How To Save on Taxes and Time When Transferring Ethereum (ETH)

17 Sep
2017

When you are transferring a crypto currency from one address to another you need to pay a fee for the transfer to happen. With crypto coins like Bitcoin the fee is paid depending on the amount of the data that need to be included in a block for the transaction to happen, it is a single fee per Kilobyte of data that you have control over. Increasing the fee can result in faster inclusion in a block and faster processing of your transaction to get included in the Blockchain and the coins to move to the new address. Decreasing the fee from the recommended amount will usually result in slower confirmation time, but if the fee is too little your transfer may actually never happen. If the fee is too low and the transaction is taking too long to confirm you might try to Cancel Unconfirmed Bitcoin Transactions if you have used a local wallet like Bitcoin Core for example.

With Ethereum (ETH) the whole thing works a bit differently, though the general principle of paying a fee for transactions is pretty much the same. When you send Ethereum, transfer tokens, interact with smart contracts and so on you need to pay a fee in Gas, though the actual fee is paid in ETH anyway. With Ethereum you always pay a fee, even if your interaction with the blockchain is not successful or if it is successful. Here is an example, if you send some Ethereum coins to a smart contract and doing so with not enough Gas, the coins will not be sent, but you still will have to pay the fee and it will be deducted from your balance. With Bitcoin for comparison an unsuccessful transaction will not result in you still paying the transaction fees. To learn more, check this guide about how to make money without paying taxes.

The total TX (transaction) fee you need to pay in Ethereum is calculated by multiplying the Gas Limit and the Gas Price you want to use for a transaction, you normally have control over the two values, but most of the cases you only change the Gas Limit. The Gas Limit is the maximum amount of Gas you are willing to pay for a transaction, you usually set it higher as you will only be paying the needed amount and not the maximum you have declared you are willing to spend. The second component, the Gas Price is normally preset at 21 Gwei to ensure a fast transaction, but at times this can be too much or too little. When there is a big ICO running or even a couple of smaller ones and there are a lot of transactions going on the Ethereum blockchain you might need to increase the Gas Price in order to avoid waiting up to a couple of hours for your transaction to finish. At the same time when the network is not so loaded you can significantly reduce the Gas Price to a level where you would still get very fast transaction, but at much lower total cost. Remember that the total fee for the transaction is being paid in ETH when you multiple the Gas Limit by the Gas Price, and you are being charged only the actually used Gas and not the whole limit you have set as a maximum you are willing to spend.

So it is really important to be able to easily track what is currently going on the Ethereum network and what is the Safe minimum Gas Price you can use in order to get your transaction executed relatively fast if you are not in a hurry and save on transaction cost or what to set as minimum if you want to have the transaction happen as fast as possible. For example the popular MyEtherWallet service has the Gas Price set by default to 21 Gwei and most people don’t change it as it ensures relatively quick transaction execution most of the time. If you check the current situation with the help of a service like ETH Gas Station for example at the time you want to make a transaction on the Ethereum network you can get a better idea on how much Gas Price to use and still get satisfying results.

What you need to remember is that the Gas Price is what decides how fast a transaction is going to be executed and not the Gas Limit, the limit is there to make sure you don’t overspend more than you are willing to pay. The final TX fee (Gas Limit * Gas Price) does not guarantee fast processing time with a very high Gas Limit, the important factor for faster processing is the Gas Price, provided that you have enough Gas Limit to execute the interaction on the Ethereum Blockchain. Note that there are times when you can easily go with just 1 Gwei Gas Price and still have a transaction executed in up to a few minutes, though at busy times you often have to use between 20-30 or even up to 50 Gwei Gas Price… higher than that it is usually unreasonable and it is recommended to wait a bit for the situation to calm down. So be careful and do not spend more for fees than you need to and if a quick check at a useful website can save you some ETH why don’t take advantage.

– Go and check the ETH Gas Station website as it might be quite useful for some of you…

GPU Mining Motherboards from the Chinese Manufacturer Colorful

16 Sep
2017

We got an interesting tip about some new motherboards intended for GPU mining rigs. Colorful, a Chinese manufacturer of video cards and motherboards as well as some other computer related products, seems to be joining the GPU mining market as well with three different motherboards for miners. Colorful is apparently focused mostly on the local Chinese market, though some of the company’s products are available in other parts of the world, their English website however is nothing much to be proud with. There are not that many details about the three mining motherboards in question in English, but you can still get a decent idea on what they offer and what to expect. If you don’t live in China the chances of being able to find these motherboards on the local market are actually not that high anyway…

The first motherboard Colorful C.H81A-BTC V20 is essentially not entirely new, it was announced a while ago and should already be on the market, while the other two new models will most likely be available later this month. The C.H81A-BTC V20 is based on Intel H81 chipset and is intended for Intel LGA1150 processors, providing support for up to 6x GPUs. A pretty basic alternative to other popular solutions like AsRock’s H81 Pro BTC for example that this product from Colorful kind of seems to be designed from. For more information visit the official English product page of the C.H81A-BTC V20.

The next model which is more up to date in the form of chipset and features is the Colorful C.B250A-BTC V20. It is an Intel B250 based motherboard intended for the more recent Intel LGA 1151 processors with support for up to 12 video cards, though that 12 GPU support may be limited depending on the operating system you use (up to 8 AMD/Nvidia under Windows). What is more interesting here is that the motherboard actually has just 6x PCI-E slots and the other 6x GPUs connect via USB 3.0 connectors. This simply means that you do not need to use the small PCB board that plugs in the PCI-E slots from the usual package of PCI-E riser boards that rely on USB 3.0 cables for data. For more information visit the official English product page of the C.B250A-BTC V20.

The third offer is with a non-standard motherboard in terms of size and features as it is probably originally intended to be used in dedicated GPU miners like the ones with 8x GP106 mining edition cards from Nvidia. The Colorful C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20 is based on Intel B250 chipset and is intended for 8x GPUs without the need of any PCI-E risers as the board comes with full size x16 PCI-E slots with enough space in between them. The presence of two rows of 8x PCI-E power connectors suggests that the motherboard is designed to handle higher power loads, there are some more specifics about this product as well like the use of SO-DIMM memory slot. The connectivity of the backplane is more limited in terms of connectivity and there is no traditional 20/24-pin ATX motherboard power connector apparently being used here. For more information visit the official English product page of the C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20.

The Cryptum ICO is Now Open Funding the First Crypto Mining Board Game

16 Sep
2017

Last month we have shared some information about an interesting new crypto crowdfunding campaign coming soon with the ultimate goal to fund the The First Crypto Mining Board Game. Today the Cryptum ICO has officially started and will take place in the next 30 days (Stage 1) distributing up to 1 Million CRTM tokens to users that decide to support the project with ETH or BTC. Any remaining tokens that are not distributed during the first stage plus an extra 100 thousands will be available for distribution in the second stage of the funding and you will be able to participate with multiple different altcoins. More details about the parameters of the Cryptum ICO are available here, but do note that the first 24 hours of the crowdsale there is a 16% bonus available, then the next 4 days it is down to 8% and the last two days of the first week you get 4% bonus. After the first week the next three weeks the tokens will be available for the regular rate of 50 CRTM per 1 ETH, and if you are using BTC then the rate is fixed at 0.0135 BTC per 10 CRTM.

The main goal of the project is to create and release a whole line of board games, starting with Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Board Game, or essentially the first board game about crypto currencies and mining and that is precisely what got our interest initially, though there are a number of other projects associated as the business model of Cryptum is more complex and rewarding that just that. You might want to take a look at the Cryptum Whitepaper for some more details on what your participation in the project can bring you back and it is more than just a free board game when it is ready. You don’t even have to spend an of your Cryptum (CRTM) tokens to get the board game that you will help bring to life, holding the tokens might be much more rewarding in the long term than just selling them on an exchange when they get listed. As already mentioned we are not only supporting the project, but our team actually got involved in the project development as we see very good potential in it. Of course we also want to help make the first crypto mining board game a reality and a fun and enjoyable game to be player by people both into crypto currencies and ones that may not yet be. So go take a look at what it is all about and if you like the idea you are welcome to help in any way, even if it is to just spread the idea.

– For more information about the start of the Cryptum ICO visit the official website…

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