the X16r algorithm that it has introduced. The new X16S (shuffle) algorithm maintains the randomness of X16r while providing consistency for hashrate and power usage, so it can be considered as a kind of improvement especially for miners. Pigeoncoin (PGN) is just a few days old was initially only CPU mineable, but quickly the Nvidia GPU miners for Ravencoin (RVN) were ported to support the new algorithm, so it is now mineable on Nvidia GPUS as well. The main specs of the coin are: 1 minute block time, 5000 PGN reward, 21 Billion coins max cap, 2016 blocks retarget, 16 shuffled algorithms (X16S shuffle). You are welcome to check it out and mine some, especially if you have some Nvidia-based GPU mining rigs, though we are still yet to see what will be the plans for the future of this new coin as there is still not much info about that available, again similar to the situation with RVN.
If you want to give it a try mining Pigeoncoin (PGN) you can do so already on the pign.suprnova.cc mining pool along with a few other pools already available and try one of the forks of ccMiner with support for the X16S algorithm. Like the latest supminer version 1.2 from Suprnova that adds support for X16S and also supports X16r, or alternatively the Nevermore-x16s v0.1-alpha (both of these open source) and there is also a new version of the x16s Pigeoncoin Enemy miner 1.03 (a closed source binary only release). For the moment there is still no AMD GPU miner available, but one will probably follow shortly based on the X16r fork in order to also support the X16S algorithm. If you are interested in an exchange supporting trading of Pigeoncoin (PGN), well, there isn’t one available yet, but the coin is still just a few days old, so you will have to wait a bit more for that. You can try trading PGN coins on Citex.
– For more information about the new Pigeoncoin (PGN) and the X16S algorithm it uses…
We often get asked about hardware crypto wallets and what we would recommend and yet we have not covered that topic much, so it is about time we do it. There are pretty much 3 main products on the market that have been available for a while and have proven to be a reliable and most of all secure solutions for storing your crypto coins. These three manufacturers of hardware crypto coin wallets are: Ledger, Trezor and KeepKey and which of them you choose is often more of a personal preference.
The one we actually prefer and use is the Ledger Nano S, though the company also makes Ledger Blue, a more powerful, bigger and feature rich device that of course also costs more. We have not used or even tried the Blue model yet, so there isn’t much that we can talk about it at this point and it is also currently out of stock at the official website, so not easy to get at the moment. Anyway, one of the main reasons why we have opted out for the Nano S is the very compact size of the device, it is the smallest of all of the options with pretty much the size of a regular USB flash drive.
The Trezor wallet called also the Bitcoin Safe is the most common alternative of the Ledger Nano S, it is available in Black and White color and comes at almost the same price. Trezor is also working on a new improved model called Model T, though that one is not freely available for sale, currently still fulfilling pre-orders at the moment apparently. The Third option in the form of the KeepKey hardware wallet is probably the least popular of the three options, but that does not mean it is inferior to them. It is a bit different in how it looks, offering a more modern clean and sleek design and very similar functionality as the others at pretty much the same price point.
We are not trying to do a review of the different crypto hardware wallets covered here, we are just pointing the options available, so you can take a look at them and decide which one better suits your needs. Again, we use the Ledger Nano S, but that does not necessary mean that it will be the one you will like the best or that it will be the optimal solution for your needs. Just take a look at the available options and see what works best for you, they all work for all of the main crypto currencies, but there are some differences in the level of support of not so popular and newer ones.
What you need to be extra careful with is where you purchase your hardware wallet from, the best solution would be to go directly from the official website getting it from the manufacturer of the device. You can also check the list of official resellers and purchase from any of them, especially if you have a local company that sells them, just make sure they are listed as official reseller. It is not wise to look for a cheaper price and purchase from eBay or any other unofficial source as there could be unpleasant surprises that you get along with your hardware wallet. When you get the hardware wallet make sure it does not come pre-initialized with any printed security key or something like that, you need to initialize and generate the private key yourself on the device (if not sure you can always do a reset before you start). If the device comes already initialized (it should not come like that!) somebody else probably already has your private key and can use it to steal the coins you store and we are pretty sure you don’t want this to happen.