GPU Miner for Heavycoin is Possible and is Being Worked On

14 Mar
2014

heavycoin-crypto-cyrrency

Heavycoin (HVC) is a recently launched crypto coin that can be mined only with the CPU, but apparently it is not impossible for a GPU miner to be created for it as well like with many other coins that started as CPU mining only. The key of the coin being “CPU only” is the use of multiple crypto algorithms – SHA-256, Keccak-512, Grøestl-512, BLAKE-512. But if you port all of them on the GPU you can achieve considerable speedup than what is possible with the CPU only mining, however for the moment there is no GPU miner available for HVC. The author of CudaMiner has reported some success already, note what he has posted in the bitcointalk forum about his work on a GPU miner for HVC (not CudaMiner, but a separate project):

we’ve accelerated 4 out of 5 hashing algos for HVC, but the last one (Groestl) is causing us a bit of trouble. Our first port is actually slower than the CPU – at least on my system.

Running Groestl on CPU and the rest on GPU I am getting an 800% performance boost vs. running the CPU alone.
Multiple CPU threads can even share a GPU ;)

Note that overall HVC is *not* CPU-only. They really need to change their advertising, and change it quickly. Whatever they did to SHA256 to turn it into a “GPU and ASIC resistant” HEFTY1 algorithm – it didn’t work as they intended.

Christian

Buy Bitoin ASIC Now, Buy Future Mining Contract or Start Cloud Mining Now

14 Mar
2014

bitmaintech-antminer-s1-asic-miner

The fresh information from CEX.io about the addition of an option to buy future mining contracts for Bitcoin has made us thing and calculate how profitable are they if we compare them to what other options are already available to start mining immediately. We are going to do a comparison between the FHA contracts (purchasing cloud mining hashrate for the end of April) that you can already purchase to the currently being shipped Bitmain AntMiner S1 BTC ASICs and to a BTC cloud mining service that is already available and running by offering 5 year Bitcoin mining contracts, namely the PB Mining Bitcoin cloud mining service. We are going to compare how much it will cost you to purchase 1 Terahash (1 THS or 1000 GHS) worth of Bitcoin mining hashrate at each of these services.

1 THS of ASIC mining hardware currently shipping:
– 5x 180 GHS Bitmain AntMiner S1 overclocked to 200 GHs each
– This will cost you about 5 BTC for the moment for the miners
– You will need power supplies for about 2100W for them
– You will need to pay for 2.1 KW of power an hour for electricity
– Miners will be at your door in a week and you will start mining

1 THS of PB Mining cloud hashrate currently being sold:
– The current cloud mining hasrate price is 0.0083 BTC per 1 GHS
– You will need to pay 8.3 BTC at the moment for 1000 GHS
– The cloud hashrate will start mining for you in a few hours
– No extra cost for electricity or need to support hardware
– This is a long term mining contract for 5 years that you purchase

1 THS of CEX future cloud hashrate for end of April (FHA):
– The current contract price for FHA is about 0.00799999 BTC per 1 GHS
– You will need to pay 7.999 BTC for a purchase of 1000 GHS contract
– The cloud hashrate will start mining in about month and a half for you
– No extra cost for electricity or need to support hardware
– You can sell or trade the cloud mining hashrate contract at anytime

So it seems that all of the above options do have their own advantages, but there are disadvantages as well. It is up to you to decide what seems the most reasonable for you at this moment if any of the options is a viable alternative for you. Based on our experience, the AntMiners are very good product and the company making them is really fast and ships from stock (if ordering directly from them), not to mention the always up to date prices going down with the difficulty increase. The PiggyBack Mining cloud mining service so far is working great based on our few weeks of experience using it, they also update prices after difficulty increase. The use of CEX.io for cloud mining is not so good of long term investment in mining hashrate due to the higher prices driver by the users trading on exchange, but if you use the platform for trade and treat the cloud mining as just an extra profit while trading it is not a bad option.

Doubled Rewards for Litecoin Mining, LTC Cloud Mining Coming Soon, Bitcoin Cloud Mining Preorders as new Features on CEX

14 Mar
2014

litecoin-double-cex

It seems to be official now after digging a bit around the CexIO website we found some information that “LTC Cloud mining is coming soon” and adding the Litecoin mining pool at Ghash.io is apparently only the first step. The currently running promotion for doubled rewards for Litecoin mining for a week in the new LTC pool is apparently a good trick to attract a lot of user attention and after this week ends the service will most likely start offering LTC cloud mining and trading to go along with the already available BTC cloud mining and trading functionality. And apparently things are already working pretty well with the current pool speed of the Litecoin mining pool at 5.76 GHS and growing as more and more people are joining in. The 100% extra profitability promised over the standard LTC mined is an offer that is not easy to pass at the moment with the not so high profitability of other alternative cryptos, so the news is spreading pretty fast.

The CexIO account Balance page already shows some new things such as the FHM and FHA balance that apparently stands for future mining contracts. 1 FHA and 1 FHM stands for futures contract for 1 GHS that will start mining for you on 26th of April and May respectively with both already traded on the website’s exchange. The purchase of future hashrate at a much lower price of 0.00399999 BTC per FHA or 0.00399999 BTC per FHM. The total FHA (April) is 1000000 GHS (1000 THS) and the total FHM (May) on the exchange is 900000 meaning that apparently there are 900000 GHS (900 THS) more that will be added at CexIO and you can pre-order now. It is very much like pre-ordering a BTC ASIC, but with an exact date for delivery and easier to calculate the break even in time. This however does not mean that these future cloud mining hashrate contracts will be profitable as there are many variables to take into account as well as with pre-orders for ASIC hardware.

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