New Crypto Difficulty, Coin Profitability and Cloud Mining

13 Mar
2014

litecoin-hashrate-difficulty-latest-chart

You have probably noticed the recent jump in Litecoin difficulty up to 4,738 (up with more than 20%) and the most recent difficulty adjustment to 4,719 which is actually a slight decrease. This has allowed some alternative crypto currencies to again become attractive alternative with better profitability than directly mining for LTC, so this may help keep Litecoin from new serious jumps in terms of difficulty for a little longer. This is however not certain as Gridseed is apparently shipping already serious quantities of their Scrypt-capable ASIC devices and if they are all used for LTC mining the difficulty may skyrocket soon again.

On the Bitcoin front there was just another increase in difficulty, this time it was surprisingly small compared to previous difficulty increases. The new BTC network difficulty is 4,250,217,920 up with just about 11.39% from the previous one, while the previous few increases were all with about 20%. This is actually good news for people that have ASIC devices that still need to earn the investment in purchasing them.

And a quick look on what is going on with the cloud mining prices after the new difficulty for LTC and BTC. It seems that with Gridseed ASIC devices hitting the market the LTC prices for KHS of cloud mining are starting to get lower and cloud mining Litecoin is getting even more atractive than investing in BTC cloud mining hashrate. Below you can find the current prices for BTC and LTC cloud mining hashrate at some of the bigger services offering them.

Bitcoin cloud mining hasrate prices:
– PB Mining – 0.0083 BTC per 1 GHS
– Bit Minng – 0.012 BTC per 1 GHS
– CexIO – 0.0157 BTC per 1 GHS

Litecoin cloud mining hasrate prices:
– MarketsCX – 0.0295 LTC per 1 KHS
– Bit Minng – 0.055 LTC per 1 KHS
– ScryptCC – 0.0576 LTC per 1 KHS

Download bfgminer 3.10.0 for Windows Scrypt mining on Gridseed 5-chip ASICs

13 Mar
2014

bfgminer-gridseed-support

Another software miner now has support for the 5-chip Gridseed GC3355 BTC/LTC ASIC devices and that is bfgminer, though you should note that there is a separate branch that supports the Gridseed hardware and the official 3.10.0 release is not compatible. The version that you can download below compiled for windows is the one with Gridseed support and you can also use it for Scrypt GPU mining, though the command line we have provided in the BAT file is only going to start bfgminer and look for Gridseed devices (remove the -d gridseed option to use GPUs too). Also note that the command line starts the miners with 850 MHz operating frequency that should result in about 360 KHS scrypt mining hashrate (60 over the stock 300 KHS) – should be stable option for good overclock performance with low to no HW errors, but your results may vary. You can get down to 800 MHz if you are getting more HW errors, or try to get up to 900 MHz if you get no HW errors to see if you can get 380 KHS stable.

This version of bfgminer shoudl work with both the earlier 5-chip Gridseed ASIC devices as well as the newer revisions, it detects and work with our miners using both the newer STM32 Virtual COM port driver as well as the older CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller. Note that bfgminer requires the devices to be working with their standard virtual COM ports and not to have the drivers replaced with Zadig with WinUSB like cgminer does. If you have installed the WinUSB drivers you may need to Uninstall the drivers and unplug and plug the ASIC devices so that the default driver is installed again. Alternatively you can try to install the GridSeed.inf driver you will find in the miner archive. Note that the version of bfgminer provided here is only for Scrypt (LTC) mining on the 5-chip Gridseed ASIC devices!

– You can download bfgminer 3.10.0 for Scrypt mining with Gridseed 5-chip ASICs on Windows OS here…

First Impressions from the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot

12 Mar
2014

haasonline-automated-trading-bot

As a part of our ongoing tests of different automated trading solutions of crypto currencies we have now started testing the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot. We have already tested multiple solutions available for automated trading on the most popular crypto currency exchanges such as BTC Robot, Butterbot and Cryptotrader. All of these have both their own advantages as well as disadvantages, so you should check out our impressions and tests that we have ran using them to trade on different crypto exchanges. Let us get back to the Haasonline’s solution as the next in line for testing. We’ve had our eye on this software for a while already, but what was stopping us from trying it was the fact that there is no trial version available and the price of the software is quite high. With that said this automated trading solution seems to be one of the most advanced one out there and at the same time still being relatively easy for people that are not experienced traders. What is even stranger is the fact that there is not a lot of information available for the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot and no detailed reviews to actually help you in deciding if you should get it or not and the software has been available for some time already. Even the information about getting started and using the software is a bit scarce, so if you are a total newbie you might still have some trouble until you get to know the functionality of the software.

haasonline-automated-trading-bot-welcome-page

We should start with what are the most important features that the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot provides you with. There are two versions of the software available, a Simple Trade Bot currently available for 0.45 BTC and an Advanced Trade Bot being sold for 0.90 BTC at the moment (these are apparently promo prices). So as we’ve already said the software does not come very cheap, but if it can help you actually make some money with automated crypto trades you might be able to quickly get back what you have paid for it. The major difference between the two versions of the trading software is that with the Simple one you get a maximum of 3 trade-bots active at the same time, and there is a limited number of securities and technical indicators available unlike wit the Advanced versions that has unlimited number of active bots and all of the trading options available. Now, what is recommended is to start with the Simple Trade Bot to try it and get to know the software and if you like it and want to get the full extras, then you can just upgrade it by paying only the difference in price to the Advanced version. This means that you can start with 0.45 BTC for the Simple bot and then only pay another 0.45 BTC to upgrade to the Advanced bot.

What you should also note about the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot software is that it is something you download and install on your own computer. The software runs as a server on your own computer that needs to be on and online all of the time in order to get effective trades and you are controlling it through a web browser. You need Windows Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1 (32-bits or 64-bits) operating system in order to run the trading software, Windows XP and RT are not supported. Now, if you don’t have or don’t want to run a computer 24/7 with the trading software installed on it, then you can get a Windows VPS server and install the trading software on it in order to get it running all the time and being accessible from different locations. Note that the trading software comes with a license for installation on a single computer and the license you purchase is valid for 2 years.

haasonline-automated-trading-bot-new-bot-options

Moving on to what crypto exchanges the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot supports. There is automated support for trading on Bitstamp, BTC-e, BTCChina, CampBX, CexIO and Cryptsy. The two most interesting thing is probably the presence of suport for Cryptsy as this adds a lot of flexibility thanks to the many alternative cryptos traded on that exchange, though CEX support and BTCChina might be interesting for some people. The comprehensive support for multiple exchanges and exchanges that not only trade BTC and LTC, but many other alternative cryptos in a single trading software is definitely a plus. There was also support for MtGox in the previous versions of the trading bot, but now that has been removed as Gox is no more.

When you are creating a bot in the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot you need to select the exchange it will operate on as well as what currency pair it will trade with and you can set a limit of the currency that it will be trading with if you don’t wan to use the full amount in the exchange. Then you have three set of tools that can be selected and the trading will be executed based on what Safeties, Indicators and Insurances you have chosen for the bot to use. The Safeties, as the name implies, are tools to protect your from losses in case something serious happens on the market, there are multiple tools that you can use for the bot you are configuring to ensure safe trading. Next are the Indicators – tools that use market analysis based on different algorithm to give signals when the bot should buy and sell. The third set of tools called Insurances are there to help you actually get profit when your bot is executing trades. An example of insurance is to take into account the exchange fees when trading, so that the profit you make should be higher than the trade fee for example, so that you will actually be making money and not trading just to cover the trade fee or even loose money from the trade because of the fee.

After you setup your bot you can do a backtest on the already available market data in order to see what kind of performance you can expect before actually activating it and allowing the bot to start trading live. Many of the tools you have available allow for further adjustment of their settings, so you can backtest and fine tune them for better results. The Haasonline Automated Trading Bot has another interesting feature called auto-tune, that basically allows you to automatically tune the trade Indicators of your bot in order to get even better results when the bot is trading. We are still checking out things and getting used to the features of the trading software, but you can expect more information and tips from us once we get better at the whole process of bot trading and optimization. The important thing is that we like what we are seeing so far and we can say for sure this is indeed the most advanced automated trading software for crypto currencies we’ve tested so far. If you are wondering what a good starting point for a trading bot is, then we can recommend to start with RSI and Stochastic Indicators with their default settings and the OvercomeFeeCosts Insurance and then see how the bot will work before starting to play further.

haasonline-automated-trading-bot-active-trading-bots

And now for some quick results from our first simple trade bot configurations using the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot software and the above advice we have shared about the two Indicators with their default settings and the Insurance for the fees. Note that on CEX there is no trading fee, so there is no need to use the OvercomeFeeCosts Insurance there anyway, but on Cryptsy and BTC-e there is a fee for each trade. We have setup LTC/BTC trade bots for BTCe and Cryptsy as well as GHS/BTC trade bot for CexIO and within an hour we got a few trades executed realizing some profit. Note that we’ve allowed the bots to operate with only small amounts of currency while we are testing, so even if we got something wrong we would loose only small amount. The good thing is that the software allows you to set limits on the amount of cash or crypto coins each bot can operate with. That is why our profits from the trades of the bots may seem so low, by using larger amounts for trades you can realize more profit, but the risk of loosing more is there as well, so be careful with that when you start trading at first and haven’t setup enough protection features for your trading bots.

This pretty much summarizes our first thoughts and impressions of the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot software, but we’ll be keeping you up to date how things progress as we get to know the software better and have more experience configuring and optimizing the trade bots for different exchanges and crypto currency pairs. For the moment we like what we are seeing and we already got some positive results from the first trades executed with a very simple configuration for the trading bots we have setup for three different crypto exchanges. We are very positive about this automated trading software for the moment and hope we’ll soon have more information to share with you. Again if you are interested in checking it out, you better get the Simple Trading Bot first as you can always upgrade it to the advanced version later on by paying only the extra difference should you decide you need all of the features available.

– For more information about the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot for crypto currencies…

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