The ScryptGuild Pool Has Added Automatic Conversion to BTC

3 Mar
2014

scryptguild-automatic-btc-conversion

One of the most annoying things when mining alternative crypto currencies in a pool with automatic switching algorithm based on the current coin profitability is that you end up with a lot of different coins that you need to move and trade on an exchange. The pool ScryptGuild has just added an easy solution to this problem, by introducing a function for automatic conversion of the mined alternative coins. Previously the pool had an option for you to manually trade the mined coins directly through the pool’s interface for BTC with an extra fee of 1% fee on top of the exchange rate of 0.3%. Now, the automatic conversion to BTC has replaced that functionality and the fees remain the same, and the coins are apparently still traded on Cryptsy. However you don’t need to move them there and trade them, the trade is automatically executed every hour if you decide use this function and the BTCs get credited directly in your pool’s account. The pool offers a coin reserve function that gives you the ability to set an amount of coins that should stay in your account and not be sold automatically for BTC… good for example if you want to keep some LTC (the autoconversion does not support LTC at the moment) or DOGE. ScryptGuild is still a relatively new pool, but they are doing a great job in making it an attractive alternative to other pools that have been around for a while already sch as Multipool for example. So if you still haven’t checked them out, then we would suggest to give them a try.

– For more information and to check out the ScryptGuild mining pool…

MtGox Has Announced a Procedure of Civil Rehabilitation

2 Mar
2014

civil-rehabilitation-proceedings-flow-chart

There is apparently a new development on the MtGox situation with their website getting an updated with an official announcement of a procedure of civil rehabilitation (the company has filed for bankruptcy protection). Here is a quote of the published text in English as there is also a Japanese translation available on the MtGox website:

ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING AN APPLICATION FOR COMMENCEMENT OF A PROCEDURE OF CIVIL REHABILITATION

MtGox Co., Ltd. made today an application for commencement of a procedure of civil rehabilitation (minji saisei) at the Tokyo District Court. This application was accepted on the same day. Further, MtGox Co., Ltd is under several orders issued by the Court : a preservative order prohibiting it from paying its debts, transferring its assets or establishing security over its assets, an order establishing a comprehensive prohibition of forced attachment of its assets by its creditors and a supervisory order ordering supervision by a supervisory committee. In consequence, MtGox hereby informs you as follows.
We first express our most sincere regrets and apologies for this situation and for causing so much inconvenience to all our users and other interested parties. We will fully respect the above orders and maintain our assets with all the necessary care.

Financial situation, reasons and timeline leading to this application

(1) As of now, the liabilities of MtGox Co., Ltd exceed its assets and its financial situation is as follows:
Total amount of assets 3,841,866,163
Total amount of current liabilities 6,501,119,371

(2) The increase of current liabilities may be linked to a loss of bitcoins and customer funds. These are now investigated by an expert and all efforts are made to discover the truth. This application was prompted by the following troubles:

At the start of February 2014, illegal access through the abuse of a bug in the bitcoin system resulted in an increase in incomplete bitcoin transfer transactions and we discovered that there was a possibility that bitcoins had been illicitly moved through the abuse of this bug.
As a result of our internal investigation, we found that a large amount of bitcoins had disappeared. Although the complete extent is not yet known, we found that approximately 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and approximately 100,000 bitcoins belonging to us had disappeared.
We believe that there is a high probability that these bitcoins were stolen as a result of an abuse of this bug and we have asked an expert to look at the possibility of a criminal complaint and undertake proper procedures.
On the same day (24th), we found out large discrepancies between the amount of cash held in financial institutions and the amount deposited from our users. The amounts are still under investigation and may vary but they approximate JPY 2.8 billion.
We are investigating the causes of these problems. Since there are probably a variety of causes including hacking by third parties, we need to investigate a huge amount of transaction reports in order to establish the truth. As of this date, we cannot confirm the exact amount of missing deposit funds and the total amount of bitcoins which disappeared.
Once we discovered that bitcoins had disappeared and the discrepancies between cash funds and deposit balances, we judged that it would be difficult to continue our activities normally and we therefore closed our site at noon on the 25th (Japan time).

(3) Regarding the filing of a complaint or damages report, an expert has been mandated and investigations have started. We will make all efforts to ensure that crimes are punished and damages recovered.
Further we will fully cooperate with inquiries from authorities and investigations related to this matter, in Japan or overseas.

In order to increase repayments to our creditors, it is necessary to explore the possibility of having MtGox Co., Ltd. continue its business. This is why the civil rehabilitation procedure has been chosen, Rebuilding MtGox Co., Ltd under the supervision of the court in a legally organized procedure while giving proper explanations will not be for the sole benefit of the company but for that of the whole bitcoin community.
All efforts will now be made to restore the business and recover damages to repay debts to creditors. We hope for the understanding and cooperation of all.
Outline of the application
(1) Application date February 28, 2014
(2) Jurisdiction Tokyo District Court
(3) Counsel of applicant

Baker & McKenzie (Gaikokuho Joint Enterprise)
Attorney-at-law Junko Suetomi
Attorney-at-law Yamamoto Hideyuki
Yodoyabashi & Yamagami Legal Professional Corporation
Attorney-at-law Akio Shinomiya
Attorney-at-law Kazumasa Kawai
(4) Supervisor Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu
Attorney-at-law Nobuaki Kobayashi
(5) Investigator idem
(6) Case no. 2014 (sai) 12Civil rehabilitation commencement application

Contact information

A call center has been established to respond to all inquiries. The call center is planned to start on March 3, 2014. All inquiries to MtGox Co., Ltd. should be made to the following telephone number:
Telephone number +81 3-4588-3921
Working hours Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm (Japan time)

Please refrain from contacting the office of the supervisor/investigator.

If you are wondering what this procedure means, essentially they are going to be checking what assets and liabilities MtGox has in order to see if the company could continue operating or they will go bankrupt. The total amount of assets the company has seems to be a bit over half of what its debts are, so they should be able to return some of their debts to customers that have deposited coins and money in the service. This document is the first official one that confirms the amount of stolen Bitcoins, though there are already some speculations that the claimed theft of coins is a lie and the whole thing is a scam by MtGox to steal a lot of money from their customers.

What Hashrate We are Getting from the 5-chip Gridseed DualMiner ASIC

2 Mar
2014

gridseed-5-chip-scrypt-asic-performance

Yesterday in our first impressions from the Gridseed 5-chip Scrypt ASIC device we have shared that the modified version of the cpuminer software is not reporting local hashrate. This is a problem as you can hardly know what is your current hashrate, especially when you start overclocking the device to get some extra performance out of it. You need to rely on information reported by the pool about your worker’s current hashrate, but these tend to often report lower or inaccurate results than actual hasrate. This is due to the fact that pools base the reported hashrate on the submitted shares for a given period of time, so result can vary. We can report that the average hasrate we are getting from our 5-chip Gridseed DualMiner ASIC device in terms of Scrypt mining performance to be hovering around 300 KHS with the stock frequency of 600 MHz that the five Gridschip GC3355 chips inside run at.

We could get the chips to run at about 850 MHz, but they were giving out quite a few HW errors, at least visually as the cpuminer software does not report actual number of stale shares or HW errors that the device makes. Seeing a lot of the red error messages means you are probably getting a lot of HW errors and should try reducing the clock frequency with 50 MHz or more. With 800 MHz the device was running more stable with much less HW errors, however this result was achieved with the use of the standard cpuminer software supplied with the device. Apparently this version of cpuminer had a bug and did not disable the BTC core and as a result mining Scrypt only you can get up to about 60W power consumption. By using the newer fixed cpuminer for Gridseed the power usage got down to the 8-9W range and we could overclock the device at 850 MHz with more stable results and very few HW errors. With 850MHz clock we got pools to report hashrate going up to about 400 KHS which is definitely a nice improvement though the newer version of the cpuminer still does not report local hashrate, so it is hard to get more realistic rate for the performance of the device when overclocked.

If you wan to overclock the Gridseed ASIC devices you need to use one fo the preset frequency values as they will not accept just about any frequency that you send to them. The lst of accepted frequencies consists of the following values: 250, 400, 450, 500, 550, 600 (default), 650, 700, 750, 800, 850 and 900 MHz. It is possible that with the version of cpuminer linked above that ensures low power consumption the ASIC devices may be ale to run pretty stable even at 900 MHz, however we still haven’t extensively tested that. Still even when using 850 MHz with about 400 KHS does not sound bad at all as compared to the claimed stock 300 KHS at 600 MHz.

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