btc_miner

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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Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware for 2018 – Bitcoin Miner Reviews

The following page reviews the best hardware available today in order to make some sort of a profit with Bitcoin mining.

If you’re completely new to Bitcoin mining please read our “Is Bitcoin mining still profitable?” post before moving on. It will give you a good idea about the profitability of mining and will make you think twice before entering this very competitive niche.

If however, you are aware of the competitive nature of Bitcoin mining and still want to get in the game, here you will be able to find the best Bitcoin mining hardware available. The good news is that there are not many mining hardware companies left that make ASIC miners so choosing will probably be easy. That’s also the bad news. Even though many websites state long lists of Bitcoin mining hardware, only a handful of mining rigs can deal with the rising Bitcoin mining difficulty that’s out there these day.

How to compare Bitcoin miners

Below is a side by side comparison of all relevant miners. Underneath the table you’ll be able to see a summarized review of each of the miners. Keep in mind that in order to see how profitable you can be with any Bitcoin miner you’ll need to use a Bitcoin mining calculator based on your electricity cost, the Bitcoin exchange rate and the increase in difficulty throughout time. Since not all of these variables are known you will have to guess some as best as you can.

Select miner

AntMiner S9

Antminer R4

Antminer T9

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S5

Antrouter R1

Use our basic Bitcoin mining calculator to help you compare miners

Antminer S5 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer S5 is the entry level Bitcoin miner for someone who isn’t ready to part away with more than a few hundred bucks. Users who have purchased it seem mostly pleased with the device. However this is an outdated device and with today’s mining difficulty and decreasing block reward you won’t make more than 0.05 BTC each money in revenue. This means you’ll need to run it for about one year and 8 months to get a full Bitcoin. Some customers also complained about the device being too noisy, but that’s just how a miner works – it’s loud and hot.

Click here to view Antminer S5 deals on eBay

Avalon 6 BitcoinMiner Summarized Review

The Avalon 6 is a great contender for both S5 and S7 AntMiners. From the small number of reviews that can be found online people are saying that it’s not nearly as loud as your usual miner and the hash rate is pretty reasonable. However at the current price tag I see little reason to choose it over the competition, it’s $100 more than the S7 that brings to the table superior results.

Click here to view Avalon 6 deals on eBay

Antminer S7 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer S7 was the raining champion up until a few months ago. Even at today’s difficulty levels and with the block reward halving you can still make 0.15BTC a month. It’s not a lot at the moment but if the Bitcoin price continues to rise it may be a profitable investment.

However I wouldn’t suggest buying this rig due to the fact that it’s neither here nor there. It’s too expensive for an entry-level device and it’s too weak to generate any substantial amount of Bitcoins. Users who bought the device seem generally happy with it however it was first introduced on August 2015, so it’s not that new.

Antminer S9 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The most advanced and most efficient Bitcoin miner today is the Antminer S9. If you’re serious about Bitcoin mining this is your rig. At the current difficulty this miner can mine around 0.02 Bitcoins every month which makes it seem like it would break even within a year. However we did not take into account the electricity costs, pool fees and hardware cost. Not to mention the fact the difficulty can rise and the Bitcoin price can drop.

It seems that even though this is the toughest miner out there, there’s only a small amount of time until it too will become outdated. Until that happens though, it looks like a pretty reliable piece of equipment.

Antminer R4 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer R4 is intended for hobby mining – basically people who want to mine Bitcoins at home. Even though it can’t compete with the S9 it will probably be a good contender for the S7. The main advantage it has over other miners is the fact that it is has a specialized cooling unit that is much quieter than any other Bitcoin miner out there – since it’s made for a home environment.

According to our mining calculator this miner should break even in about 12 months. However if Bitcoin’s price continues to rise this miner may yet yield a good return on investment.

Avalon 7 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Aavalon 721 (or Avalon 7 as it is known commonly) is the latest Bitcoin miner supplied by Avalon in late 2016. It has a lower price tag than most of the advanced miners but is also less powerful. It seems to be a good choice for people who are looking for a cheaper entry level miner and don’t want to go for an Antminer S7.

According to our calculations, this miner should break even in about 24 months, making it a pretty risky investment. You can also connect up to 5 Avalon 721s in a row creating a powerful 30 TH/s mining rig.

Antminer T9 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer T9 is a more reliable, cheaper version of the successful S9 model. However, the T9 uses almost 30% more power than the S9 making it much less attractive in terms of return on investment. If you want to get up and mining as soon as possible and reliability is more important to you than efficiency, then we’d say the T9 is a reasonable choice. If you don’t pay for power and just want a good, fast miner you can “fire up and forget,” the Antminer T9 will fit the bill nicely.

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.

is a GPU/CPU Bitcoin miner for Windows based on poclbm

Provably Fair
Black Jack

WHAT IS GUIMINER?

GUIMiner is a graphical frontend for mining Bitcoin, providing a convenient way to operate Bitcoin miners from a graphical interface. It supports both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, as well as CPU mining. You can choose between pooled mining and solo mining – the software embeds a list of mining pools to choose from.

COMES ALREADY CONFIGURED FOR MANY POPULAR MINING POOLS

There's no need to enter connection details manually, unless you want to.

REAL-TIME STATISTICS ON ALL YOUR RUNNING MINERS IN ONE LOCATION

Displays hash rate, total shares accepted/invalid, and total shares in the past hour.

AUTOMATICALLY START ONE OR MORE MINERS ON PROGRAM STARTUP.

VIEW YOUR ACCOUNT BALANCE WITH A POOL AND/OR WITHDRAW FUNDS

Do it from within the GUI, at participating pools.

MINIMIZES TO TRAY

The tray icon can be hovered to show statistics, and miners can be paused from the tray context menu.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD GUIMINER?

You can download GUIMiner from the official GitHub repo.

WHERE CAN I GET NEWS AND UPDATES ABOUT GUIMINER?

Have a look at the official forum thread on BitcoinTalk.

CAN I USE GUIMINER TO MINE LITECOIN?

In order to mine Litecoin, you have to use GUIMiner-scrypt.

What is GUIMiner-scrypt?

GUIMiner-scrypt is a GUIMiner fork for mining scrypt chains, such as Litecoin.

GUIMiner is the premier Bitcoin Mining tool for Windows and is one of the easiest ways to start mining Bitcoins. By offering a simple and easy to use graphical interface, GUIMiner will let you take full control of your Bitcoin mining process without requiring complicated commands or constantly editing configuration files. GUIMiner is the perfect Windows mining software for beginners and experts alike, offering a ton of useful features that will help anyone get the greatest amount of Bitcoins with the lowest amount of fuss.
GUIMiner supports the most popular Bitcoin Mining software, including OpenCL Miner for AMD graphics cards, CUDA Miner for Nvidia cards, CGminer for any ASIC Miner, and even Ufasoft Miner so you can mine Bitcoins with your CPU! Not only does GUIminer support all of these different Bitcoin miners, it also supports using multiple miners at the same time! With GUIMiner, you can maximize your Bitcoin Mining profits all in one simple place! After your miners are configured, you can even setup "Autostart mining" that will let you start mining for Bitcoins as soon as the program opens!
To use GUIMiner, download the latest version from the link above, open it and extract the archive to anywhere on your PC (we recommend your Desktop so you can easily access it), then double click the GUIMiner executable to open the interface. Once GUIMiner is up and running, simply choose a mining pool (we recommend using Slush's pool, to receive the most Bitcoins), setup your login details and hit "Start Mining!" to begin earning those sweet Bitcoins! Once mining begins, you'll be able to see your mining statistics all in one place, letting you know what your hash rate is, your total shares accepted, and the total number of shares from the past hour.

This site is not affiliated with GUIMiner and is not the official page of the software.

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Welcome to the Yahoo Search forum! We’d love to hear your ideas on how to improve Yahoo Search.

The Yahoo product feedback forum now requires a valid Yahoo ID and password to participate.

You are now required to sign-in using your Yahoo email account in order to provide us with feedback and to submit votes and comments to existing ideas. If you do not have a Yahoo ID or the password to your Yahoo ID, please sign-up for a new account.

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Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off

I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount

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 'secure' then it'll be 'unfair' gaming and I'll lose because of the insecurity can be a 'Excuse'. Hope y'all understand my explanation!

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

chithidio@Yahoo.com

i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.

Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?

Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?

Rahyaftco@yahoo.com

RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means

Question on a link

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

Getting Started Mining Bitcoins

Steps On Using Bitcoin

1.Learn About Bitcoin

Bitcoin is not the same on what you are using on a daily basis or the things that you might know. In order for you to be able to start using Bitcoins without any pitfalls or unsecured transaction, you should refer some guides on how to start with.

2.Decide Your Desired Wallet

On you daily life transactions, wallet plays important role that it can be just put on your mobile or computer and bring it anywhere you go. Though it is important to choose what satisfies your requirements, you can choose or change anytime you want.

3.Accept Bitcoins

You can get Bitcoins by any payment you receive from selling or buying transactions whether from a friend, a client or somebody near you. Using your bank account, you can also get BTC from exchange industries.

4.Use Bitcoins For Purchasing

There are huge amount of merchant, sellers and buyers that uses Bitcoins all over the world. You can start doing transactions to them and abide honest ratings for visibility purposes.

Steps On Accepting Bitcoins

1.Learn About Bitcoin

Bitcoin doen’st need merchants to process any transactions. Bitcoin is a bit different when you compare it on what you have been using everyday. Hence, using Bitcoin is very cool but you have also to understand the concept and even the worst thing to happen when you failed using it carefully.

2.Process Payment Transaction

Processing invoices or payments with Bitcoin is so easy where you can use merchant services or even process it by your own to deposit money on your currency or Bitcoin. Commonly used on POS are phones or tablets for clients and customers convenience where they can just use phones and mobiles.

3.Taxes and Accounting

Contacting a qualified accountant is way more safer in terms of buying items from merchants and compute the appropriate tax where merchants happen to display their product information on local currency. Tax compliance is a must and you can have a lot of ways to comply easily.

4.Becoming More Visible

A lot of BTC users have been searching for ways and steps on how to use their cryptocurrency in purchasing items anywhere. You can put your business to online business pages in order for you to be visible to anyone.

Bitcoin Mining Guide - Getting started with Bitcoin mining

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

How Bitcoin Mining Works

Before you start mining Bitcoin, it's useful to understand what Bitcoin mining really means. Bitcoin mining is legal and is accomplished by running SHA256 double round hash verification processes in order to validate Bitcoin transactions and provide the requisite security for the public ledger of the Bitcoin network. The speed at which you mine Bitcoins is measured in hashes per second.

The Bitcoin network compensates Bitcoin miners for their effort by releasing bitcoin to those who contribute the needed computational power. This comes in the form of both newly issued bitcoins and from the transaction fees included in the transactions validated when mining bitcoins. The more computing power you contribute then the greater your share of the reward.

Step 1 - Get The Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Purchasing Bitcoins - In some cases, you may need to purchase mining hardware with bitcoins. Today, you can purchase most hardware on Amazon. You also may want to check the bitcoin charts.

How To Start Bitcoin Mining

To begin mining bitcoins, you'll need to acquire bitcoin mining hardware. In the early days of bitcoin, it was possible to mine with your computer CPU or high speed video processor card. Today that's no longer possible. Custom Bitcoin ASIC chips offer performance up to 100x the capability of older systems have come to dominate the Bitcoin mining industry.

Bitcoin mining with anything less will consume more in electricity than you are likely to earn. It's essential to mine bitcoins with the best bitcoin mining hardware built specifically for that purpose. Several companies such as Avalon offer excellent systems built specifically for bitcoin mining.

Best Bitcoin Cloud Mining Services

Another option is to purchase in Bitcoin cloud mining contracts. This greatly simplifies the process but increases risk because you do not control the actual physical hardware.

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 Mining Hardware Comparison

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

The Meaning of Bitcoin Mining Software

Assuming that you already have at least minor knowledge in Bitcoin Mining Hardware, we will now be tackling the best Bitcoin Mining Software. While they differ on process handling, both of them have the same importance in terms of Bitcoin mining.

If you are doing it by your own, the BTC mining software will then connect to your blockchain. Whereas, if you are mining with your buddies and using the pool, then your software will be connecting to a Bitcoin mining portal.

On the other hand, Bitcoin cloud mining doesn't need any mining software to use with.

Bitcoin Mining Software Importance

The actual process of Bitcoin mining is to connect both mining hardware and mining software. Hence, the Bitcoin mining software will take care of the distribution of digital data into the network and process them into a complete information for you to be able to understand the statistics.

You can then monitor the in and out of your miner device by displaying the information you want to show on screen. That includes hashrate, speed of the Bitcoin miner, fan speed and the temperature of the hardware.

BTC Wallets

Wallet is a MUST before using or doing any mining stuffs. Bitcoin address will be on the wallet that you can use when setting up the Bitcoin mining software. The purpose is to send the payouts and rewards in the future.

After you make and downloaded a wallet, that's the time you can have the address to supply on the Bitcoin mining software setup.

We can recommend you the following wallets :

Electrum - This wallet can work on multiple platforms like Windows, Linux and Mac.

Mycelium - This wallet is the most common wallet in Android.

Breadwallet - This wallet is the most common wallet for IOS.

If you have this high hope to profit more money in Bitcoin mining then purchasing a hardware wallet would be a good idea, which is more secure than the above wallets. You can also go to Ledger Nano S which priced in the market for $60 - $65 which will keep your coins more and more secure.

Since you already have the idea on what is a Bitcoin mining software is including the idea of a wallet, it's time to learn on different BTC software that runs on different platforms.

Windows Operating System : Bitcoin Mining Software

Bitcoin Miner

This miner is available on both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The software interface is user-friendly, it supports pool mining, there's a mode for power saving and very fast in share submission.

The most powerful feature on this Bitcoin mining software is the profit reports. Hence, on this feature you can easily monitor your profit over a period of time. The newest version upon writing this article is Bitcoin Miner 1.27.0.

BTCMiner

This Bitcoin miner is an Open Source for ZTEX USB-FGPA modules 1.5. The following features are : there's a flexibility on chosing the highest rate of frequency in valid hashes, integrated with Bitstream example - Xilinx software or required with license.

The miner also has FPGA board supports that has USB interface in it for programming and communication usage.

CGMiner

Upon writing this page, it is aguably the most common and the most popular Bitcoin mining software used by miners. CPU Miner is the original code for this miner.

It has a lot of features which specifically : control on fan speed, capabilities for remote interface, using mini database - it can detect new blocks easily, supports with multi GPU, and supports CPU Mining.

BFGMiner

It is almost the same features with CGMiner. Unlike CGMiner, BGFMiner doesn't focused on GPUs which turns out to be their big difference on features.

It has unique capabilities also like : LLVM OpenCL/mesa mining, PCI bus ID reorderring ADL device, can be integrated for overclocking and fan control.

EasyMiner

Acting as a wrapper for BFGMiner and CGMiner software, the GUI-based Bitcoin mining software is very convenient. The are 2 protocols this software supported with : stratum mining and getwork mining.

Both pool and solo mining can be executed on the software. Graphical illustration and can be set up easily with your miner are the features that is very important on this software.

Linux Operating System : Bitcoin Mining Software

CGMiner

Upon writing this page, it is aguably the most common and the most popular Bitcoin mining software used by miners. CPU Miner is the original code for this miner.

It has a lot of features which specifically : control on fan speed, capabilities for remote interface, using mini database - it can detect new blocks easily, supports with multi GPU, and supports CPU Mining.

BFGMiner

It is almost the same features with CGMiner. Unlike CGMiner, BGFMiner doesn't focused on GPUs which turns out to be their big difference on features.

It has unique capabilities also like : LLVM OpenCL/mesa mining, PCI bus ID reorderring ADL device, can be integrated for overclocking and fan control.

EasyMiner

Acting as a wrapper for BFGMiner and CGMiner software, the GUI-based Bitcoin mining software is very convenient. The are 2 protocols this software supported with : stratum mining and getwork mining.

Both pool and solo mining can be executed on the software. Graphical illustration and can be set up easily with your miner are the features that is very important on this software.

Mac Operating System : Bitcoin Mining Software

RPC Miner

This miner can be supportive on Mac OS 10.6 or up and have features like integrating with Mac OS systems and APIs.

Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware for 2018 – Bitcoin Miner Reviews

The following page reviews the best hardware available today in order to make some sort of a profit with Bitcoin mining.

If you’re completely new to Bitcoin mining please read our “Is Bitcoin mining still profitable?” post before moving on. It will give you a good idea about the profitability of mining and will make you think twice before entering this very competitive niche.

If however, you are aware of the competitive nature of Bitcoin mining and still want to get in the game, here you will be able to find the best Bitcoin mining hardware available. The good news is that there are not many mining hardware companies left that make ASIC miners so choosing will probably be easy. That’s also the bad news. Even though many websites state long lists of Bitcoin mining hardware, only a handful of mining rigs can deal with the rising Bitcoin mining difficulty that’s out there these day.

How to compare Bitcoin miners

Below is a side by side comparison of all relevant miners. Underneath the table you’ll be able to see a summarized review of each of the miners. Keep in mind that in order to see how profitable you can be with any Bitcoin miner you’ll need to use a Bitcoin mining calculator based on your electricity cost, the Bitcoin exchange rate and the increase in difficulty throughout time. Since not all of these variables are known you will have to guess some as best as you can.

Select miner

AntMiner S9

Antminer R4

Antminer T9

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S5

Antrouter R1

Use our basic Bitcoin mining calculator to help you compare miners

Antminer S5 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer S5 is the entry level Bitcoin miner for someone who isn’t ready to part away with more than a few hundred bucks. Users who have purchased it seem mostly pleased with the device. However this is an outdated device and with today’s mining difficulty and decreasing block reward you won’t make more than 0.05 BTC each money in revenue. This means you’ll need to run it for about one year and 8 months to get a full Bitcoin. Some customers also complained about the device being too noisy, but that’s just how a miner works – it’s loud and hot.

Click here to view Antminer S5 deals on eBay

Avalon 6 BitcoinMiner Summarized Review

The Avalon 6 is a great contender for both S5 and S7 AntMiners. From the small number of reviews that can be found online people are saying that it’s not nearly as loud as your usual miner and the hash rate is pretty reasonable. However at the current price tag I see little reason to choose it over the competition, it’s $100 more than the S7 that brings to the table superior results.

Click here to view Avalon 6 deals on eBay

Antminer S7 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer S7 was the raining champion up until a few months ago. Even at today’s difficulty levels and with the block reward halving you can still make 0.15BTC a month. It’s not a lot at the moment but if the Bitcoin price continues to rise it may be a profitable investment.

However I wouldn’t suggest buying this rig due to the fact that it’s neither here nor there. It’s too expensive for an entry-level device and it’s too weak to generate any substantial amount of Bitcoins. Users who bought the device seem generally happy with it however it was first introduced on August 2015, so it’s not that new.

Antminer S9 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The most advanced and most efficient Bitcoin miner today is the Antminer S9. If you’re serious about Bitcoin mining this is your rig. At the current difficulty this miner can mine around 0.02 Bitcoins every month which makes it seem like it would break even within a year. However we did not take into account the electricity costs, pool fees and hardware cost. Not to mention the fact the difficulty can rise and the Bitcoin price can drop.

It seems that even though this is the toughest miner out there, there’s only a small amount of time until it too will become outdated. Until that happens though, it looks like a pretty reliable piece of equipment.

Antminer R4 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer R4 is intended for hobby mining – basically people who want to mine Bitcoins at home. Even though it can’t compete with the S9 it will probably be a good contender for the S7. The main advantage it has over other miners is the fact that it is has a specialized cooling unit that is much quieter than any other Bitcoin miner out there – since it’s made for a home environment.

According to our mining calculator this miner should break even in about 12 months. However if Bitcoin’s price continues to rise this miner may yet yield a good return on investment.

Avalon 7 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Aavalon 721 (or Avalon 7 as it is known commonly) is the latest Bitcoin miner supplied by Avalon in late 2016. It has a lower price tag than most of the advanced miners but is also less powerful. It seems to be a good choice for people who are looking for a cheaper entry level miner and don’t want to go for an Antminer S7.

According to our calculations, this miner should break even in about 24 months, making it a pretty risky investment. You can also connect up to 5 Avalon 721s in a row creating a powerful 30 TH/s mining rig.

Antminer T9 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer T9 is a more reliable, cheaper version of the successful S9 model. However, the T9 uses almost 30% more power than the S9 making it much less attractive in terms of return on investment. If you want to get up and mining as soon as possible and reliability is more important to you than efficiency, then we’d say the T9 is a reasonable choice. If you don’t pay for power and just want a good, fast miner you can “fire up and forget,” the Antminer T9 will fit the bill nicely.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

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

AntRouter R1

Antminer S9

BPMC Red Fury USB

• Overview - Table of Contents
• What is Bitcoin Mining?
• Technical Background
• Bitcoin Mining Hardware
• Bitcoin Mining Software
• Bitcoin Cloud Mining
• Mining Infographic
• What is Proof of Work?
• What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?
• Other Languages

Before we begin.

Before you read further, please understand that most bitcoin users don't mine! But if you do then this Bitcoin miner is probably the best deal. Bitcoin mining for profit is very competitive and volatility in the Bitcoin price makes it difficult to realize monetary gains without also speculating on the price. Mining makes sense if you plan to do it for fun, to learn or to support the security of Bitcoin and do not care if you make a profit. If you have access to large amounts of cheap electricity and the ability to manage a large installation and business, you can mine for a profit.

If you want to get bitcoins based on a fixed amount of mining power, but you don't want to run the actual hardware yourself, you can purchase a mining contract.

Another tool many people like to buy is a Bitcoin debit card which enables people to load a debit card with funds via bitcoins.

What is Bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin mining is a lot like a giant lottery where you compete with your mining hardware with everyone on the network to earn bitcoins. Faster Bitcoin mining hardware is able to attempt more tries per second to win this lottery while the Bitcoin network itself adjusts roughly every two weeks to keep the rate of finding a winning block hash to every ten minutes. In the big picture, Bitcoin mining secures transactions that are recorded in Bitcon's public ledger, the block chain. By conducting a random lottery where electricity and specialized equipment are the price of admission, the cost to disrupt the Bitcoin network scales with the amount of hashing power that is being spent by all mining participants.

Technical Background

During mining, your Bitcoin mining hardware runs a cryptographic hashing function (two rounds of SHA256) on what is called a block header. For each new hash that is tried, the mining software will use a different number as the random element of the block header, this number is called the nonce. Depending on the nonce and what else is in the block the hashing function will yield a hash which looks something like this:

You can look at this hash as a really long number. (It's a hexadecimal number, meaning the letters A-F are the digits 10-15.) To ensure that blocks are found roughly every ten minutes, there is what's called a difficulty target. To create a valid block your miner has to find a hash that is below the difficulty target. So if for example the difficulty target is

any number that starts with a zero would be below the target, e.g.:

If we lower the target to

we now need two zeros in the beginning to be under it:

Because the target is such an unwieldy number with tons of digits, people generally use a simpler number to express the current target. This number is called the mining difficulty. The mining difficulty expresses how much harder the current block is to generate compared to the first block. So a difficulty of 70000 means to generate the current block you have to do 70000 times more work than Satoshi Nakamoto had to do generating the first block. To be fair, back then mining hardware and algorithms were a lot slower and less optimized.

To keep blocks coming roughly every 10 minutes, the difficulty is adjusted using a shared formula every 2016 blocks. The network tries to change it such that 2016 blocks at the current global network processing power take about 14 days. That's why, when the network power rises, the difficulty rises as well.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware

In the beginning, mining with a CPU was the only way to mine bitcoins and was done using the original Satoshi client. In the quest to further secure the network and earn more bitcoins, miners innovated on many fronts and for years now, CPU mining has been relatively futile. You might mine for decades using your laptop without earning a single coin.

About a year and a half after the network started, it was discovered that high end graphics cards were much more efficient at bitcoin mining and the landscape changed. CPU bitcoin mining gave way to the GPU (Graphical Processing Unit). The massively parallel nature of some GPUs allowed for a 50x to 100x increase in bitcoin mining power while using far less power per unit of work.

While any modern GPU can be used to mine, the AMD line of GPU architecture turned out to be far superior to the nVidia architecture for mining bitcoins and the ATI Radeon HD 5870 turned out to be the most cost effective choice at the time.

As with the CPU to GPU transition, the bitcoin mining world progressed up the technology food chain to the Field Programmable Gate Array. With the successful launch of the Butterfly Labs FPGA 'Single', the bitcoin mining hardware landscape gave way to specially manufactured hardware dedicated to mining bitcoins.

While the FPGAs didn't enjoy a 50x - 100x increase in mining speed as was seen with the transition from CPUs to GPUs, they provided a benefit through power efficiency and ease of use. A typical 600 MH/s graphics card consumed upwards of 400w of power, whereas a typical FPGA mining device would provide a hashrate of 826 MH/s at 80w of power.

That 5x improvement allowed the first large bitcoin mining farms to be constructed at an operational profit. The bitcoin mining industry was born.

The bitcoin mining world is now solidly in the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) era. An ASIC is a chip designed specifically to do one thing and one thing only. Unlike FPGAs, an ASIC cannot be repurposed to perform other tasks.

An ASIC designed to mine bitcoins can only mine bitcoins and will only ever mine bitcoins. The inflexibility of an ASIC is offset by the fact that it offers a 100x increase in hashing power while reducing power consumption compared to all the previous technologies.

Unlike all the previous generations of hardware preceding ASIC, ASIC may be the "end of the line" when it comes to disruptive mining technology. CPUs were replaced by GPUs which were in turn replaced by FPGAs which were replaced by ASICs. There is nothing to replace ASICs now or even in the immediate future.

There will be stepwise refinement of the ASIC products and increases in efficiency, but nothing will offer the 50x to 100x increase in hashing power or 7x reduction in power usage that moves from previous technologies offered. This makes power consumption on an ASIC device the single most important factor of any ASIC product, as the expected useful lifetime of an ASIC mining device is longer than the entire history of bitcoin mining.

It is conceivable that an ASIC device purchased today would still be mining in two years if the device is power efficient enough and the cost of electricity does not exceed it's output. Mining profitability is also dictated by the exchange rate, but under all circumstances the more power efficient the mining device, the more profitable it is. If you want to try your luck at bitcoin mining then this Bitcoin miner is probably the best deal.

Bitcoin Mining Software

There are two basic ways to mine: On your own or as part of a Bitcoin mining pool or with Bitcoin cloud mining contracts and be sure to avoid Bitcoin cloud mining scams. Almost all miners choose to mine in a pool because it smooths out the luck inherent in the Bitcoin mining process. Before you join a pool, make sure you have a bitcoin wallet so you have a place to store your bitcoins. Next you will need to join a mining pool and set your miner(s) to connect to that pool. With pool mining, the profit from each block any pool member generates is divided up among the members of the pool according to the amount of hashes they contributed.

How much bandwidth does Bitcoin mining take? If you are using a bitcoin miner for mining with a pool then the amount should be negligible with about 10MB/day. However, what you do need is exceptional connectivity so that you get any updates on the work as fast as possible.

This gives the pool members a more frequent, steady payout (this is called reducing your variance), but your payout(s) can be decreased by whatever fee the pool might charge. Solo mining will give you large, infrequent payouts and pooled mining will give you small, frequent payouts, but both add up to the same amount if you're using a zero fee pool in the long-term.

Bitcoin Cloud Mining

By purchasing Bitcoin cloud mining contracts, investors can earn Bitcoins without dealing with the hassles of mining hardware, software, electricity, bandwidth or other offline issues.

Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services and is to serve merely as a Bitcoin cloud mining comparison. 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.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

Bitcoin mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions. 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.

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 or use a bitcoin mining calculator.

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.

Blitzboom and the guys from #bitcoin-dev for their help with writing the guide!