The images on the internet show bitcoin mining in a form reminiscent of the old gold rush miners, pickaxes digging out the gold. The actual mining is not quite like that and it changes over time.
Bitcoin miners are a special necessity in the bitcoin network. When a bitcoin is spent, a transaction occurs. Your transaction is verified by checking back through the transactions to ensure that you have the bitcoin available to spend. Your wallet synchronizes with the network to make sure that it is up-to-date and accurately reflects the amount of bitcoin you have available.
When the transaction is created, it floats into the network and is considered an unconfirmed transaction because it has not yet been allocated to a block on the blockchain. The blockchain is a public ledger and every transaction has to be verified and placed into a block.
Mining is the process of verifying each transaction. It is important that transactions are added in order. Otherwise, an unscrupulous person could send bitcoin to one person and then immediately send another payment. Unless there is a way to verify which came first, chaos could ensue. Sellers would not trust the system if their incoming fund transaction ever failed.
When miners verify the transaction, new bitcoins are created and the successful miner who created the block and adds it to the block chain is rewarded with bitcoin. This is called the block reward. In the beginning, that is in 2009, the reward was 50 bitcoins for each block. When 210,000 blocks have been mined, the reward is halved. By 2017, the reward has halved twice so it is now 12.5 bitcoins.
The formula was set out in the bitcoin protocol when Satoshi Nakamoto determined that the bitcoin would max out at 21 million coins. By cutting the number of bitcoins in half every four years, it would cut down on the bitcoin supply. At least, he thought it would take 4 years to generate 210,000 blocks.
Miners still solve blocks but the reward is smaller. The next reduction in the block reward will bring it down to 6.25 bitcoins per block. The four-year duration was based the approximate amount of time it takes to mine 210,000 blocks. The move toward the total 21 million bitcoins is moving faster than anticipated.
Sounds easy? It involves solving a mathematical puzzle as the miner first has to identify the block and link it to the previous block. The puzzles increases in difficulty every 2016 blocks. This works out to be roughly every two weeks.
The mathematical puzzle is a cryptographic puzzle and involves in hashing the transactions. A miner takes transactions and applies a hashing algorithm. Bitcoin’s proof of work algorithm is SHA-256.
When mining started, people could use their home computers to mine bitcoin. As the number of bitcoin transactions grew, more power was needed. A computer with a more powerful graphics processing unit or card was needed for mining. By 2013, the Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) was developed specifically for bitcoin mining.
The hash rate refers to the number of attempts involved in solving the cryptographic puzzle. Hash rates are measured in TH/s measurements. TH/s refers to one trillion hashes per second. Finding new blocks will be more challenging all the time but bitcoin cloud mining pools continue to attract miners.
A dedicated mining operation runs on banks of specialized computer hardware and electricity cost is astronomical.
As it becomes more difficult to generate bitcoin currency, mining is becoming less profitable. As well as the difficulty of hashing and the demand for more and faster bitcoin mining hardware and more mining power, there are diminishing returns for each block reward. In the future, will there be fewer miners as bitcoin mining profitability declines?
Original article and pictures take the-bitcoin.info site
Want to mine some bitcoins? Want to earn for free? Have a pi not being used?
Then lets mine some bitcoins!
Step 1: What Is BitCoin?
If you don’t know already, Bitcoin is a virtual currency set up in 2009. Bitcoin has grown in reputation over the past few years becoming a very popular as a method to pay for services over the internet. The value has rocketed recently thanks to the huge coverage in the media, for both positive and negative reasons.
There are two ways to get Bitcoin:
-Buying them from an exchange, which is the process of converting local currency to Bitcoin.
-Mining them. Mining is the process of verifying transactions in the blockchain.
As the whole of the Bitcoin system is decentralised, every transaction is publically viewable within what is called the blockchain. This blockchain contains every bitcoin exchanged between users so, as there is no central server, it has to be self governed. This is the job of the miners.
Step 2: Requirements
In order to mine Bitcoin, you will
A pool account
Bitcoin Wallet
Raspberry Pi
Raspbian image SD card
USB Bitcoin miner
Step 3: Creating an Account
There are two things you need to do:
Download a bitcoin wallet
Create a pool account
Set up paymentSet up workers
Download a Bitcoin Wallet
A wallet is a program that sits on your computer and gives you a wallet address, this is a unique string of numbers and letters that you will use to receive bitcoins. Download the client for your computer from https://bitcoin.org/en/download
After installation, you will have to save a file called wallet.dat, keep this file safe, as this contains your unique wallet address within it, including all bitcoins that you will gain. If you lose this file, you cannot recover any bitcoins it contained.
Create a Pool Account Once you have a wallet address, create a pool account. A pool is a huge collection of other people working towards gaining bitcoins. Due to the complexity of mining a bitcoin, it has become unrealistic to solo mine–the act of processing millions of numbers to solve the block problem. Working as a group, or pool, lets everyone have a chance of earning some Bitcoin. There are many pools around, in this tutorial I’ll be using one called Slush’s pool: https://bitcoin.org/en/download
Set Up Payment
Once you have created a pool account, you'll need to enter your unique wallet address into the Bitcoin payout address.
Create Worker Account
Next step is to create a worker login account. Within your pool account you have the ability to create something called a worker for each of your bitcoin miners, so you're able to monitor them all separately just in case one should fail.
Each worker has its own login name and password. Whilst you are on My Accountclick Register New Worker and give it a name, for example; worker, and a password. Now you're ready to set your Raspberry Pi mining for Bitcoin.
Step 4: Setting Up the Raspberry Pi
Start with a fresh Raspbian install, if you don’t know who to do this, read the tutorial How to Install NOOBS on a Raspberry Pi With a Mac.
If you plan on running more than one Bitcoin miner at the same time, it is best to use a powered USB hub. Take into account the power rating as mining will need a lot of power, as much as one mp per miner.
With your USB miner attached to your Raspberry Pi, let’s get everything installed.
Step 5: Installing Required Libraries
The miner to be installed comes as source files, which means that the program must be compiled into a binary before it can be run. To make a program, in this case BFGMiner, many dependencies are required.
Dependencies are additional software, or libraries the program needs in order to compile properly, as it has been developed using them to make the software more efficient. Hopefully you will be seeing the Raspbian desktop, so double click on LXTerminaland type in the following:
Once all the dependencies have been installed, now it is time to download and install BFGMiner, so type the following into LXTerminal. It’s normal for these to take a few minutes to complete so some patience is needed.
You will be greeted with a screen that looks similar to the following:
Step 7: Start Mining Bitcoin
Now you’re ready to start mining. To do this, providing you're using Slush’s pool, you’ll use the following command:
./bfgminer -o stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -O username.worker:password -S all
The username section is composed of two parts, the username that you use to login to the pool, and worker which is the worker name you gave when you registered the worker. Finally, the password that was set when you created the worker.
That’s a lot of numbers, so I’ll make some of them a bit clearer.
Current mining speed, typically calculated in megahashes or gigahashes. The number of hashes a second that can be calculated the better. A hash is an algorithm of converting numbers and letters into an undecryptable set of characters. So a miner is used to process millions of numbers in an effort to match the hash to guess the original number. The more hashes that can be processed the faster it is able to solve the problem.
Number of accepted shares. A share on a pool is to show the miner has successfully worked out a given problem, so the more shares you can process the better your reward from the pool.
Detailed information on accepted shares and pool updates. This is a running log of what is currently happening with the miners and basic pool information, such as messages of updates and when new blocks are found.
More information can be found at the BFGminer github site.
Step 8: Conclusion
Following these steps will leave you with a very energy efficient bitcoin miner, as a Raspberry Pi only uses four watts of power, and a miner is typically 2.5W. Mining used to be done with computers consuming over 700W for the same process so to make a jump in savings helps repay the cost of the hardware we are using.
All there is to do now is to sit back and watch the money slowly build up. Though it is important that you understand that Bitcoin value fluctuates wildly, it is extremely volatile, so invest at your own risk.
You can also put up LCDs. Connect more Pis for getting better speed :D
For more information there are a number of websites and forums available, such ashttps://bitcointalk.org/,to help get you started.
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Original article and pictures take www.instructables.com site
Bitcoin Mining Guzzles Energy—And Its Carbon Footprint Just Keeps Growing Paul Ratje/The Washington Post/Getty Images
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably been ignoring the bitcoin phenomenon for years — because it seemed too complex, far-fetched, or maybe even too libertarian. But if you have any interest in a future where the world moves beyond fossil fuels, you and I should both start paying attention now.
Last week, the value of a single bitcoin broke the $10,000 barrier for the first time. Over the weekend, the price nearly hit $12,000. At the beginning of this year, it was less than $1,000.
If you had bought $100 in bitcoin back in 2011, your investment would be worth nearly $4 million today. All over the internet there are stories of people who treated their friends to lunch a few years ago and, as a novelty, paid with bitcoin. Those same people are now realizing that if they’d just paid in cash and held onto their digital currency, they’d now have enough money to buy a house.
That sort of precipitous rise is stunning, of course, but bitcoin wasn’t intended to be an investment instrument. Its creators envisioned it as a replacement for money itself—a decentralized, secure, anonymous method for transferring value between people.
But what they might not have accounted for is how much of an energy suck the computer network behind bitcoin could one day become. Simply put, bitcoin is slowing the effort to achieve a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. What’s more, this is just the beginning. Given its rapidly growing climate footprint, bitcoin is a malignant development, and it’s getting worse.
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin provide a unique service: Financial transactions that don’t require governments to issue currency or banks to process payments. Writing in the Atlantic, Derek Thompson calls bitcoin an “ingenious and potentially transformative technology” that the entire economy could be built on — the currency equivalent of the internet. Some are even speculating that bitcoin could someday make the US dollar obsolete.
But the rise of bitcoin is also happening at a specific moment in history: Humanity is decades behind schedule on counteracting climate change, and every action in this era should be evaluated on its net impact on the climate. Increasingly, bitcoin is failing the test.
Digital financial transactions come with a real-world price: The tremendous growth of cryptocurrencies has created an exponential demand for computing power. As bitcoin grows, the math problems computers must solve to make more bitcoin (a process called “mining”) get more and more difficult—a wrinkle designed to control the currency’s supply.
Today, each bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy used to power nine homes in the US for one day. And miners are constantly installing more and faster computers. Already, the aggregate computing power of the bitcoin network is nearly 100,000 times larger than the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers combined.
The total energy use of this web of hardware is huge—an estimated 31 terawatt-hours per year. More than 150 individual countries in the world consume less energy annually. And that power-hungry network is currently increasing its energy use every day by about 450 gigawatt-hours, roughly the same amount of electricity the entire country of Haiti uses in a year.
More on Bitcoin
That sort of electricity use is pulling energy from grids all over the world, where it could be charging electric vehicles and powering homes, to bitcoin-mining farms. In Venezuela, where rampant hyperinflation and subsidized electricity has led to a boom in bitcoin mining, rogue operations are now occasionally causing blackouts across the country. The world’s largest bitcoin mines are in China, where they siphon energy from huge hydroelectric dams, some of the cheapest sources of carbon-free energy in the world. One enterprising Tesla owner even attempted to rig up a mining operation in his car, to make use of free electricity at a public charging station.
In just a few months from now, at bitcoin’s current growth rate, the electricity demanded by the cryptocurrency network will start to outstrip what’s available, requiring new energy-generating plants. And with the climate conscious racing to replace fossil fuel-base plants with renewable energy sources, new stress on the grid means more facilities using dirty technologies. By July 2019, the bitcoin network will require more electricity than the entire United States currently uses. By February 2020, it will use as much electricity as the entire world does today.
This is an unsustainable trajectory. It simply can’t continue.
There are already several efforts underway to reform how the bitcoin network processes transactions, with the hope that it’ll one day require less electricity to make new coins. But as with other technological advances like irrigation in agriculture and outdoor LED lighting, more efficient systems for mining bitcoin could have the effect of attracting thousands of new miners.
It’s certain that the increasing energy burden of bitcoin transactions will divert progress from electrifying the world and reducing global carbon emissions. In fact, I’d guess it probably already has. The only question at this point is: by how much?
Original article and pictures take www.wired.com site
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Bitcoin Is Growing up - an Infographic of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
On January 3, 2009, the Genesis block, or the first block in the Bitcoin blockchain, was created. In the coinbase parameter, there was a simple message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” From that one block, Bitcoin was born.
Bitcoin has come a long way from that initial statement by Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. The technology is growing up and changing from its early days as a project adopted by impassioned technologists and libertarians to a technology widely researched and used by financial institutions worldwide.
Bitcoin had a rough road ahead of it, as did many early technologies including the Internet. It dealt with newspaper headlines lambasting Bitcoin because of its connection to Silk Road and drugs. Early adopters suffered millions of dollars in losses when early exchange Mt.Gox imploded. “Bitcoin is Dead,” many prophesied.
And yet, as Bitcoin approaches its seventh birthday, we see things changing. It is turning into that curious, wide-eyed technology with ideas as widespread as any normal 7-year-old. Cross-border payments, machine-to-machine transactions, smart contracts, microtransactions, and stock settlements all have been discussed and developed. Nothing is off limits; no question goes unasked.
From the early days of mining using a laptop computer, now bitcoin miners are setting up industrial-sized data centers with hundreds of thousands of high-powered, specialized machines. In January 2014, the Bitcoin network hashrate was only 10 million GH/s. Now it is 504 million GH/s. And as new mining machines are built and sold, the hashrate has continued to increase. During same time frame, there were around 50,000 bitcoin transactions daily. That measure of network utility has increased to about 170,000 bitcoin transactions daily.
A big part of this growth in transactions is linked to the growth in bitcoin-accepting merchants. In mid-2014, there were approximately 65,000 merchants who accepted bitcoin. By mid-year 2015, there were 100,000, which is a 50 percent increase. TigerDirect, a publicly-traded online electronics retailer, has seen incredible results. Of all the buyers that used bitcoin, 46 percent of them were brand new to TigerDirect. Further, orders placed with bitcoin were 30 percent bigger. In August 2015, BitPay, a bitcoin payment processor, recorded an all-time high of 70,000 bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin as a tool of transaction is growing.
Bitcoin as an asset class is also maturing. For the majority of 2015, the price has stayed relatively nonvolatile and constant, with the price fluctuating from $200 to $300. It’s only the past few weeks where the price has experienced such a significant increase, reminiscent of the early years. From January 1, 2013 to January 1, 2014, the price went from $13.41 to $808.05, going as high as $1,147.25 on December 4. Just one month earlier, on November 4, 2013, the price was $225.20. Even the “bubbles” in bitcoin are maturing. On the other hand, the market cap of bitcoin is down from an all-time high of nearly $14 billion to around $5 billion at time of writing.
Venture capital funding, however, continues to pour into the space. In 2013, bitcoin companies raised only $93.8 million. In 2014, firms raised $314.7 million. With another two months remaining in the current year, bitcoin and blockchain companies have raised more than $1 billion.
Regulations are also changing. Before, there were politicians decrying bitcoin because of its use on the underground marketplace Silk Road. Now, organizations such as Coin Center and the Chamber of Digital Commerce work to help these politicians and regulators draft rules that will ensure Bitcoin can continue to grow worldwide. New York has led the regulatory charge with its recent BitLicense. The European Union also recently ruled that Bitcoin was not subject to VAT, giving significant clarity for those participating in the ecosystem.
Finally, the next stage of blockchain companies continues to grow. Augur, a decentralized prediction market, announced that it had raised $5.1 million in a crowdsale. Ethereum, the smart contract and publishing platform, raised $18.4 million in its own crowdsale. It is expected that OpenBazaar, the completely decentralized peer-to-peer ecommerce site will launch in the coming months.
In the graphic below, many of the top Bitcoin leaders talk about the growth of bitcoin and where it is going. Bitcoin is not just in the fringes anymore; it is everywhere. Whether it's miners or payment processors, wallets or developer tools, the reality is simple: Bitcoin is growing up. And its ambitions are as vast as the many great technologies that came before it.
Jacob Donnelly is a full-time product manager and freelance journalist covering stocks, business and bitcoin. He runs a weekly digital currency and blockchain newsletter called Crypto Brief.
Original article and pictures take fs.bitcoinmagazine.com site
Bitcoin has left gold in the dust in recent months.
The Bitcoin Investment Trust Shares have almost tripled in value in the last twelve months, gaining more than 30 percent in the last three months alone. Meanwhile, SPDR Gold shares are down 3.78 percent in the last twelve months and up 4.49 percent in the last three months.
Apparently, Bitcoin is more popular than gold among investors.
Is it just hype or something fundamental about the digital currency. It’s hard to say. What’s not hard to say is that there’s a growing mistrust of national currencies, following dubious government policies, which has pushed people into Bitcoin.
The last three months in the digital currency rally, for instance, has coincided with India and Venezuela’s efforts to get rid of old currency notes.
Prime Minister Modi and President Maduro have very little in common -- except they have pursued policies late last year that replace large notes in circulation with new notes (India) or with coins (Venezuela).
For different reasons, of course. Prime Minister Modi has been trying to fight corruption, a widespread problem in India. And President Maduro has been trying to fend off capital flight from the ailing Venezuelan economy.
Then there are a couple of advantages that make Bitcoin better than gold, at least for the millennial generation, which understands the digital currency better than the baby-boomer generation.
Unlike gold, for instance, Bitcoin is a convenient medium of payments around the globe, though for a limited number of transactions.
Then, there’s scarcity. Bitcoin supply is expected to be limited to 21 million. The supply of gold, on the other hand, is expected to increase anytime its price rises, as it provides an incentive for gold miners to mine for gold.
To be fair, gold has its own advantages, too. It can be used as an outright gift, to make jewelry, and in manufacturing of certain products.
That’s why investors shouldn’t rush to substitute the yellow metal for the digital currency in their portfolio.
Especially if they don’t quite understand the nature of the digital currency.
Original article and pictures take www.forbes.com site
Bitcoin Hardware Wallets – Best Hardware Wallets for Bitcoin 2018
Cryptocurrencies Are The Future Of Money. Invest In E-Wallets Today! We bring you a comprehensive and well-researched list of the best Bitcoin Hardware Wallets that you can buy online.
Cryptocurrencies started out as a test project for the implementation of digital currency that would revolutionize the way we carry out our day to day transactions, thus eventually wiping out any possible need for a paper-based currency in the future.
However, cryptocurrencies have already begun with their aggressive takeover of our markets and people have started investing in them. This investment comes not just as an experimental or a ‘plan B’ type of investment, but a real one.
Especially Bitcoin, the king of cryptocurrencies, has taken its place on the throne and it has become synonymous with digital currency already. While there are others too, Bitcoin leads them strongly.
As the years pass by, people have started taking cryptocurrencies seriously. This creates the need to buy dedicated hardware wallets for storing cryptocurrencies. These wallets may be built for storing only one type of cryptocurrency or multiple cryptocurrencies.
The Best Bitcoin Hardware Wallets list given below is detailed, but it is certainly not very strict and exhaustive. If you think it’s better to have a dedicated hardware platform independent of your mobile device for making Bitcoin payments, we suggest you read on to know better. The list will give you a faint idea as to what you may need when it comes to investing in a wallet.
Top Five Best Bitcoin Hardware Wallets That You Can Buy Online.
For the more dedicated and serious cryptocurrency enthusiasts who are dead serious about their digital currency investments, the list will provide detailed information about the Best Bitcoinhardware wallets available nowadays.
Although Ledger seems to be a new entrant in the Bitcoin wallet market, it has firmly established itself as a promising force right from the beginning, in fact, this is one of the most recommend hardware wallet by many cryptocurrency Geeks.
This hardware wallet comes with a built-in display that helps you to keep an eye on the transactions. The display eliminates the need for having an independent software platform to keep a check on your Bitcoin deposit account.
Now you can watch the number of Bitcoins being spent right in front of you on the screen. Also, while you attach your Bitcoin wallet to the Point-Of-Sale, you can also confirm the payment of the amount with the help of a button on the device.
This wallet also comes with an inherent security feature that does not let your confidential data leak out because it comes encrypted with robust security mechanism and is secured by a PIN code. So no one can carry on with the transaction unless they know the PIN code for the device.
You can also take a back-up of your account data on any other ledger device or even on another wallet, compatible with this one.
Ledger Nano S also supports other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Ripple. Litecoin, Dogecoin, Zcash, Dash, Stratis, Komodo, Ark, PoSW, ERC20 tokens.
I am personally using this hardware wallet you should give it a try.
Security is the most pivotal feature that any Bitcoin wallet must have. Keep Key is one of the high-security Bitcoin wallets in this list and hence also easiest to use. It uses high-grade data encryption technology that keeps your Bitcoin account data safe.
Also, if you lose your KeepKey wallet, you need not worry about losing your Bitcoins. You will be given a choice of entering a recovery sentence consisting of twelve words.
If you lose your Bitcoin wallet, all you have to do is enter the twelve-word sentence on an online interface and get back your device and its Bitcoins.
The device is also malware proof. Given that this device works on no operating system, viruses, keyloggers, and malware cannot infect the device since that particular layer is non-existent. Therefore, if hackers are giving you sleepless nights, worry no more.
Apart from Bitcoins, it also supports other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoins, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Testnet. It is compatible with multiple operating system platforms such as Mac, Linux, Android, and Windows. Also, it does not need any drivers to operate.
If you were to find the USP of the Trezor Bitcoin wallet, you would know that it is none other than its highly sophisticated security mechanism. This security mechanism is built to keep any sort of breaches and violations at bay from the device.
Given that a hardware device that houses digital currency data, it is likely that there could be attempts to breach the security passes.
This is why the device comes with a modern and highly powerful cryptographic algorithm to protect it from security breaches.
Also, the device is compatible with most of the device platforms such as Windows computers, OS X as well as Linux there are no chances that you will have compatibility issues with any Point-Of-Sale.
The wallet is also open source based, so the chances of seeing improved models based on this one are great.
The next one in our list of Best Bitcoin Hardware Wallets is OPENDIME. The most significant feature of this Bitcoin wallet is that it generates its own private key which is nearly impossible for any other person to know. Not even the owner.
With a simple functioning resembling an ordinary read-only flash-drive, this wallet works with most of the Point-Of-Sale hardware devices such as computers, phones, and laptops. The drive contains a QR image inside, along with a text file that contains the address of your Bitcoin.
The device nearly embodies your Bitcoins in their physical form. If you want to help your friends or family members with money, you can hand them over the device, and they are ready to use. The process is just like using physical money and does not involve any hassle such as miner fees or delays in confirmation.
This wallet is based on the very basic Bitcoin architecture/structure that has not changed for years. Hence any significant change that the Bitcoin market sees in the future, you don’t have to worry about the device not catching up with it.
Costing below one hundred dollars, this USB stick is a go-to option for those who are new to Blockchain science and want to try their hands are digital transactions.
This is the most expensive and high-end hardware wallet on the list. It is especially for those who are open to investing above four hundred dollars for their Bitcoin wallet to get those extra features.
This device is entirely a screen in itself, just like your smartphone. This feature makes it separate from other wallets on the list.
The device is Bluetooth and USB enabled and can easily work on any computer and smartphone. The device has got a sufficiently large touchscreen display that comes with a scratch-resistant glass and is covered with a sturdy cover.
The device also works on an operating system of its own. Installation of applications is easy and can be accessed with relative ease with the help of a quick-launch dashboard.
The Ledger Manager assists you in installing and removing apps. The Ledger Manager also upgrades from time to time.
Despite having an operating system of its own, your data is never compromised in any manner. The device comes with layers of security, data encryption systems and a ‘Secure Element’ that locks your data with a PIN code.
This wallet supports multiple cryptocurrencies apart from Bitcoin such as Ethereum, Zcash, Dogecoin, Dash Coin and Litecoin.
The question remains, who should buy this device? Or to put it the other way, why should one buy this device? The answer is, if you are someone who is looking for a hardware wallet that comes with an interface where you can interact with the software elements that manage your ledger, this is the universal wallet for you.
Given that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are surging ahead with each passing year, it makes sense that you not only educate yourself using digital currencies but also buy a universal wallet for accomplishing your transactions. Places like Canada, The Netherlands and certain parts of the United States such as California are leading the world in bringing cryptocurrencies to the mainstream. So if you frequently travel to these places, it makes more sense that you put your cryptocurrency knowledge to test by buying those wallets.
For A Software Currency, Go For A Hardware Wallet.
Just like you have leather or a fabric wallet to carry your paper money inside it, innovators now have come up with the concept of a hardware wallet, where you can store your Bitcoins and can be used to make Bitcoin payments.
However, you are not just limited to one mode of Bitcoin payment. You also have the choice of making Bitcoin payments with the help of mobile Bitcoin wallets for Android and mobile Bitcoin wallets for iOS as well. Here you can pay with the help of your smartphone as the hardware platform.
If you are making your transactions online from the comfort of your workstation and using your desktop computer, a desktop wallet is what you will be using if you choose to make your payments with Bitcoins.
Also, using mobile Bitcoin wallets can be a lot beneficial when you are making transactions on your Android device, online. What we forgot to mention in the beginning was that unlike your hardware-based wallets, these wallets are entirely interface/software-based, like PayPal, but only trading in Bitcoins.
In a cluster of Bitcoin wallets available online, all you need to do is to find out specific needs for your type of Bitcoin transactions and buy the right device. The one listed here are our choices. However, you can do some research on your own and add to the list, what you consider as a better contender.
If you want to add Something to the above list of Best Bitcoin Hardware Wallets do let us know by commenting Below.
Original article and pictures take geekviews.tech site
Bitcoin prices have been fluctuating around $4,000 for more than a week, flying high in spite of the currency’s potential headwinds.
The cryptocurrency’s price has risen more than 300% year-to-date (YTD), and even after suffering some recent volatility, Bitcoin has managed to retain the overwhelming majority of these gains, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).
Since breaking through $4,000 on August 12, Bitcoin’s price has mostly traded above this key psychological level, reaching fresh, all-time highs and fanning the flames for those who believe that a bubble may be brewing.
[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]
Robust Inflows
Bitcoin’s price has skyrocketed this year as cryptocurrencies continue to attract robust inflows from eager investors.
The total market value of these digital assets has surged more than 500% YTD, according to CoinMarketCap, illustrating the substantial enthusiasm surrounding the space.
Bitcoin has managed to ride this tidal wave of interest, climbing in value even as the cryptocurrency community faces notable uncertainty ahead of a hard fork scheduled to take place in November.
Original article and pictures take www.forbes.com site
Bitcoin Faces Bear Move as Price Drops Toward $15K Bitcoin is looking weak today after prices failed to hold above $17,000 levels at the weekend.
Coindesk’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) fell to a low of $15,253 earlier today and was last seen trading at $15,345 levels. According to data source OnChainFX, bitcoin (BTC) has depreciated by 8.86 percent in the last 24 hours.
Notably, fears of a China crackdown on bitcoin mining may have weakened the bid tone around the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Caixin Global reported last week that local regulators in China may not longer offer discounted electricity and tax deductions to mining companies. Further, a leaked document now suggests that China’s top internet finance regulator is requesting that local governments push bitcoin-mining operations towards an “orderly exit” from the industry.
Given that China is the world’s capital of bitcoin mining, and accounts for more than two-thirds of the world’s processing power devoted to the process of securing the network, such moves – if proved to be genuine – could bring more pressure to prices of the cryptocurrency.
The technical chart also indicates an increased risk of a bearish breakdown.
Bear flag – a bearish continuation pattern. A downside break – i.e. a close below $14,460 (flag support) – would indicate the corrective rally from the low of $10,400 (Dec. 22 low) has ended and the sell-off from the record high of $19,891 has resumed.
The relative strength index (RSI) is back below 50.00 (bearish territory).
Since Dec. 21, trading volumes have remained well below the 30-day moving average. A sharp rise in volume on negative price action today (today) would boost odds of a bearish breakdown in prices.
View
A high volume bearish flag breakdown (close below $14,460) would open doors for a drop to $10,400 (Dec. 22 low). A violation there would expose the next support lined up at $9,965 (100-day MA).
Bullish scenario: Only an upside break of the flag would revive the bull run and shift risk in favor of rally to fresh record highs above $20,000.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Interested in offering your expertise or insights to our reporting? Contact us at news@coindesk.com.
Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
Minergate is Bitcoin and Altcoin Pool Mining service where you can contribute with your computing power you could even use a smartphone or tablet they have an App (Do Not suggest doing this as it could over heat the device if you have a spare phone that you can leave some where cool and keep well ventilated but be careful) and depending on the power of the devise (HashRate) you will receive payment in the coin that you have chosen to mine and if you are a gamming nut and have multiple PC’s with powerful graphics cards or (GPU) (CPU) you might be able to make a few bucks and with the price of most crypto currency’s continuing to rise the (ROI) retune of investment might not be worth it at this time of mining but in 18 months the $XMR you mine today might be worth 50 times as much in 18 months not saying this will happen but you what could see what is possible.
Will be trying and break down the Pro’s and Con’s for this site and what to look for to make the best choice on what to mine
MinerGate was one of the very first crypto nodes mining pools they have some of the biggest hash rates going what this means is the more shared mining power of a mining pool has in hashrate the more likely that pool will earn a block reward so it is best in my opinion to go for the higher pool hashrated coins
Keep in mind that this will change so make sure you check this every couple of days adjust when needed to get the most of your HashPower or if you are mining a coin that you like then do whatever that suits you and do your research on what you want to get into some coin’s might not be worth that much now compared to the Bitcoin price but could blow up but if are just looking to flip whatever you mine for Bitcoin then go for best pool 2 world hashrate ratio.
Currency
There multiple currencies’ you can mine up to 14 different coin of the most popular cryptocurrencys Bitcoin Litecoin Eth Monero just to name few.
Pool
The Pool is the combined hash power of all Minergate workers for that coin so take note of this compered to World column if the pool is over 30%-40% could be profitable coin to mine.
World
World is the total world hashrate power take note the higher the difficulty the harder it will to get Block rewards what I do if I want to mine that coin is change the pool fee to PPS Payed per share stay away from PPLNS if the world hashrate or difficulty is too high because it will be harder to get paid.
Pool fees
PPS Payed per share 1.5% fee for per share of work done. My strategy with this is to stick with the good Pool to Wold HashRate ratio so stay with 11%-26% of pool to total world hashrate this theory should be good. You can even go with higher world hashrate because you get PPS done so you don’t have to find a block reward for the pool to get paid.
PPLNS Payed per lose and share 1% The fee is lower but you only get payed once a block gets found so make sure you check when the last block was found and stay with something that finds blocks every 24 hours or less so get you payed for your GPU/CPU work so check this in the Pool stats tab.
Workers
This is the number of people running CPU/GPU systems you can run both off the one computer and this is counted as 2 workers good thing to keep in mind if there are not many workers for a coin there could be some think wrong with the coin so do your research on it if you plan to mine that coin as you might be putting you’re GPU/CPU’s to work for nothing.
Rate
1 mined coin worth of Bitcoin you can change this to USD or EUR if you want.
Calculator It’s Handy tool to work out a general total of the profit you will make mining it gives you multiple time frames remember this could always change as the mining hash rate can change so keep this in mind but it’s still a great tool to use.
Dashboard
Unconfirmed
Is what you have earned it will take a certain amount of coins to be mined before it goes into your balance all coins are different so don’t worry if don’t see it in your total balance all coins are different as long as you are getting (Good shares) you are mining.
how the fees work PPS will go straight into unconfirmed. 1.5% Fee PPLnS Will go into unconfirmed only when the mining Pool finds a Block. 1% Fee In my option only use this when the a block is fund every 24 hours
Summery on Mining strategy
Look for pools that have a good amount of workers this helps you know that people are making money mining it and not dud coin.
If you are going to use PPLNS because it is 50% cheaper fees make sure that blocks are being found regularly. (Pool stats)
If you are going to use PPS make sure that pool hash rate is good ratio to the world hash rate.
Do research on the Altcoin that you plan to mine.
If you plan to use a smartphone or tablet use you’re spare devise keep cool and well ventilated
CLOUDMINING They have a cloudmining program not really sure what the ROI (return of investment) would be with this as I have not bought any contracts if I do will update this on what the ROI is. Most cloudmining servicer's ROI are about 6 to 9 month period some that I have used are Genesis Mining and hashflare I did a review on Genesis Mining on the pros and cons and strategy I use to deveserfiy my portfolio from the profits that I have made.
Original article and pictures take www.moarcoins.com site
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The largest cryptocurrency bitcoin surged to $20,000 in December. Its rapid growth was due to common folk deciding to invest in the hope of making a quick buck. It was a time for professional investors to sell.
‘Bitcoin will take the arrows, settlers will get the wealth’ – PwC exec
“Many people behind bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole understand that the skyrocketing prices in the last few months are linked to a cash inflow from mass-market consumers. Even pensioners wanted to invest,” Georgy Verbitsky, managing director at eToro, Russia and the CIS, told RT.
Bitcoin hit $20,000 last month, breaking new records every day. But this week, a sell-off swept the cryptocurrency market, and bitcoin slid below $10,000 on Wednesday.
“Experienced investors knew that the bitcoin honeymoon couldn’t last forever. Those who catch the last train are usually punished by the market. Big-time miners and investors understood that they needed to diversify, that they had to get some fiat money. People who raised money on the ICOs had to pay wages to developers,” the analyst said.
Visa may be waging war against bitcoin by rejecting it as currency
Many analysts are linking this week’s bitcoin collapse to news from China and South Korea. Regulators in these Asian countries are said to be cracking down on cryptocurrencies. However, the fall actually happened because those who bought bitcoin for $17,000 to $20,000 were disappointed about a lack of further growth, and brought bearish sentiments to the market, according to the analyst.
“It was about pure greed. Of course, after they lost a third to a half of their investments, they pushed the ‘sell’ button. A consolidation around $12,000 and $14,000 can now be expected,” Verbitsky said, adding that prices may remain stagnant for at least six months.
The analyst proved his point by recalling the Chinese ban on ICOs in September. That was a bigger blow to bitcoin than this week’s news, but the market was bullish, and the hit went unnoticed. Now, bearish sentiments are prevailing, and every negative news results in a bitcoin slide.
Bitcoin conference stops accepting Bitcoin over processing costs
The price of processing Bitcoin funds has been its principal downside as a medium of change, particularly in comparison with the transaction speeds and prices of money (free and prompt) and bank cards (usually additionally free and virtually prompt).
These points have prompted the organisers of the North American Bitcoin Convention to be held in Miami subsequent week to announce they might not be exchanging tickets for any cryptocurrency.
The convention introduced that “as a consequence of community congestion and handbook processing, we’ve closed ticket funds utilizing cryptocurrencies” only a week earlier than the convention opened.
“We’ve, and at all times will, settle for cryptocurrencies for our conferences, as much as fourteen days earlier than the occasion,” the organisers mentioned.
“Nonetheless, because of the handbook inputting of information in our ticketing platforms when paid in cryptocurrencies, we determined to close down bitcoin funds for final minute gross sales as a consequence of print deadlines.”
Video: Considerations over Bitcoin future buying and selling
Stating that issues would hopefully be higher subsequent 12 months when “world adoption [of cryptopcurrencies] turns into actuality”, the convention organisers known as for “extra unity locally about scaling” – permitting Bitcoin to develop by enhancing the processing speeds and transaction prices.
Final minute tickets for the convention are promoting for $1,000 (£740), however a few of Bitcoin’s most devoted followers could not have that a lot money at hand after inserting all of it into the cryptocurrency.
A single Bitcoin is at present valued at precisely £10,000 after a file 12 months in 2017 when it elevated in worth greater than 2,000% between its file high and low.
Bitcoin Cash Looking Heavy After Bull Move Fails Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is looking heavy, courtesy of last week’s failed bullish move.
Data source OnChainFX say the world’s fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is down 4 percent in the last 24 hours, while week-on-week, bitcoin cash has yielded -2 percent returns. As of writing, BCH is trading at $2,372 – that’s down 45 percent from its all-time high of $4,330 set on Dec. 20.
BCH witnessed an upside break of the congestion last Wednesday, but the follow-through has been anything but encouraging. Contrary to expectations, the cryptocurrency failed to see a sustained move above $2,800 on Thursday.
Prices then briefly jumped to $2,884 on Saturday, but again closed (as per UTC) well below the $2,800 mark, marking another failure at key resistance.
The price action is referred to as “fakeout” – that is, when prices fail to rally following a bullish breakout and actually drop. A fakeout usually ends up turning the tide in favor of the bears.
Still, while a cause of concern for the bulls, the bitcoin cash chart shows no reason to panic.
Fakeout (failed bullish breakout) as discussed above.
Prices have re-entered the sideways channel, neutralizing the immediate outlook.
The 50-day moving average is still bullish (sloping upwards).
The rising trend line is intact and could offer support at $1,880 levels.
View
A downside break of the sideways channel (i.e. a close (as per UTC) below $2,300) would indicate the sell-off from the record high of $4,104 has resumed. Prices could then test rising trendline support of $1,880. The trendline support is seen sloping upwards to $2,000 over the next week.
On the higher side, a close (as per UTC) above $2,950.70 (Jan. 11 high) could yield a rally to $3,319 (61.8 percent Fibonacci retracement).
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Interested in offering your expertise or insights to our reporting? Contact us at news@coindesk.com.
Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
