CryptoCurrency Mining

CryptoCurrency Mining

I wanted to write about this topic since the day I started mining myself in 2015. At this point, there are many sites you can find that talks about the subject. However, in this post I am going to talk about my experience in cryptocurrency mining.  This article assumes that you heard about cryptocurrency in general.

It is one of these topics that begin to resurface recently due the surge in prices of cryptocurrency again (first surge happened in 2013).

For example, Etherium, which is one of most well known currencies, alongside bitcoin has reached 380$ per coin. Which is an insane price compared to 10 dollars few months ago. This regenerated the mining craze that started in 2013, but now more than one coin are worth mining.

The reason for the surge:

There are many reasons that made cryptocurrency in general to surge. Some reasons are political, others are awareness and acceptance. For political reasons, among them is the election of Donald Trump, and Briexit. In addition to these, the recent regulation by the Japanese government made bitcoin as a legal method of payment. This alone made bitcoin to surge.

In addition to political reasons, many people become aware of bitcoin quite simply. Many shops started to offer bitcoin as a method of payment. I plan to write a post that has most of the shops that started to accepts bitcoin as a method of payment.

Furthermore, bitcoin concept of being a free currency that is not being controlled by a single entity (in theory) away from governments has made it an ideal currency for people who want a currency that is not being affected by political decisions.

Just think about it, why would you invest in a currency that you know could lose its value for whatever reason that might happen. That could be war, political tension between countries, decisions such as Brixit. Bitcoin can lose some of its value due to technical issues, or political reasons. However, these factors are temporary factors. In my opinion it is going to rise even more.

So how do you get bitcoin?

You have three ways to get bitcoin. the first is to mine it. Second, is ti buy it directly from various exchanges. Last, is to mine an alternative cryptocurrency such as Etherium and exchange it with bitcoin.

Before buying a bitcoin, you need a wallet. A wallet to store all of you bitcoins. It works just like a bank account. You can send, received and view all of you transactions. To get a bitcoin wallet, go to bitcoin.com. Once you downloaded a wallet, It will start to sync its blockchain. Blockchain is like a log or a ledger that keeps track of all transactions that happen between wallets.

This could take from 1 day to fe days depends on your internet connection. Once your wallet is synced, you can go on and acquire a bitcoin. But first, you need get get an address. An address is what you need to provide people or exchanges with to get paid.

Etherium on the other hand has a cloud based wallet. Meaning that, you only need to create a wallet online and get a keystone file. Keep this keystone file secure.

For Etherium Wallet, go here.

For Etheriumj classic Wallet, go here.

Other cryptocurrencies have similar wallets.

Buying bitcoin:

There are many sites that you can buy bitcoin from, selling bitcoin is an entirely different story. I will focus on buying Bitcoin in this paragraph. You can buy bitcoin from many sites, such as coinbase.com, changelly.com, localbitcoin, and, coinmama.com among many others. I personally used coinmama, and changelly. You can use your credit card to buy bitcoin from these sites. For coinmama.com You can buy a small amount at the beginning without being verified. Once you reached this limit, which is 150$ worth of bitcoin at the time of writing this post, you need to get verified. Verified means that you need to submit documents that prove that you are who you say you are. You need to provide your ID or passport photocopy, your current address. This will allow you to buy up to 10,000$ worth of bitcoin. The higher you need to buy bitcoin, the more that you need to prove who you are by presenting a copy of ID, or even a video of yourself telling your name, address and holding your own ID card. This is to prevent money laundering. You can bypass all of this headache by buying bitcoin directly from someone you know or through localbitcoin. By using localbitcoin.com you will benefit from avoiding paying commission and going through verification.

Selling bitcoin: 

You do it in person using sties such as bitcointalk.org. You can also use coinbase.com, and localbitcoin.com. Overall, selling bitcoin is not as straight forward as buying bitcoin. Especially if you live outside the US. The easiest way is to by through localbitcoin.com. localbitcoin.com once you create an account, you will have an escrow wallet that you sent bitcoin to. Then you can lists your offer. If a person likes your offer, he or she will contact you to complete the transaction. This could be a bank transfer or meeting the buyer in person. Just remember to pick public place to meet.

Mining bitcoin:

Not possible at this time. Well technically it is possible, but it is not worth it. Since there are many large entities that are mining bitcoin in huge mining farms. It is really hard to compete with them. An example of what I am talking about, go to the following link and watch the video Link.

Personally, I would mine alternative currencies and exchange them with bitcoin. This is much easier and worth it.

You can mine Monero, Etherium, Etherium classic, bytecoin. All of these coins are still mineable and you can get rewarded handsomely for mining these. You can check an up to date value of all cryptocurrencies with this website: coinmarketcap.com.

How to start mining?

What you need first is, a computer with multiple GPUs.

You don’t even need a computer, you just need computer components. Personally, I just buy the components without even getting a housing for them.

Here is a list of what you need to get started:

1-  Motherboard that has 4 or more PCI Express slots, PCI 16 is also fine.

2- A processor. Some people go for the cheapest processor they can find. Personally, I go for a decent one and use it to mine another coin that is mineable with a processor. Cryptonight (monero, bytecoin, etc) coins are example of coins that can be mined with a processor. An air cooler is also fine. But a water cooler is much better. I don’t cheap on processors. I get an i5, or i7 if I can. I used to get AMD processors.

3- A regular RAM. If you plan to use Windows, get least 4 GB of RAM. If you plan to go Linux route, 2 GB is fine.

4- A hard drive, the smallest you can find would do the job.

5- PSU, get a GOLD standard one. Don’t cheap on this own. If you plan to use a powerful GPU such as AMD R 290X, then go with EVGA 1300 W G2. If you Plan to use AMD RX 400 series then go for 850 W. I prefer EVGA, I found it to work flawlessly.

6- Mining software. I use Claymore. I found it the easiest to use and the least one to give you double. Your antiVirus might complain about. Just ignore the warning.

Example of a mining software mining Etherium classic. I am using RX 470

7- Remote desktop program to monitor and configure your mining rig remotely. I prefer to use TeamViewer.

8- Operating system. I prefer to use Windows 7. Linux is also an option. I do have some mining rigs running Linux but setting up Windows in just much easier.

9- Finally and the most important is bunch of GPUs. Get AMD cards cause they are best at mining. Amount the most picked are R9 290x, R9 290, RX 480, and RX 470. The problem with 290X is that they produce so much heat and consume a lot of energy. They consume up to 300W. This makes it much harder to construct a mining rig with 6 GPUs. RX 470 consume up to 150W.

10- If you are like me who live in a hot area, get an addition air conditioner. I got two, one works during the day, and one during the night. They take shifts. Remember that GPUs and CPUs thermal throttle the performance when it gets hot. Meaning that you will not get the optimal performance if they are not cooled enough.

My experience:

Right now, I am mining Etherium with nanopool.org they are excellent and pay you Etherium in 0.2. They also offer monero, Etherium classic aside from other coins. They have a how to start guide which is very easy to use. I recommend to use them.

If you hate command line, then use minergate.com they have a GUI based miner. You can also connect to their pool with Claymore miner.

Pictures of my mining operation, not large:

 

That’s it. with minergate you can start mining with your laptop right away. Although that will not fetch you much. But you will get the jest of mining.

Smaller UPS for Networking Equipments

Small UPS for networking equipments

I recently purchased a UPS for my NAS and local server. If you are like me, then you have equipment that run 24/7.

Since power outages happen mostly when I am away from home, it is critical that I keep my network equipments alive while there is a power outage.

For this specific purpose, I picked up 2 used APC ES400 and APC ES700 UPSs from ebay. I saved a significant amount of money by picking up used and once without battery. I also avoided having to deal with bad batteries and figuring our how to dispose of them.

I picked a bigger battery locally with 7.2AH.

UPS ES400

Issues:

I picked up a bigger battery that the one suggested by the manufacturer. It was a good decision that I picked up a bigger battery. The one that was installed was rated for 3.3AH. However, I noticed that the battery won’t fit. Although the battery compartment is big enough to accommodate 9AH battery.

After looking through the battery compartment, I found out that there are plastic prices that push the battery upward. Not sure if there is a reason other than preventing people from buying a cheaper UPS model and replace the battery later with a bigger on.

I started to cut out the plastic prices one by one. After fully removing the plastic prices, I was able to fit the battery perfectly. The process was easy if you have the right tools. I used a cable cutter, pilers, and a small cable cutter.

UPS ES700:

I got this UPS to used it for my surveillance system. It wouldn’t make sense to use a surveillance system without connecting it to a power backup system. Cause the house would be vulnerable whenever there is a power failure.

The other UPS ES700 was with a battery. But it suffered from another issue which is beeping every 5 hours while blinking a read light. I looked online and found out that it does this whenever the UPS fails its self test. I found out that to fix this issue, you need to do the following:

1- turn off the UPS.

2- Turn it on while holding the power button for 10 seconds. It will start the test and you will see a blinking green light. If the light shuts off at the end, it means the battery is fine. It the light turned red, it mean the battery needs to be replaced.

All in all, you would be save a significant amount of money if you decided to go the used UPS route. I also suggest replacing the batteries if you got a used one with a battery. The chances are the battery already reaching the end of its life.

Mac Mini, Apple and Other Things

Mac Mini is by far one of my favorite Apple products. It gets the job done and it is perfect for regular computing. As a person who has multiple PC at home, I find myself using it more often.

I don’t do video editing or computing intensive tasks to need a super computer. I just need to browse the web, watch YouTube, work processing, programming and that’s it. It does all of that.

As for gaming, mac is not a great machine for gaming. For me, I don’t game on PC at all. I use consoles for that. I believe consoles deliver the best experience when it comes to gaming. Game consoles also become powerful enough that you don’t need powerful PCs to enjoy breath taking graphics.

My First Mac Mini

I bought my first Mac Mini during collage. My laptop had an issue with its SuperDrive, so I sent it to Apple for repairs. At that time, I forgot about one of the assignments that I needed to deliver by the end of the week. It was an assignment for an Artificial Intelligence class. The name of the course seems fancy and high tech. But it wasn’t fun and mostly was mostly boring. Was had to code in languages such as schema, Lisp and Prolog. Did not like any of them. Anyway, I went to the school’s computer lab but those laps were using Windows. I was not able to download a compiler for Prolog because I had a student not admin account.

At this point, I decided to buy the cheapest Mac available. And it was Mac Mini with SuperDrive.

I ordered it from Amazon with over night delivery. I had Prime membership so I did not pay crazy price for this option. Only 4 dollars to receive it over night. I received it the night before the assignment is due. And was able to finish the assignment with an all nighter.

That’s not the end of it. I started working on it as my daily driver. I even used it to host my personal webpage, among other sites that I hosted at that time. The thing is that, I liked setting on a desk while working on a computer. When I had a laptop, I used to set on the sofa. That added much to why I liked the Mac Mini.

In anycase, I still have the first Mac Mini that I bought in 2008. Recently, I bought a 2010 version with SuperDrive to use it as a media center PC. Since the drive was a regular HDD, I replaced it with an SSD and upgraded the RAM to 8G (was 4).

Apple After Jobs and alternative to Mac Mini!

I believe the moment Steve jobs died, Apple went downhill. They started to produce products that are disposable. You can’t upgrade them nor you can easily fix them. For example, the very same Mac Mini version 2014, has a solders on RAM. In addition to this, the HDD is also much more difficult to replace. These changes obviously were made to force users to choose a product which the hight specs that they can afford. If they can’t not afford a higher spec product now, they will be deemed to change it after few years because it will become obsolete.

For this reason, I started to look for alternatives. Since I am a guy who likes small form factor PC, I looked at Intel NUC and AsRock Deskmini. Both are amazing.

Intel NUC however, fails when it comes to performance. I choose a NUC with Core I7 but still, it was too noisy and would slow down when I am doing doing many tasks at once.

As for Asrock Deskmini, it is a DIY computer. So I choose the parts. Well, this unit was a beast of a PC. I choose a core I7 67900k which is a powerful processor. So it provided a fine computing experience without an issue or slowdown. 

In the end, Deskmini and NUC are not Macs. I mean they don’t run Macintosh. Well, you can run Hackintosh but that’s a hassle and it is not upgradable. And I hate Windows.

In conclusion, I will see how it goes. I started using Linux so I might switch to it permanently. At least I see it as the closest thing to Mac and much better than Windows.