Crypto currency mining

[MikkiJayne]

Looks like Winminer is down completely now. I tried earlier and it said they weren't accepting new miners, and now I can't even log in.

I guess I'm just not cut out for cryptomining. I don't seem to be able to make any headway - just flushing money down the toilet

[Regulus]

I just watched an interview on usawatchdog with Lynette Zang. And she mentioned something that I "have been waiting to hear" about crypto currencies.

https://usawatchdog.com/ultimately-t...lynnette-zang/

You know I am sceptical about this. That I believe it's a way to get everyone into digital money.

Listen to what she says at 10:50.
She came across the 1996 NSA whitepaper on crypto currencies; and a year later, there was a peer review on smart contracts.

Looking back even further, The Economist had an article which is mentioned on armstrongeconomics webpage, among other places.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...orld-currency/

A link where the whitepaper is discussed
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/nsa-bitcoin-1996/

And here is a link to the whitepaper I believe. I haven't read it yet but it looks genuine at first glance.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/clas...nt/nsamint.htm

Disclaimer, yes I am biased against any complete move away from cash, even if it is fiat money

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

L3+ are getting rented out on miningrigrentals, I was afraid more hashing power sellers will move over there and rates will go down but it looks like more buyers moved over there than sellers so rates are up and instead of getting 20-30% more than on NiceHash I am now getting 40-50% more.

I noticed that too.

I had added my S9 and one L3+ to MRR and set my rental price quite high so that they would only get rented if they would earn more than they would on NH. As a result they haden't been rented in ages. Suddenly today they've both been rented out.

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by Regulus

I just watched an interview on usawatchdog with Lynette Zang. And she mentioned something that I "have been waiting to hear" about crypto currencies.

https://usawatchdog.com/ultimately-t...lynnette-zang/

You know I am sceptical about this. That I believe it's a way to get everyone into digital money.

Listen to what she says at 10:50.
She came across the 1996 NSA whitepaper on crypto currencies; and a year later, there was a peer review on smart contracts.

Looking back even further, The Economist had an article which is mentioned on armstrongeconomics webpage, among other places.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...orld-currency/

A link where the whitepaper is discussed
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/nsa-bitcoin-1996/

And here is a link to the whitepaper I believe. I haven't read it yet but it looks genuine at first glance.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/clas...nt/nsamint.htm

Disclaimer, yes I am biased against any complete move away from cash, even if it is fiat money

One thing I will agree with Lynette Zang is that I believe the 'present system' will inevitably implode (and probably much sooner than we're expecting). You simply can't continue printing money at will indefinitely and the national debt of most countries is past the point of no return.

I've read various theories of the origins of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies but what you need to understand is that it matters not who it was that had the eureka moment only that they did, and that they shared the solution with the world. The individual or organisation who devised the mathematical solutions that made cryptocurrencies possible has no more control over them than Newton or Einstein had control over gravity or time. Like any scientific paper that describes a new discovery, the Bitcoin whitepaper describes a mathematical solution to an age-old problem (I'd recommend reading about the double-spend problem and the Byzantine General's Problem if you want to better understand what was so remarkable about the mathematical discovery that made it all possible).

The implementation of that solution is cryptocurrencies and distributed blockchains, a decentralised ledger of values and ownership that is controlled by open source software (which can be checked and verified by anyone), modifiable only with complete network consensus and free from the control or manipulation of any government.

And yes, cryptocurrencies replace cash, but it a good way. Without cryptocurrencies we're heading for a cashless society where the banks and governments know and control your every transaction (we're probably 90% there already). The value of government issued paper cash can be controlled and manipulated and it can even be withdrawn from circulation with very little notice. Cryptocurrencies, while not physical, are like cash, only better. It's cash that you keep in a digital wallet (eg on a phone) rather than a physical wallet. Just like cash, payments are peer-to-peer (no bank or intermediary required). You can send payment from someone stood next to you just as easily as someone on the other side of the world. The payments are secure, borderless, fast and cannot be controlled or reversed.

[Regulus]

Originally Posted by moltuae

The implementation of that solution is cryptocurrencies and distributed blockchains, a decentralised ledger of values and ownership that is controlled by open source software (which can be checked and verified by anyone), modifiable only with complete network consensus and free from the control or manipulation of any government.

And yes, cryptocurrencies replace cash, but it a good way. Without cryptocurrencies we're heading for a cashless society where the banks and governments know and control your every transaction (we're probably 90% there already). The value of government issued paper cash can be controlled and manipulated and it can even be withdrawn from circulation with very little notice. Cryptocurrencies, while not physical, are like cash, only better. It's cash that you keep in a digital wallet (eg on a phone) rather than a physical wallet. Just like cash, payments are peer-to-peer (no bank or intermediary required). You can send payment from someone stood next to you just as easily as someone on the other side of the world. The payments are secure, borderless, fast and cannot be controlled or reversed.

I will agree that that crypto currencies are borderless and fast. Much faster than the SWIFT international banking system. And probably with a lower transaction cost involved, not counting the electricity.

Even if I have reservations against crypto currencies this far, I can see why bitcoin was introduced by an entity who/which hasn't been identified.
Looking at the one instance when a US president tried to introduce state controlled money in the USA. Because the Federal Reserve and other central banks are in fact not owned by the countries they operate in. They are private owned and run.

I only very recently became aware of the fact that JFK tried to pull the US government out of the central bank control.
http://john-f-kennedy.net/executiveorder11110.htm

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by Regulus

I only very recently became aware of the fact that JFK tried to pull the US government out of the central bank control.
http://john-f-kennedy.net/executiveorder11110.htm

A very interesting revelation, assuming it's true.

The thing with Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, is that the 'cat's out of the bag' now, so to speak. If someone shot and killed the author of the whitepaper, cryptocurrencies would continue regardless. The point being that it matters not who invented the solution, Bitcoin is built on transparency and consensus. The inner-workings, and all the transaction history, are there for anyone to see and inspect while, at the same time, it is inherently secure and cannot be controlled or stopped. It is the people's cash.

[ulfilias]

Originally Posted by Regulus

I just watched an interview on usawatchdog with Lynette Zang. And she mentioned something that I "have been waiting to hear" about crypto currencies.

https://usawatchdog.com/ultimately-t...lynnette-zang/

You know I am sceptical about this. That I believe it's a way to get everyone into digital money.

Aww bless. Someone needs to do a bit of traveling. She's exceptionally America centric. Crypto currencies really are NOT. They're worldwide and for the people. Even *IF* it was an NSA conspiracy plot, it's in the wild and is now too big to go back into any box!

[ulfilias]

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

Looks like Winminer is down completely now. I tried earlier and it said they weren't accepting new miners, and now I can't even log in.

I guess I'm just not cut out for cryptomining. I don't seem to be able to make any headway - just flushing money down the toilet

Winminer is interesting, but after having a fiddle with it yesterday and then a couple of other miners from it, it's only really a nice front end and pool behind it!

I managed to get my 4 x GTX 970 rig from 1100 on ETN to ~1600 using a couple of the Windows miners and that's not overclocking as so far i've yet to figure out what ETN really needs in terms of clock/memory and my Win10 rig is a bit strange overclock compared with reasonable ease on Ethos!

You can do better than the EASY miners, it can take a bit of time to set-up but once you've got the hang of configuring a miner, it's not that hard.....Most need just need pool and ID

Signing up to a pool is pretty easy. Try https://www.suprnova.cc/ for a multi-pool and then you have the same details for quite a few coins. It's reasonably sized you tend to get shares often, if not massive!

Most pools also suggest miners and have download links and configuration help, though I often do a net search and end up the bitcointalk.org page for the miner / coin as there are so many guides

You can use https://whattomine.com/ to figure out what is profitable, though go for a coin that you have a pool and wallet for. I've found the coinomi android app a great multicoin wallet and ideal for short term holding!

What's up with the Vega.....looks a cool card, if a little new. Must be plenty of people using them, so it's certainly possible ???

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by ulfilias

What's up with the Vega.....looks a cool card, if a little new. Must be plenty of people using them, so it's certainly possible ???

They have been an utter nightmare to set up. They wouldn't work on my older motherboards, so I put them in my server but the drivers won't load in Windows Server. I bought a brand new Asrock mining board and they wouldn't work on that either until I discovered they need a UEFI bios, and I was booting in legacy mode. The LAN adapter on the board also won't work in my preferred Windows 10 Pro RTM build, so I had to install Creators Edition which is hateful. So rebuilt it with UEFI and then they run, for anywhere between a couple of minutes and a couple of hours. I've tried iGPU on, and then cast-xmr and claymore flatly refuse to recognise the cards, so I've tried iGPU off and then on numerous occasions the blockchain driver has crashed so hard it has destroyed the OS and I've had to reinstall from scratch. Nicehash would crash the driver on most benchmarks, and kill the OS completely benchmarking Cryptonight. Cast-XMR will happily go to 2000+ H/S with overclocking, but at random one card will drop to 0, then the miner crashes the blockchain driver and the OS won't restart after a forced power-off. I had one of them doing Eth at a pathetic 32 somethings so gave up with that before they managed to crash.

I've reset the bios, reinstalled the OS, reinstalled the blockchain driver, plugged in and unplugged the cards, switched slots, turned the iGPU on and off, and tried various different miners so many times I would have taken the whole steaming pile of kit out the back and set it on fire, had it not cost so much money I finally found a detailed guide to using the cards with stak-xmr which looked promising and then Nicehash blew up just as I got it set up so there was nowhere for it to mine to. It connected to minergate just once, and then refused to connect ever again.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong - every time it seems to be working I leave it overnight and it's dead by the morning. I've been building computers since that involved soldering 40-pin cpu sockets on veroboard and I've never had this much trouble with anything. Meanwhile, the GTX960 is running just fine in the server and was just about covering its electricity costs until someone stole the proceeds.

I find all the pool and wallet stuff rather intimidating which, as an IT professional, is embarrassing and just adds to the frustration. Nicehash was easy because it would have paid out to a Coinbase account. With that gone I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel. I just can't ignore the fact that everyone else seems to be doing just fine at this

[tintin]

Following this chain with some interest, and then saw this on my FB feed:

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-cur...-intelligence/

Thoughts? Not much content in this piece, but sort of interesting, in a Skynet-sort-of-way...