VertCoin (VTC) Pools With The New Lyra2RE Algorithm

13 Dec
2014

vertcoin-vtc-lyra2re

It was anticipated that VertCoin (VTC) will hardfork to the new Lyra2RE algorithm at around 16th this month at block 208301, however we have reached the fork a bit earlier. So if you are mining VertCoin you should switch to the new Lyra2RE GPU miners and to pools that have already switched to the new algorithm. Some people have anticipated that after the fork the price of VTC will increase, but this did not happen as currently VertCoin is quite profitable to mine and sell directly and apparently a lot of people are doing exactly this resulting in exchange rate dropping. This is just the first day after the fork, so we should wait and see how the Lyra2RE fork will affect VTC – will it help the coin or on the contrary.

VTC mining polls with Lyra2RE support:
– Verters Pool
– SimpleMulti
– Coinotron
– CoinMine VTC
– Hashlink VTC
– CrunchPool VTC
– P2PPool VTC

Microsoft Starting to Accept Bitcoin Payments

11 Dec
2014

microsoft-bitcoin-payment

Microsoft has announced officially that thanks to a partnership with the crypto currency payment processor BitPay they are now starting to accept Bitcoins as a form of payment from users. Starting today you can trade-in Bitcoin – at current market value – and add it to your Microsoft account and then the funds can be used to purchase content in the Windows Store, or in stores that house Xbox Games, Xbox Music or Xbox Video. While the virtual currency can be used to put funds into Microsoft accounts, it can’t be used to pay directly for other Microsoft products and services other than the content mentioned.

Starting today, Bitcoin should appear as an option for those wishing to add money to their Microsoft accounts. If you want to transfer your Bitcoins, you first need to select the amount of money to add to your Microsoft account. BitPay calculates the equivalent amount in Bitcoin and delivers that information, along with a BitPay Bitcoin address and payment instructions. You then pay the displayed amount of Bitcoin from your wallet to complete the transaction. There is a cap on how much you can exchange per day: $1000 USD (or its equivalent in your country or region’s currency) to your Microsoft account on any given day, and no more than $5000 USD to additional Microsoft accounts that are registered in your name or by you.

New ccMiner 1.5.1-git by tpruvot With Lyra2RE Support Available

11 Dec
2014

ccminer-1-5-1-tpruvot

We have compiled a new windows binary from the latest ccMiner 1.5.1-git by tpruvot (source) that comes with support for the Lyra2RE algorithm – the algorithm that VertCoin (VTC) is going to be forking to. There is an official ccMiner fork with support for Lyra2RE available, but it seems that tpruvot’s fork is slightly better in terms of performance. We are getting about 1180 KHS with a GTX 980 GPU running at stock frequencies and around 1140 KHS with the official Lyra2RE ccMiner on the same hardware. Do note that this is not an official 1.5.1 release from tpruvot, we have just compiled a binary form the latest source in order to be able to test Lyra2RE mining performance on the available test pool. Our windows binary is compiled with VS2013 and supports Compute 3.0, 3.5, 5.0 and 5.2 GPUs, you can download and try it below, there is an example BAT file setup for testing hashrate at the Hashlink’s test VTC pool with Lyra2RE support.

– To download the latest ccMiner version 1.5.1-git by tpruvot for Windows OS (CUDA 6.5)…

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