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Bitcoin Blog a1

Monday, October 19, 2015

Video: Life in a Chinese Bitcoin Mine

I found this very interesting video on life in a bitcoin mine in china. The video actually taught me a few things, one of which is that bitcoin is legal in China for ordinary citizens. This misconception isn't all that surprising considering China's love of censorship; after all, even Facebook is blocked in ChinaThis site, gives more detail about bitcoin's legal status in China. Anyways, enjoy!

Monday, October 12, 2015

Mining again?

The last time I mined was way back in in January of 2014. I actually didn't get anything for it either. The blocks for bitcoin were too difficult.
This time, I have mined a more feline cryptocurrency, Nyancoin to be exact. I used the QT wallets integrated miner. I downloaded minerd here. From here ( I think, I had to google it again) I jumped on http://xpool.net . http://xpool.net as the Server, 8870 as the port, and my wallet as the username. I also set my type to pool mining, as I actually wanted to get something, as opposed to playing the crypto lottery. ( as you may know, solo mining means you have to solve a whole block on your own.





The mining had minimal results and in a few hours I got maybe ⅓ of a nyancoin. I also mined this morning for a few hours and got ¼ of a nyancoin. Overall, it is very slow progress. I have a pretty well made computer, and I get 24 kilohash/ second on average. But to truly get meaningful results, I would need to buy an ASIC.

I also only mined when the difficulty was quite low. The difficulty was at 3.3 at one point and I could not get any shares ( shares are a proof of work, and more shares when a block is solved means you will get more of the reward). With bitcoin, my shares never added up high enough to actually get any bitcoin sent to my wallet. With Nyan however, this was not the case.

Overall, it was fun to actually mine something! I recommend trying it out!