Bitcoin machine

How Bitcoin Mining Works

Where do bitcoins come from? With paper money, a government decides when to print and distribute money. Bitcoin doesn't have a central government.

With Bitcoin, miners use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins in exchange. This provides a smart way to issue the currency and also creates an incentive for more people to mine.

Bitcoin is Secure

Bitcoin miners help keep the Bitcoin network secure by approving transactions. Mining is an important and integral part of Bitcoin that ensures fairness while keeping the Bitcoin network stable, safe and secure.

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Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are:

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S9

• Overview - Table of Contents
• Mining Hardware Comparison
• What is Bitcoin Mining?
• What is the Blockchain?
• What is Proof of Work?
• What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?
• The Computationally-Difficult Problem
• The Bitcoin Network Difficulty Metric
• The Block Reward

Bitcoin mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions or blockchain. This ledger of past transactions is called the block chain as it is a chain of blocks. The block chain serves to confirm transactions to the rest of the network as having taken place.

Bitcoin nodes use the block chain to distinguish legitimate Bitcoin transactions from attempts to re-spend coins that have already been spent elsewhere.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

What is the Blockchain?

Bitcoin mining is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and difficult so that the number of blocks found each day by miners remains steady. Individual blocks must contain a proof of work to be considered valid. This proof of work is verified by other Bitcoin nodes each time they receive a block. Bitcoin uses the hashcash proof-of-work function.

The primary purpose of mining is to allow Bitcoin nodes to reach a secure, tamper-resistant consensus. Mining is also the mechanism used to introduce Bitcoins into the system: Miners are paid any transaction fees as well as a "subsidy" of newly created coins.

This both serves the purpose of disseminating new coins in a decentralized manner as well as motivating people to provide security for the system.

Bitcoin mining is so called because it resembles the mining of other commodities: it requires exertion and it slowly makes new currency available at a rate that resembles the rate at which commodities like gold are mined from the ground.

What is Proof of Work?

A proof of work is a piece of data which was difficult (costly, time-consuming) to produce so as to satisfy certain requirements. It must be trivial to check whether data satisfies said requirements.

Producing a proof of work can be a random process with low probability, so that a lot of trial and error is required on average before a valid proof of work is generated. Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work.

What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?

The Computationally-Difficult Problem

Bitcoin mining a block is difficult because the SHA-256 hash of a block's header must be lower than or equal to the target in order for the block to be accepted by the network.

This problem can be simplified for explanation purposes: The hash of a block must start with a certain number of zeros. The probability of calculating a hash that starts with many zeros is very low, therefore many attempts must be made. In order to generate a new hash each round, a nonce is incremented. See Proof of work for more information.

The Bitcoin Network Difficulty Metric

The Bitcoin mining network difficulty is the measure of how difficult it is to find a new block compared to the easiest it can ever be. It is recalculated every 2016 blocks to a value such that the previous 2016 blocks would have been generated in exactly two weeks had everyone been mining at this difficulty. This will yield, on average, one block every ten minutes.

As more miners join, the rate of block creation will go up. As the rate of block generation goes up, the difficulty rises to compensate which will push the rate of block creation back down. Any blocks released by malicious miners that do not meet the required difficulty target will simply be rejected by everyone on the network and thus will be worthless.

The Block Reward

When a block is discovered, the discoverer may award themselves a certain number of bitcoins, which is agreed-upon by everyone in the network. Currently this bounty is 25 bitcoins; this value will halve every 210,000 blocks. See Controlled Currency Supply.

Additionally, the miner is awarded the fees paid by users sending transactions. The fee is an incentive for the miner to include the transaction in their block. In the future, as the number of new bitcoins miners are allowed to create in each block dwindles, the fees will make up a much more important percentage of mining income.

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Bitcoin Mining Hardware ASICs

Hobby Bitcoin mining can still be fun and even profitable if you have cheap electricity and get the best and most efficient Bitcoin mining hardware.

It’s important to remember that Bitcoin mining is competitive. It’s not ideal for the average person to mine since China’s cheap electricity has allowed it to dominate the mining market. If you want bitcoins then you are better off buying bitcoins.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

What is an ASIC Bitcoin Miner?

Since it’s now impossible to profitably mine Bitcoin with your computer, you’ll need specialized hardware called ASICs.

Here’s what an ASIC miner looks like up close:

The Dragonmint 16T miner.

Originally, Bitcoin’s creator intended for Bitcoin to be mined on CPUs (your laptop or desktop computer). However, Bitcoin miners discovered they could get more hashing power from graphic cards. Graphic cards were then surpassed by ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits).

Think of a Bitcoin ASIC as specialized Bitcoin mining computers, Bitcoin mining machines, or “bitcoin generators”. Nowadays all serious Bitcoin mining is performed on dedicated Bitcoin mining hardware ASICs, usually in thermally-regulated data-centers with access to low-cost electricity.

Don’t Get Confused

There is Bitcoin mining hardware, which mines bitcoins.

There are also Bitcoin hardware wallets like the Ledger Nano S, which secure bitcoins.

Check Profitability

You can use our calculator below to check the mining hardware above. Input your expected electricity price and the hash rate of the miner for an estimate.

Profitability Factors

The Bitcoin price and the total network hash rate are the two main factors that will affect your profitability.

Our calculator is more accurate than most others because ours assumes the 0.4527678% daily increase in network hash rate. This has been the average daily increase over the past 6 months.

Most other calculators do NOT include this metric which makes mining appear way more profitable than it actually is.

The Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin mining is a booming industry, but the Bitcoin price increasing can help make up some of these losses.

The Bitcoin price is increasing at an average of 0.3403% per day over the past year. Try messing with the calculator using different prices.

Know your Competition

It may seem easy to just spin up a miner.

But you NEED to take a look at just how serious mining is.

The video below offers an inside look at one of China’s largest mines.

How to Find the Best Bitcoin Miner

There are some important factors to look at when determining which Bitcoin mining ASIC to buy:

Hash rate – How many hashes per second can the Bitcoin miner make? More hashes cost more, which is why efficiency is crucial.

Efficiency – You’ll want to buy the most efficient bitcoin mining hardware possible. Right now, this is the Halong Mining Dragonmint T1. Since miners use a large amount of electricity, you want to buy one that converts the most amount of electricity into bitcoins.

Price – How much does the bitcoin miner cost? Cheap mining hardware will mine less bitcoins, which is why efficiency and electricity usage are important. The fastest and more efficient mining hardware is going to cost more.

Don’t try to buy a miner based on only price or only hash rate. The best ASIC miner is the most efficient bitcoin miner. Aim for value.

Bitcoin Miners for Sale on eBay or Amazon

If you’re a hobby miner who wants to buy a couple rigs for your house, eBay and Amazon both have some decent deals on mining hardware.

Used Bitcoin Mining Hardware for Sale

Both new and used bitcoin mining rigs and ASICs are available on eBay. One may want to buy used ASIC mining hardware on eBay because you can get better prices.

eBay’s customer protection ensures you’ll get a working product. Other bundled equipment may be included with your purchase depending on the seller.

We recommend purchasing the Dragonmint or the Antminer S9.

Just Want Bitcoins?

If you just want bitcoins, mining is NOT the best way to obtain coins.

Buying bitcoins is the EASIEST and FASTEST way to purchase bitcoins.

Get $10 worth of free bitcoins when you buy $100 or more at Coinbase.

Hardware Profitability

You can use a bitcoin mining profitability calculator to determine your estimated cost of return on your mining hardware.

Be sure to take electricity costs into account. Most mining hardware appears profitable until electricity costs are accounted for.

Most Efficient Bitcoin Miners

Good Bitcoin mining hardware needs to have a high hash rate. But, efficiency is just as important.

An efficient Bitcoin miner means that you pay less in electricity costs per hash.

To improve your efficiency, there are also companies that will let you order hardware to their warehouse and run the miners for you.

You could also cloud mine bitcoins. But both options are a lot less fun than running your hardware!

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Companies

Halong Mining – Halong Mining is the newest mining hardware company. They have the best miner available. Unfortunately, they already sold out of their first batch but a new batch should be available for sale soon.

Bitmain – Bitmain makes the Antminer line of Bitcoin miners. Bitmain is based in China and also operates a mining pool.

BitFury – BitFury is one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips. Its hardware is not available for purchase.

Bitcoin Mining Equipment

In addition to a Bitcoin mining ASIC, you’ll need some other Bitcoin mining equipment:

Power Supply – Bitcoin rigs need special power supplies to funnel and use electricity efficiently.

Cooling Fans – Bitcoin hardware can easily overheat and stop working. Buy a sufficient amount of cooling fans to keep your hardware working.

Bitcoin Mining Without Hardware?

It’s still technically possible to mine bitcoins without dedicated mining hardware.

However, you’ll earn less than one penny per month. Mining bitcoins on your computer will do more damage to your computer and won’t earn a profit.

So, it’s not worth it unless you’re just interested to see how the mining process works. You’re best bet is to buy dedicated hardware like the Antminer S7 or Antminer S9.

USB Bitcoin Miners

Using a Bitcoin USB miner with your computer was once a profitable way to mine bitcoins. Today, however, USB miners don’t generate enough hashing power to mine profitably. If you just want to get a Bitcoin miner USB to learn, eBay is a good place to buy a cheap Bitcoin miner.

Halong Mining

The world of crypto was in disbelief when Halong Mining, a new ASIC startup, announced their brand new Dragonmint T16. Halong claimed it to be the most powerful – and efficient – Bitcoin mining ASIC on the market. If they delivered on their promise, Bitmain’s reign as king of ASIC developers would come to an abrupt end.

Unsurprisingly, many prominent members of the Bitcoin community were in disbelief, as cryptocurrency in general has been plagued by fake startups and ICO scams.

In an effort to build trust with their potential buyers, Halong Mining released videos of their ASICs running as advertised. Moreover, they claimed that $30 million dollars was invested in research, development, and prototypes.

Their first batch of Dragonmint T16’s was set for shipment in March of 2018. As the deadline crept up, the world patiently waited for the much anticipated release.

If Halong Mining really did produce the most efficient SHA-256 miner to date, the startup would prove their skeptics wrong and dethrone Bitmain, a company only concerned with their monopoly on the market.

After prominent members of the Bitcoin community doubted Halong’s legitimacy, including Cøbra, the company proved them wrong. Miners shipped as described, and Halong delivered – quite literally – on their promises.

Slush, the creator of Slush Mining Pool and the TREZOR hardware wallet, claimed on Twitter the miners are legitimate. Halong Mining has earned their keep, finally viewed as a reputable company after months of speculation and debate.

Over 100 individuals took part in the development of the chip, including BtcDrak, one of the leading pseudonymous Bitcoin core developers. According to Bitcoin Magazine, BtcDrak remarked:

The project is motivated by, and driven to help facilitate greater decentralisation in Bitcoin mining at all levels, and make SHA-256 great again.

Dragonmint T16 vs. Antminer S9

The Dragonmint T16 was Halong Mining’s first ASIC to hit the market. Boasting 16 TH/s, it is the most powerful ASIC miner. Additionally, the T16 is remarkably power efficient, consuming a mere 0.075J/GH. Moreover, the Dragonmint T16 utilizes ASICBOOST, an exploit of Bitcoin’s algorithm which improves efficiency by 20%.

Compared to Bitmain’s Antminer S9, which consumes 0.098J/GH, the Dragonmint T16 is not only more powerful, but more efficient as well. The difference in power consumption seems small. However, when mining on a large scale, every bit of saved electricity counts.

What do you get when you combine power and efficiency? An incredibly profitable ASIC! The T16 is 30% more efficient than its competition.

Note that is appears profitable even with high electricity costs ($0.12 per KW/h). With $0.03 / KW/h it’s even more profitable:

The T16’s new DM8575 chip design is largely responsible for the ASIC’s notable improvements over Bitmain’s S9.

Although the Antminer S9 still yields a decent mining profit, it is no match for Halong Mining’s newest chip, the Dragonmint T16. Hashrate and power consumption are the primary factors in mining profitability, next to electricity cost – Halong Mining’s Dragonmint T16 is clearly superior to Bitmain’s best ASIC miner.

ASICs’ Impact on Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology, a decentralized platform which takes power away from a central authority and gives it to the average person. Sensitive information is stored on the blockchain rather than large data centers, and is cryptographically secured. A vast amount of people, known as miners, all work together to validate the network, instead of just one person or government.

In the beginning, CPUs were used to solve cryptographic hash functions, until miners discovered that GPUs were far better equipped for mining. As block difficulty increased, miners turned primarily to GPUs.

Eventually, technology was developed solely for mining, known as ASICs, or Application Specific Integrated Circuits. Their hashrates are significantly higher than anything GPUs are capable of.

With stellar performance comes a high price tag – the best ASIC chips will run you a few thousand dollars each. Upon creation, Bitcoin blocks were confirmed by the average person using their desktop – once ASICs hit the market, things changed.

ASICs rendered GPUs useless. ASIC developers, including Bitmain, granted early access to large mining cartels rather than the average person. Nowadays, a large majority of Bitcoin mining takes place in China where electricity is cheap.

Thousands of ASICs all mine simultaneously in a mining farm (large warehouse). Evidently, most people can’t afford just one or two of ASICs, not to mention thousands of them.

When ASICs hit the market, the blockchain’s validation process became more centralized than decentralized, as the majority of validation is done by a single mining company, rather than being spread out amongst many miners. Unfortunately, Bitcoin is no longer as decentralized as it was once intended to be.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Guide

The best Bitcoin mining hardware has evolved dramatically since 2009

At first, miners used their central processing unit (CPU) to mine, but soon this wasn't fast enough and it bogged down the system resources of the host computer. Miners quickly moved on to using the graphical processing unit (GPU) in computer graphics cards because they were able to hash data 50 to 100 times faster and consumed much less power per unit of work.

During the winter of 2011, a new industry sprang up with custom equipment that pushed the performance standards even higher. The first wave of these specialty bitcoin mining devices were easy to use Bitcoin miners were based on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors and attached to computers using a convenient USB connection.

FPGA miners used much less power than CPU's or GPU's and made concentrated mining farms possible for the first time.

Today's modern and best bitcoin mining hardware

Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners have taken over completely. These ASIC machines mine at unprecedented speeds while consuming much less power than FPGA or GPU mining rigs. Several reputable companies have established themselves with excellent products.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are:

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S9

Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Two major factors go into determining the best bitcoin mining hardware: (1) cost and (2) electricity efficiency.

Bitcoin mining is difficult to do profitably but if you try then this Bitcoin miner is probably a good shot.

ASIC Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Application-specific integrated circuit chips (ASICs) are bitcoin mining hardware created solely to solve Bitcoin blocks. They have only minimal requirements for other normal computer applications. Consequently, ASIC Bitcoin mining systems can solve Bitcoin blocks much quicker and use less less electricity or power than older bitcoin mining hardware like CPUs, GPUs or FPGAs.

As Bitcoin mining increases in popularity and the Bitcoin price rises so does the value of ASIC Bitcoin mining hardware. As more Bitcoin mining hardware is deployed to secure the Bitcoin network the Bitcoin difficulty rises. This makes it impossible to profitably compete without a Bitcoin ASIC system. Furthermore, Bitcoin ASIC technology keeps getting faster, more efficient and more productive so it keeps pushing the limits of what makes the best Bitcoin mining hardware.

Some models of Bitcoin miners include Antminer S5, Antminer U3, ASICMiner BE Tube, ASICMiner BE Prisma, Avalon 2, Avalon 3, BTC Garden AM-V1 616 GH/s, VMC PLATINUM 6 MODULE, and USB miners.

AntMiner U2

BPMC Red Fury USB

GekkoScience

Best Bitcoin Cloud Mining Services

For those not interested in operating the actual hardware then they can purchase Bitcoin cloud mining contracts. Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams.

Hashflare Review: Hashflare offers SHA-256 mining contracts and more profitable SHA-256 coins can be mined while automatic payouts are still in BTC. Customers must purchase at least 10 GH/s.

Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced. Zcash mining contracts are also available.

Hashing 24 Review: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.

Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.

Minergate Review: Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Bitcoin.

Hashnest Review: Hashnest is operated by Bitmain, the producer of the Antminer line of Bitcoin miners. HashNest currently has over 600 Antminer S7s for rent. You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website. At the time of writing one Antminer S7's hash rate can be rented for $1,200.

Bitcoin Cloud Mining Review: Currently all Bitcoin Cloud Mining contracts are sold out.

NiceHash Review: NiceHash is unique in that it uses an orderbook to match mining contract buyers and sellers. Check its website for up-to-date prices.

Eobot Review: Start cloud mining Bitcoin with as little as $10. Eobot claims customers can break even in 14 months.

MineOnCloud Review: MineOnCloud currently has about 35 TH/s of mining equipment for rent in the cloud. Some miners available for rent include AntMiner S4s and S5s.

Bitcoin ATM Map

The Bitcoin ATM Map is no longer maintained. Please try CoinATM Radar for more current data.

Bitcoin ATM Map, News and Information

Contact us to add a Bitcoin ATM (Or BTM!) with the details once live. Location details are needed and proof of operation.

Bitcoin ATM Suppliers and Projects

Bitcoin ATM News

From Seeds to Weed, Bitcoin Finds Home Where Commerce Goes Gray

Across the US, bitcoin ATMs are finding use among those who operate in the gray areas of commerce

Brazilian University Accepts Bitcoin, Installs Campus ATM

Nov 9, 2015 at 17:32 | Pete Rizzo

FIAP, a São Paulo-based private university, has announced it will now accept bitcoin as payment for select courses.

Bitcoin ATM Industry: A Look At The Numbers

What is the general state of the bitcoin ATM industry? CoinDesk takes a look at the data to decipher trends.

Mike Tyson: I'm Grateful to be Part of the Bitcoin Revolution

Sep 25, 2015 at 10:57 | Grace Caffyn

Mike Tyson says he is grateful to be part of the "bitcoin revolution", though he admits he's "no guru" just yet.

Robocoin Faces Lawsuit Over Bitcoin ATM Refund

Aug 3, 2015 at 16:25 | Grace Caffyn

Embattled bitcoin ATM maker Robocoin is facing yet another upset, this time in the form of a customer lawsuit.

Mike Tyson Bitcoin ATM Owner Hits Back at Scam Accusations

Jul 27, 2015 at 13:41 | Grace Caffyn

A deal to create an official Mike Tyson-branded bitcoin ATM in Las Vegas has been met with criticism following questions about the companies involved.

First Spanish University Installs Bitcoin ATM on Campus

Jun 24, 2015 at 17:00 | Pete Rizzo

Pompeu Fabra joins MIT, Simon Fraser University and the University of Zurich as universities that have installed bitcoin ATMs.

Canadian University Adds Bitcoin ATMs to Bookstore Locations

May 25, 2015 at 21:20 | Pete Rizzo

British Columbia's Simon Fraser University (SFU) announced today that its official campus bookstore would begin accepting bitcoin payments.

Lamassu Plans Added Cost for Bitcoin ATM Operators

Apr 23, 2015 at 21:35 | Stan Higgins

Bitcoin ATM maker Lamassu is set to begin charging operators for technical support after a period of what it called "belt tightening".

BTCPoint Creates 10,000 Bitcoin-Enabled ATMs Using Spanish Bank Network

Mar 6, 2015 at 17:30 | Pete Rizzo

Bitcoin-to-cash withdrawals are now available at 10,000 additional bank ATMs in Spain due to an agreement between Banc Sabadell and BTCPoint.

Getting Bitcoin can't be easier.

Multi-crypto support now available!

Cash to Ethereum, Zcash, Bitcoin Cash, Dash or Litecoin in no time. Operators now have the option to offer multi-cryptocurrency buying and selling on Lamassu machines.

Ethereum 15 second confirmation time makes the cryptocurrency ideal for cash-out transactions.

Bitcoin machines are profitable

Prime locations are reporting monthly transactions volumes from $70K to as high as $300K, standard locations about $20K to $30K. Operators have been covering the cost of their machines in 3-9 months.

Questions on ROI and BTM placement? inquiries@lamassu.is

Operator is king

As an operator, you will have complete and exclusive control of your machine through our open source Rakía backend.

Change the commission, exchanges and price tickers on the fly and choose whether you want to run a full node bitcoin wallet or use a hosted one.

5 Upcoming Bitcoin Mining Machines You Can Buy

We’ve talked about Bitcoins before, and even put together a list of 20 places where you can spend them. But a list of places to spend Bitcoins isn’t of much use if you don’t have any Bitcoins. Sure, you could go to a Bitcoin exchange such as Mt.Gox and exchange your money for Bitcoins, but there’s always security risks involved in doing so. If you decide to mine Bitcoins yourself, it’d probably take you forever just to mine one Bitcoin using an everyday computer rig. So, what’s a budding Bitcoin enthusiast to do?

Well, if you’re serious about getting into Bitcoin, and don’t want to deal with the potential dangers of online Bitcoin exchanges, then there’s only one thing left to do: invest in a Bitcoin mining machine. These are purpose-built computers where the one and only aim is to mine as many Bitcoins as possible, as quickly as possible.

Intrigued? Here’s a list of 5 machines that will be shipping in the near future. Make sure you have some cash to burn!

1. Fast-Hash One

There are three machine models in the Fast-Hash One series of Bitcoin mining machines: the Silver Edition, the Gold Edition and the Platinum Edition. These are 19" rack mountable Bitcoin machines, with the main differences being their expandability and the power of the included mining modules. All three machines come with one mining module, but can be upgraded to have six.

The Silver Edition is powered by a 64 GH/s module and tops out at 384 GH/s. The Gold Edition is powered by a 128GH/s module, with a maximum hash rate of 768GH/s. The Platinum Edition comes with the most powerful 256 GH/s module, and can go up to 1.536TH/s. Overall, when fully upgraded, these machines will mine anywhere from 0.2 up to 0.85 Bitcoins a day.

While the Silver Edition does not support expansion cases, both the Gold and Platinum Editions support up to six expansion cases, with each expansion case able to hold up to 16 modules, for even more mining power. The Fast-Hash One mining machines are available for pre-order.

Price: $2,499 – 5,999 for base units

2. CoinTerra TerraMiner IV

CoinTerra’s TerraMiner IV is a water-cooled Bitcoin mining machine powered by CoinTerra’s own in-house ASIC chips, the GoldStrike I. The TerraMiner IV is built on a 28nm process and comes in a 4U enclosure with a power supply included, which is a rarity in Bitcoin mining circles.

The TerraMiner IV has four ASIC chips, and with each boasting a 500 GH/s hash rate, it means that the TerraMiner IV has a total hash rate of 2TH/s. At the current mining difficulty, that translates to just over 1.1 Bitcoins a day. CoinTerra also claim that the TerraMiner IV is power efficient, although there are no numbers available yet to prove this claim.

The April batch for the TerraMiner IV is open for pre-orders.

Price: $5,999

3. Hashfast Sierra

Hashfast’s Sierra is a high performance water-cooled Bitcoin mining machine powered by three Golden Nonce ASIC chips. It is built into a 4U rack mountable case and comes with two Seasonic power supplies built in.

The Sierra has a nominal hash rate of 1.2 TH/s, which translates to about 0.66 Bitcoins a day as of the time of writing. The thing with the Sierra, though, is that it doesn’t have an on-board controller, so you’ll have to connect the Sierra to a main control unit via USB. This main control unit can be anything that will run CGminer, a mining software.

The Hashfast Sierra is open for pre-orders and is guaranteed to ship by March 31, 2014.

Price: $6,300

4. Black Arrow Prospero X-3

Black Arrow’s Prospero X-3 is powered by 20 Black Arrow Minion ASIC chips built into a 19" rack mount unit. The Minion ASICs are built on a 28nm process and are an in-house design. The Prospero X-3 will also have a built-in LCD display that will show statistics and diagnostics.

The 20 Minion ASIC chips in the Prospero X-3 give it a hash rate of 2TH/s, good for about 1.1 Bitcoins per day as of the time of writing. The Prospero X-3 has been designed with up to 20% under- and overclocks in mind. It also supports the lightweight Stratum mining protocol.

The Prospero X-3 is available for pre-order and is scheduled to be available at the end of February 2014.

Price: $6,999

5. KnCMiner Neptune

The KnCMiner Neptune is quite possibly the grand daddy of all Bitcoin mining machines. The Neptune is basically four modular 20nm ASIC boards, designed so that the machine will continue mining even if one (or more) of the boards fails. The Neptune follows up from their previous miner, the Jupiter, which was built on a 28nm process.

The Neptune has a minimum hashing speed of 3TH/s, which translates to about 1.66 Bitcoins a day. This is a vast improvement on the Jupiter, which was only able to mine 0.6 Bitcoins a day. KnCMiner also mention that they have the right to increase the speeds as it nears shipment, so the Neptune might end up being even faster once it gets into miners’ hands.

The KnCMiner Neptune is currently available for pre-order, and is scheduled to begin shipping in Q1/Q2 of 2014, limited to 1200 units.

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I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

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In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

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How to Set Up a Bitcoin Miner

Last updated: 26th November 2013

There are three main categories of bitcoin mining hardware, each more expensive and more powerful than the last. This guide to setting up a bitcoin miner explains each of them, and talks about how to make them work.

By this stage, you will understand how bitcoin works, and what mining means. But we need to get from theory to practice. How can you set up a bitcoin mining hardware and start generating some digital cash? The first thing you're going to need to do is decide on your hardware, and there are two main things to think about when choosing it:

This is the number of calculations that your hardware can perform every second as it tries to crack the mathematical problem we described in our mining section. Hash rates are measured in megahashes, gigahashes, and terahashes per second (MH/sec, GH/sec, and TH/sec. The higher your hash rate (compared to the current average hash rate), the more likely you are to solve a transaction block. The bitcoin wiki's mining hardware comparison page is a good place to go for rough information on hash rates for different hardware.

Energy consumption

All this computing power chews up electricity, and that costs money. It's worth looking at your hardware's energy consumption in watts, when making your choice. You want to make sure that you don't end up spending all of your money on electricity to mine coins that won't be worth what you paid.

Use these two factors to work out how many hashes you're getting for every watt of electricity that you use. To do this, divide the hash count by the number of watts.

For example, if you have a 500 GH/sec device, and it's taking 400 watts of power, then you're getting 1.25 GH/sec per watt. You can check your power bill or use an electricity price calculator online to find out how much that means in hard cash.

However, there's a caveat here. In some cases, you'll be using your computer to run the mining hardware. Your computer has its own electricity draw on top of the mining hardware, and you'll need to factor that into your calculation.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware

There are three main hardware categories for bitcoin miners: GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs. We'll explore them in depth below.

CPU/GPU Bitcoin Mining

The least powerful category of bitcoin mining hardware is your computer itself. Theoretically, you could use your computer's CPU to mine for bitcoins, but in practice, this is so slow by today's standards that there isn't any point.

You can enhance your bitcoin hash rate by adding graphics hardware to your desktop computer. Graphics cards feature graphical processing units (GPUs). These are designed for heavy mathematical lifting so they can calculate all the complex polygons needed in high-end video games. This makes them particularly good at the SHA hashing mathematics necessary to solve transaction blocks.

You can buy GPUs from two main vendors: ATI and Nvidia. High-end cards can cost hundreds of dollars, but also give you a significant advantage over CPU hashing. For example, an ATI 5970 graphics card can give you over 800 MH/sec compared with a CPU, which will generally give you less than 10 MH/sec.

One of the nice things about GPUs is that they also leave your options open. Unlike other options discussed later, these units can be used with cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. Litecoin, for example, uses a different proof of work algorithm to bitcoin, called Scrypt. This has been optimized to be friendly to CPUs and GPUs, making them a good option for GPU miners who want to switch between different currencies.

GPU mining is largely dead these days. Bitcoin mining difficulty has accelerated so much with the release of ASIC mining power that graphics cards can't compete. If you do want to use them, you'd best equip yourself with a motherboard that can take multiple boards, to save on running separate PSUs for different boards.

FPGA Bitcoin Mining

A Field Programmable Gate Array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured after being built. This enables a mining hardware manufacturer to buy the chips in volume, and then customize them for bitcoin mining before putting them into their own equipment. Because they are customized for mining, they offer performance improvements over CPUs and GPUs. Single-chip FPGAs have been seen operating at around 750 Megahashes/sec, although that's at the high end. It is of course possible to put more than one chip in a box.

ASIC Bitcoin Miners

This is where the action's really at. Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are specifically designed to do just one thing: mine bitcoins at mind-crushing speeds, with relatively low power consumption. Because these chips have to be designed specifically for that task and then fabricated, they are expensive and time-consuming to produce - but the speeds are stunning. At the time of writing, units are selling with speeds anywhere from 5-500 Gigahashes/sec (although actually getting some of them to them to ship has been a problem). Vendors are already promising ASIC devices with far more power, stretching up into the 2 Terahashes/sec range.

In September 2015, 21 released its 'Bitcoin Computer', which houses a mining chip and retails for around $400. It is aimed at developers to build applications with and not those wishing to mine bitcoin for profit.

21's 'Bitcoin Computer', which is aimed at developers and retails for $400.

Calculate mining profitability

Before making your purchase, calculate the projected profitability of your miner, using the excellent mining profitability calculator from The Genesis Block or this one. You can input parameters such as equipment cost, hash rate, power consumption, and the current bitcoin price to see how long it will take to pay back your investment.

One of the other key parameters here is network difficulty. This metric determines how hard it is to solve transaction blocks, and it varies according to the network hash rate. Difficulty is likely to increase substantially as ASIC devices come on the market, so it might be worth increasing this metric in the calculator to see what your return on investment will be like as more people join the game. Use this guide on calculating mining profitability for more information.

Once you have chosen your hardware, you'll need to do several other things:

Download the software

Depending on which equipment you choose, you will need to run software to make use of it. Typically when using GPUs and FPGAs, you will need a host computer running two things: the standard bitcoin client, and the mining software.

Standard bitcoin client

This software connects your computer to the network and enables it to interact with the bitcoin clients, forwarding transactions and keeping track of the block chain. It will take some time for it to download the entire bitcoin block chain so that it can begin. The bitcoin client effectively relays information between your miner and the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin mining software

The bitcoin mining software is what instructs the hardware to do the hard work, passing through transaction blocks for it to solve. There are a variety of these available, depending on your operating system. They are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and others.

You may well need mining software for your ASIC miner, too, although some newer models promise to ship with everything pre-configured, including a bitcoin address, so that all you need to do is plug it in the wall.

One smart developer even produced a mining operating system designed to run on the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost credit card-sized Linux computer designed to consume very small amounts of power. This could be used to power a USB-connected ASIC miner.

Join a pool

Now, you're all set up. Good for you. I bet you thought you were going to be mining more bitcoins than the Federal Reserve prints dollars, didn't you? Sadly not. You will stand little chance of success mining bitcoins unless you work with other people. You can find out more about that in our upcoming guide on how to join a mining pool.

Beginner’s Guide to Mining Bitcoins

Last updated on May 18th, 2018 at 03:08 pm

One of the biggest problems I ran into when I was looking to start mining Bitcoin for investment and profit was most of the sites were written for the advanced user. I am not a professional coder, I have no experience with Ubuntu, Linux and minimal experience with Mac. So, this is for the individual or group that wants to get started the easy way.

1. Get a Bitcoin mining rig

Bitcoin mining is a very competitive niche to get into. As more and more miners come on board with the latest mining hardware the difficulty to mine increases each day. Before even starting out with Bitcoin mining you need to do your due diligence. This means you need to find out if Bitcoin mining is even profitable for you.

The best way to do this is through the use of a Bitcoin mining calculator. Just enter the data of the Bitcoin miner you are planning on buying and see how long it will take you to break even or make a profit. However, I can tell you from the get go that if you don’t have a few hundred dollars to spare you probably won’t be able to mine any Bitcoins.

Once you’ve finished with your calculations it’s time to get your miner. Make sure to go over our different Bitcoin mining hardware reviews to understand which miner is best for you. Today, the Antminer S9 is the newest and most powerful miner.

Select miner

AntMiner S9

Antminer R4

Antminer T9

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S5

Antrouter R1

As a side note it’s important to state that in the past it was possible to mine Bitcoins with your computer or with a graphics card (also known as GPU mining). Today however, the mining niche has become so competitive that you’ll need to use ASIC miners – special computers built strictly for mining Bitcoins.

2. Get a Bitcoin wallet

First thing you need to do is get a “Bitcoin Wallet“. Because Bitcoin is an internet based currency, you need a place to keep your Bitcoins. Once you have a wallet make sure to get your wallet address. It will be a long sequence of letters and numbers. Each wallet has a different way to get the public Bitcoin address but most wallets are pretty straight forward about it. Notice that you’ll need your PUBLIC bitcoin address and not your PRIVATE KEY (which is like a password for your wallet).

If you’re using a self hosted wallet (i.e. you downloaded a program to your computer and are not using an internet based service) there’s one additional very important step. Make sure you have a copy of the wallet.dat file on a thumb drive and print a copy out and keep it in a safe location. You can view a tutorial on how to create a secure wallet here. The reason is that if you computer crashes and you do not have a copy of your wallet.dat file, you will lose all of your Bitcoins. They won’t go to someone else, they will disappear forever. It is like burning cash.

3. Find a mining pool

Now that you have a wallet you are probably roaring to go, but if you actually want to make Bitcoin (money), you probably need to join a mining pool. A mining pool is a group of Bitcoin miners that combines their computing power to make more Bitcoins. The reason you shouldn’t go it alone is that Bitcoins are awarded in blocks, usually 12.5 at a time, and unless you get extremely lucky, you will not be getting any of those coins.

In a pool, you are given smaller and easier algorithms to solve and all of your combined work will make you more likely to solve the bigger algorithm and earn Bitcoins that are spread out throughout the pool based on your contribution. Basically, you will make a more consistent amount of Bitcoins and will be more likely to receive a good return on your investment.

When choosing which mining pool to join you will need to ask several questions:

• What is the reward method? – Proportional/Pay Per Share/Score Based/PPLNS
• What fee they charge for mining and withdrawal of funds?
• How frequently they find a block (means how frequently I get rewarded)?
• How easy it is to withdraw funds?
• What kind of stats they provide?
• How stable is the pool?

To answer most of these questions you can use our best Bitcoin mining pools review or this excellent post from BitcoinTalk. You can also find a complete comparison of mining pools inside the Bitcoin wiki. For the purpose of demonstration I will use Slush’s Pool when mining for Bitcoins. Once you are signed up with a pool you will get a username and password for that specific pool which we will use later on.

Follow the link to go to their site and click the “Sign up here” link at the top of their site and follow their step by step instructions. After you have your account set up, you will need to add a “Worker”. Basically, for every miner that you have running, you will need to have a worker ID so the pool can keep track of your contributions.

4. Get a mining program for your computer

Now that you’ve got the basics covered we’re almost ready to mine. You will need a mining client to run on your computer to that you will be able to control and monitor your mining rig. Depending on what mining rig you got you will need to find the right software. Many mining pools have their own software but some don’t. You can find a list of Bitcoin mining software here.

I’m using a mac so I will use a program called MacMiner. The most popular program I’ve found for a PC are BFGMiner and 50Miner . If you want to compare different mining software you can do this here.

5. Start mining

OK, so hopefully now everything is ready to go. Connect you miner to a power outlet and fire it up. Make sure to connect it also to your computer (usually via USB) and open up your mining software. The first thing you’ll need to do is to enter your mining pool, username and password.

Once this is configured you’ll basically start mining for Bitcoins. You will actually start collections shares which represent your part of the work in finding the next block. According to the pool you’ve chosen you will be paid for your share of coins – just make sure that you enter your address in the required fields when signing up to the pool. Here’s a full video of me mining in action:

Conclusion – perhaps it’s better just to buy the coins?

To conclude this article here’s something to consider. Perhaps it would be more profitable for you to just buy Bitcoins with the money you plan to spend on Bitcoin mining. Many times just buying the coins will yield a higher ROI (return on investment) than mining. If you want to dig into this a bit deeper here’s a post about exactly that.