Beginner

Zombie mode is the last chance for 4Gb video cards to stay in Ethereum mining

We are getting closer and closer to the moment when the 382 era in Ethereum mining will come, which means that the DAG file will increase to 4Gb and all video cards with this amount of video memory will be forced to leave Ethereum mining forever. This will actually happen if you do not turn on the special mode of the miner in the miner, when not the entire DAG file is loaded into the video card, and during ETH mining, the miner will discard all decisions that need to access the missing part of the DAG file. This mode of operation of video cards has already been called Zombie Mode. For the miner, it will look like a drop in the hash rate of the video card. And the longer the epoch, the larger the DAG file and, accordingly, the larger part of the DAG file will not fit into 4Gb video cards. Accordingly, with each new era, such video cards will lose their hash rate.

Mining Ethereum on Binance Pool. Pool setup, RaveOS and HiveOS.

After the launch of the Binance Pool for Ethereum mining, only 2 weeks have passed, and the number of workers connected to this pool has already been more than 2000, the total pool hash rate was 345GH/s. Low mining commission 0.5% (0% until December 12, 2020), as well as many convenient services (spot and futures exchange, P2P exchange, withdrawal to Visa and MC cards, earnings on deposits) available in one place, makes Binance Pool is one of the most attractive offers on the market. For example, the previously launched Binance pool for Bitcoin mining has 10% (14EH/s) of the entire BTC network (140EH/s) or 256,200 workers. Ethereum Binance Pool will not be ignored by miners either, and soon it may become one of the largest pools for Ethereum. If you also decide to join the Binance Pool, then below we will tell you how to do this, how to set up the Binance pool and Windows, RaveOS and HiveOS operating systems for Ethereum mining.

 

The best mining pools for Ethereum. Selection by parameters

Ethereum cryptocurrency is the most popular among miners, because for a long period of time remains one of the most profitable cryptocurrencies for mining on video cards. Actually, over the past 5 years, all miners began their journey precisely with an acquaintance with the Ethereum cryptocurrency. And one of the problems that a novice Ethereum miner faced was the choice of a mining pool. In this article, we will compare the top 10 ETH co-mining pools and help you choose your best option.

Installing and configuring RaveOS - Linux operating system for mining cryptocurrencies on video cards

Specialized operating systems for mining cryptocurrencies on video cards and ASICs continue to gain popularity among miners, especially now that Ethereum mining on video cards with 4Gb video memory is only available on Linux and Linux-based OS. One such Linux-based operating system for miners is called RaveOS, which is one of the best solutions on the market. RaveOS offers a wide range of functionality for managing and monitoring mining rigs, in addition, stable operation and timely updates of miners can be noted. For beginner miners, RaveOS offers a free service for 3 GPU rigs or 3 ASICs. The service cost for owners of 4 or more installations is $ 2 USD per month for each connected device. If you are interested in this offer, then we will tell you how to install and configure RaveOS for cryptocurrency mining.

Enabling Compute Mode in AMD Software Radeon Adrenalin Drivers - Solves most of the problems with low hashrate of Radeon graphics cards. Instructions

AMD Radeon graphics cards are deservedly popular for cryptocurrency mining, because offer a better price-performance ratio than competing solutions from Nvidia. But at the same time, in order to get the maximum hash rate from AMD video cards, you need to spend much more effort and knowledge compared to Nvidia, i.e. AMD is not a plug-and-play approach. One of these "tricks" of AMD, which should be known to everyone who is fond of mining cryptocurrencies, is the ability of the drivers of AMD Radeon graphics cards to work in two different modes: Compute and Graphics . Moreover, by default, it is the Graphics mode that is enabled, in which AMD video cards issue a hash rate when mining cryptocurrencies by 20-50% lower than in Compute mode. If you didn’t know about this possibility in AMD Software Radeon Adrenalin drivers, then this material is for you, in which we will tell you how to switch the operation of your AMD video cards from Graphics mode to Compute.

Cannot write buffer for DAG - mining Ethereum (Ethash) on video cards with 4Gb video memory in 2020

Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency for miners, uses the Dagger-Hashimoto mining algorithm or simply ETHash, for which a special file must be loaded into the memory of the video card - DAG file. He, in turn, tends to increase in size after a certain period of time, called epochs. As of July 22, 2020, there is an epoch 350 on the Ethereum network, and the DAG file size for this epoch is 3.73Gb. In 2015, when the Ethereum cryptocurrency had just appeared, at the zero epoch the DAG file was exactly 1Gb, so in 2015 video cards with 2Gb video memory could mine this cryptocurrency, but already in 2016 miners with such video cards began to receive the message "Creating one big buffer for the DAG" symbolizing the lack of video memory for creating and storing a DAG file in the video memory of video cards with 2Gb. In 2018, the same fate befell the owners of video cards with 3Gb video memory, and in 2020, as you might have guessed, 4Gb video cards AMD RX470, RX480, RX560, RX570, RX580 and Nvidia GTX1050Ti, GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Super will finally leave Ethereum mining.

An easy way to buy or sell cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum) at a favorable rate. Instruction.

The main question when working with cryptocurrencies for beginners is how to buy for investments and how then to exchange cryptocurrency and bitcoin back in particular for dollars, euros, rubles, yuan. Because Buying goods and services for cryptocurrency is now quite problematic, so the reverse exchange of purchased or mined cryptocurrency back to fiat is also quite acute. Moreover, such an exchange for beginners should be as simple as possible, fast and reliable, without registration, verification of identity and at the same time intuitive even for a user who is poorly versed in computer technology.

The choice of video cards for cryptocurrency mining in 2020

We offer you to familiarize yourself with our annual analysis of the video card market and their application for cryptocurrency mining in 2020. In this analytical review, we will consider all currently relevant video card models for mining, consider their characteristics, prices and possible payback of equipment for 2020.

Over the past 2019, the video card market has undergone significant changes, as AMD released the RX5000 generation video cards based on the new RDNA architecture, and Nvidia in response released the updated RTX2000 line of video cards with the SUPER prefix while lowering the price of regular versions. Those. over the past year, the choice of video cards has become much larger, which can also complicate the choice of video cards for assembling mining rigs. Moreover, the choice between the lowest hash price and the best energy efficiency on the market is now the most relevant.

Bitcoin halving in 2020 will not cause a rapid increase in the value of cryptocurrency

On May 12, 2020, a significant event will occur in the cryptocurrency industry - halving the bitcoin or reducing the reward for mining the first cryptocurrency in two to 6.25 BTC per block. This will be the third halving in the history of bitcoin: the first occurred in October 2012, when the reward for miners fell from 50 BTC to 25 BTC, the second halving occurred in July 2016 with a decrease in reward to 12.5 BTC per block. Many enthusiasts, investors and miners believe that these two events were the catalysts for the sharp increase in the value of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency in 2013 and 2017. After another halving in May 2020, a significant change in the value of Bitcoin is also prophesied, but we do not completely agree with such statements, and then we will try to explain why you should not wait for Bitcoin to rise in price by 50% or more percent from the current values ​​only because of halving.

The current hashrate of video cards for 2020

In 2020, as before, new cryptocurrencies with "revolutionary" mining algorithms for the GPU continue to enter the market, but like in previous years, the leader remains the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm - Dagger Hashimoto or simply ETHash. Mining algorithms based on Equihash, MTP, RandomX are also very popular. Of the new algorithms that have appeared over the past year and have gained popularity, it is worth noting variations of Cuckoo, BeamHash and ProgPow. These are the cryptocurrencies GRIN, MWC, SWAP, Beam, Sero, BCI. The remaining new and revolutionary cryptocurrencies could not interest miners in the long term.

How to configure RavenCoin mining (RVN) on the new KAWPOW algorithm

We already wrote earlier that soon, namely on May 6, the RavenCoin (RVN) project will make hard forks and will be transferred to a new mining algorithm called KAWPOW, which is derived from ProgPOW. In this article below, you will see detailed step-by-step instructions on how to configure your rigs for RavenCoin mining on the new algorithm after its hard fork. At the moment, 4 miners are already available that support this mining algorithm and you can use any of them according to your preference.

 

How to choose a cryptocurrency mining pool

Mining Pool  - a specialized service for miners, which combines hundreds or thousands of mining computers into one. Small and medium miners are added to the pools, whose capacity is not enough to find at least one or two blocks per day, i.e. with the help of the pool, miners receive a stable daily income, thus eliminating the element of luck, which may not be on your side for several months. Those. If your hashrate does not allow finding on average at least one block in 1-2 days, then it is better to pay a small commission to the mining pool and receive a reward for mining stably according to calculations. For popular cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, even large miners with equipment worth millions of dollars use the pool, because the number of participants is so large that even such large miners prefer to pay 1-2% of the commission than to maintain equipment for a week, pay for electricity and wages and, in the end, get nothing in return just because the probability theory was on the other side . If we have already figured out why to use the mining pool, then we will talk in more detail about how to choose it correctly.

Choosing a software wallet for cryptocurrency Bitcoin

Everyone who has ever dealt with cryptocurrencies has always wondered about keeping their crypto savings. For these purposes, today there is a large version of various solutions that we discussed in detail back in 2018. Today, we will dwell on individual software wallets for Bitcoin, especially since now there are more than 50 different items, and choosing the right one for you is not an easy task.

 

Profit-Mine.com - added support for mining profitability calculations for the Cuckatoo32 algorithm for the GRIN coin

On the website of the mining calculator Profit-mine.com, support for the new Cuckatoo32 algorithm has been added to calculate the profitability of mining the GRIN coin version on this algorithm. In addition, hashes of some popular AMD and NVIDIA video cards were added to the site database, such as: RX 470,480,570,580,5700XT, VEGA56, VEGA64, VEGAVII; GTX1070,1070Ti, 1080,1080Ti; RTX2070,2080,2080Ti for this algorithm. If you are interested in mining GRIN coins, you can calculate the profitability of mining your video cards on the new algorithm, as well as compare it with the profitability of GRIN mining on other algorithms (Cuckaroo29 and Cuckatoo31).

Binance - profitable and safe withdrawal of fiat money . Instruction manual

The well-known cryptocurrency exchange Binance continues to expand the range of its services, offering not only operations with cryptocurrencies, but also with fiat money from various countries. Today, Binance works with the following currencies: Russian ruble (RUB), Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH), Euro (EUR), Pounds (GBP), Hong Kong dollar (HKD), Kazakhstan tenge (KZT), Nigerian naira (NGN), Turkish lyre (TRY). For all these fiat currencies, you can buy cryptocurrency using bank cards, or vice versa, withdraw  rubles, euros, hryvnias, tenge on the card, and it is profitable with minimal fees and safe. Next, we will talk about our experience of withdrawing Bitcoin through Binance to the Russian card of Sberbank and compare with the exchange through cryptocurrency exchangers.

Cloud mining services blacklist 2020

Cloud mining services became widespread in 2017, when there was a booming demand for video cards, ASICs and other mining equipment against the background of a sharp increase in the value of cryptocurrencies. In addition to accessibility, cloud mining services from investors remove other problems related to the purchase and maintenance of mining equipment. That is precisely why these services have become popular, and  in popularity, money and rush demand there scammers always appear. As you can easily guess, the cloud mining industry simply drowned out a wave of hype cloud mining projects or simply pyramids under the guise of cloud mining, especially since it’s as easy as tricking a trusting layman who is not versed in cryptocurrencies. At the peak of popularity, it came to the point that among all this numerous variety of “cloud mining” it was almost impossible to find really working projects. Now in 2020, when Bitcoin from 20,000USD fell to 3,000 USD, all such hypes ceased to be paid, but did not cease to exist. Many sites of such scam services continue to work, and on a new wave of interest in cryptocurrencies, they can again actively begin their advertising activities to attract money from gullible investors.

Install and configure Windows 10 for mining rig

We constantly get a lot of questions regarding the installation and configuration of the Windows 10 operating system for mining rigs and decided to write generalizing material on this topic, which is able to answer most of the questions of beginners. Many of the nuances and settings that we will talk about today are very important for the optimal mining process. If you know any other features or settings of Windows10 that will not be discussed in this article, please write about them in your comments or on our forum.

Choosing OS for mining cryptocurrencies on video cards

In addition to a careful selection of components when creating mining rigs based on video cards, it is also worth paying attention to the choice of an operating system (OS), which will be responsible for the management, efficiency and reliability of all equipment. Today, for mining, use Windows of various generations. Linux distributions and various specialized Linux mining builds. And as a rule, each option has its drawbacks and advantages, which we will cover in this material, which will help you make the right choice based on your preferences and financial capabilities.

Configuring HiveOS for mining the GRIN cryptocurrency

The GRIN cryptocurrency confidently holds the lead in the profitability of mining on Nvidia video cards all of 2019, and the maximum performance in GRIN mining can be obtained only on Linux operating systems, for example, HiveOS. Due to the specific requirements for setting up miners software, many owners of mining rigs are faced with the difficulty of setting up HiveOS for mining GRIN cryptocurrencies using the Cuckatoo31 and Cucarood29 algorithms. Therefore, further we will tell you how to configure HiveOS to work together with F2pool to mine GRIN cryptocurrencies. By the same rules, you can configure the OS for any cryptocurrency based on the MimbleWimble encryption algorithm.

NiceHashOS - how to install and configure the operating system from NiсeHash

Since 2014, NiceHash has been offering its services in the mining industry, namely the service of automatically switching your mining rigs to the most profitable algorithm and cryptocurrency, while paying a reward only in Bitcoin, i.e. mined altcoins are also automatically transferred to BTC. Actually, on this functionality, NiceHash gained its popularity among beginner miners and those who do not have time to constantly monitor mining trends. Following the latest trends in the mining industry, the company released its own Linux operating system NiceHashOS in addition to all the well-known Windows applications. If you want to combine the convenience and free Linux operating systems with the convenient NiceHash features, you can easily do this using our NiceHashOS installation and configuration guide.