The Situation with the BTC-e Crypto Exchange Takes Unexpected Turns

26 Jul
2017

Yesterday the BTC-e crypto currency exchange went offline with some unexpected technical issues cited as the problem. The website is still not available online and there has been some unexpected, yet interesting development happening in the meantime. Reuters has reported that Greece arrests Russian suspected of running $4 billion bitcoin laundering ring and the person in question (Alexander Vinnik) is apparently associated with BTC-e in some way or another and the exchange has apparently been used for money laundering according to the information. Meanwhile WizSec has released an update regarding the MtGox hack tying the person in question with laundering the Bitcoins stolen from MtGox (not the actual “hacker” or hacker it seems). Apparently more details regarding the MtGox connection, the BTC-e case and money laundering are yet to follow…

Official Information From Genesis Mining Regarding Delayed Payouts

26 Jul
2017

Users of the Genesis Mining cloud mining service have reported that the last few days they did not get their regular daily payments. Today the company has revealed details for the reason of the payment delays and their plan to get back things to normal as soon as possible. It seems that on July 21st there has been a hacker attack that has resulted in some disruption on the normal operation of the cloud mining services though the actual mining operations have not been affected.

Every single one of our customers will receive their missing payouts as soon as we’re sure about the safety and integrity of our payment system. One of the advantages of the daily payout system is that it helps prevent actual losses, even in moments like these that cause delays.

The next payout is being scheduled, and all missing mining profits will be paid out to our users during the coming days. Genesis Mining will cover the full amount, and you will receive all of your payouts. The mining profits will be released gradually with the usual daily payouts, so you will receive two payouts a day instead of the usual single payout per day, until all missing payments are complete.

The good news is that things will get back to normal very soon and all payments due to users will be processed and sent, so no actual loses for anyone using the cloud mining services of the company, just a bit of inconvenient delay in getting paid.

– To read the full official explanation about the situations with the delayed payments…

AMD Polaris ETH Mining Performance Drop Might Not Actually Happen

25 Jul
2017

If you remember last month we have warned that a possible Ethereum Hashrate Drop for Radeon RX400/RX500 GPUs is Incoming. The slow decrease of mining hashrate for Ethereum (ETH) on AMD Polaris-based GPUs was a bit puzzling as it was actually not related to the video memory, so 4GB and 8GB models were affected. Do note that at some point though cards with 4GB video memory might still start dropping in terms of mining performance anyway as the DAG size starts getting close to the amount of video memory available.

It turns out that AMD may actually be working on a driver fix to resolve the problem according to information published by Claymore on the Bitcointalk forum. Apparently the upcoming AMD Vega was also affected by the same problem, though it has been already resolved with driver fix and in two weeks or so a fix for Polaris may be release via a driver update as well. Hopefully a driver update that will not be WHQL and allow the use on AMD GPUs with modified video BIOSes as most AMD Polaris-based Ethereum GPU mining rigs are using modified memory straps for better performance.

On a side note, something regarding AMD’s new Vega GPUs for mining Ethereum from Claymore, in case you have missed it:

“Vega is … hot. In stock it takes about 400-450W in dual, 300-350W in ETH-only mode at about 33MH/s. And it’s throttling like hell. It’s very good in dual mining mode, but it’s too hot.”

So most likely the new AMD Vega GPUs will not turn out to be a great choice for mining, though who knows… people are using GTX 1080 Ti’s at 250W TDP or even more with some OC for mining and are happy with the results. Even though it might not be great for mining Ethereum, the new AMD Vega, just like with GTX 1080 Ti, might still end up a good solution for Equihash or any other popular altcoin algorithm for example.

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