Mining News Review

The recent jump in bitcoin after a period of comparative lull caused a revival among miners. Such growth already pushed many to the decision to go broke, finally, a couple of mining combines. Such a course of events will undoubtedly positively affect the security of the network as a whole.</strong>

During a recent meeting of leading ChineseMining device manufacturers once again it became apparent how centralized mining is still. While such meetings take place behind closed doors, and other users are confronted with mining mainly in the form of hacker mining programs on their computers - this is hardly the best option for the cryptocurrency industry.

Based on these considerations, we compiled an overview of the most significant mining news for the last period.

Altcoin mining cloud

Many companies have already realized the potential of the game in"Digital miners" and consciously moving towards hosting mining equipment, or the so-called cloud mining. The problem is that it is difficult for a potential miner to understand the abundance of services offered. In fact, the only thing they are able to offer consumers is a certain hashing power in exchange for periodic payments.

What stands out from this mass of new serviceGenesis mining? But here's what: altcoin mining. While most services offer mining opportunities only in the most common crypto network - Bitcoin, Genesis Mining promotes a number of alternatives based on the scrypt algorithm.

The company offers mining resources.Bitcoins, Lightcoins, Firecoins, Dogecoins, Auroracoins, Lottcoins and Megacoins. By testing the service using the free account provided to us at a speed of 1 megacheh per second, we were able to earn $ 0.13 lightcoins per day. This is not much, but mining based on Genesis Mining may well serve as a good addition or test service before buying mining devices using scrypt. In any case, you can see what you really get for your money.

Walmart sells miners

Matching its tagline, Walmart, whichallows you to "save and live better", launched the sale of mining devices. Thanks to a contract with TigerDirect, buyers of this largest mega-retailer can now buy their own mining combine.

To date, onlyButterfly Labs Jalapeno. “Earn more bitcoins with Bitcoin miner Butterfly Labs,” the description text entices us. The Jalapeno model, which appeared on the market last summer, runs at a speed of 10 gigahashes per second and sells for $ 299, plus $ 5.70 for delivery. The cost of a miner from Wallmart is $ 50 more than what is stated on the manufacturer’s website Butterfly Labs. 10 gigahashes per second based on SHA-256 - at the moment this is already the last century. Having bought this miner today at the stated price, you are unlikely to ever recoup your investments - unless you can proudly call yourself a real Bitcoin miner and support the decentralization of the network.

Software Updates BFGminer

A popular client used by bitcoin miners, BFGminer has updated the software by releasing version 4.0. New in this version: hot plugging, proxy and scrypt support.

Latest client version is now compatible withlatest developments and devices from Gridseed, Butterfly Labs and Hex Fury. BFG miner is available to users of Windows, Mac OS and Linux, which makes it more flexible and allows you to work on the operating system that is convenient for the user.

This program appeared at a time whenTo create new blocks, ordinary video cards and FPGAs were enough. Its main developer is the controversial luke-jr (pictured), who is also the administrator of the Elegius pool and is known for publishing excerpts from the Bible on the blockchain due to his religious beliefs.

The official release of the new version reports thatManufacturers plan to integrate features in the next versions that provide additional cryptographic algorithms for proof of work (PoW), opportunities for decentralized pools and parallel mining processes.

Gridcoin

It is likely that in the near future, mining devices can only be used subject to special electricity tariffs.

This means that as the volume increaseshash operations, providing the network with the necessary amount of energy can become a major security issue for Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency called gridcoin, created last year, is designed to solve this problem. Gridcoins are awarded to miners who participate in the BOINC (Open Infrastructure for Computer Networks of Berkeley) projects.

According to the BOINC website, theirThe projects support scientific research in the field of medicine, global warming and solving mathematical problems. Any user can download software to participate in BOINC projects.

According to the creators of this currency, the schemegridcoin-based caching can turn out to be much more relevant and effective than a SHA-256 based scheme or similar cryptographic algorithms, since they allow you to receive rewards for a wide range of socially useful work, and not just for merging energy into meaningless random number sorting.

Hydro Power Mining

British company MegaMine providesOpportunities for resident mining with a speed range from 10 gigahashes per second to 10 terrashas per second. Today, many entrepreneurs who have data centers at their disposal sell mining contracts, but MegaMine has one strategic advantage over others. The company uses only the energy that is generated by hydrogenerators, therefore, electricity bills when using this service are significantly lower.

As network power increases, for the nextgenerations of miners will need more and more electricity. Even if we assume that the nodes will become smaller and require less energy, inevitable competition will require new advantages in terms of energy cost. Electricity is expensive in Europe, especially in countries like Germany, France, and Spain. Miners in these countries may prefer MegaMine as an alternative source of cheaper energy.

Determining the hashrate will become harder

The trend towards centralization in the environmentBitcoin miners reduce transparency. The Neighborhood Pool Watch blog has posted a post on this phenomenon. Some large mining pools do not disclose the hashrate of each miner individually. In this regard, it becomes difficult to determine how many miners are borrowed by hashing.

There may be several reasons for this. For example, some of the pools do not want competitors to know which devices they use. It is possible that they use several modified installations with a large number of ASICs in each instead of a large number of individual miners.

One way or another, if in November 2013the researchers could confidently determine the source of more than 60% of the hashing power in the network, at the moment this is possible only in relation to 37% of the mining power. Who owns the remaining 63% is a mystery. This does not mean that all this power is concentrated in one hand, just its owners are clearly taking special measures to make it difficult to identify, which, as you know, is usually typical of industrial mining farms.

Obviously, in this industry there areconsolidation trends, this applies to both individual miners and companies. The merger of Cloud Hashing and HighBitcoin led to the emergence of Peernova, and the creation of BitFury of the 20 millionth investment fund confirmed fears of deepening one of Bitcoin's main problems: centralizing transaction confirmations.

: Coindesk Posted by: Daniel Coury

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