Can data centers tap unused server capacity to mine for Bitcoins?The question occurred to the team at the online backup service iDrive, which performs most of its customer backup jobs overnight, leaving its 3,000 quad-core servers idle for much of the day.So the company ran a test with 600 servers to see whether Bitcoin mining could become a secondary revenue stream.The result: running Bitcoin mining software on those 600 quad-core servers for a year would earn about 0.43 Bitcoin, worth a total return of about $275.08 at current prices on major Bitcoin exchanges.“Its a waste of time, so any other company thinking about mining with their infrastructure, learn from us,” said iDrive’s Matthew Harvey.You need custom machines to effectively mine bitcoins and generate a real ROI.” The iDrive test-drive reinforced a common theme on Bitcoin mining forums: To earn money by mining, you need to invest in highly-customized computers using ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) to crunch data for creating and tracking bitcoins.

Bitcoin is sometime referred to as the “Internet of money,” a platform using cryptography and software to offer an alternative currency and payment-tracking system.At its heart is a huge distributed computing network that verifies each transaction.Participants in this online ledger are rewarded with new bitcoins, which are issued about every 10 minutes.bitcoin chart phOver the past year, the computing power supporting the bitcoin network has soared.bitcoin chart phThe cryptocurrency is now supported by a powerful global network backed by 150,000 petaflops per second of computing power, roughly 600 times the combined power of the all the supercomputers in the Top500 list.litecoin rss feedPractitioners of Bitcoin mining – the term for using data-crunching computers to earn newly-issued virtually currency – are adopting more powerful hardware, pooling their efforts and seeking to slash their power bills.litecoin mac miner

Most serious Bitcoin miners have graduated from CPUs and GPUs to specialized chips such as FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) or ASICs that can be optimized for specific workloads.This has led to the emergence of a new class of hardware vendors selling custom hardware for bitcoin mining.The horsepower required to succeed in Bitcoin is highlighted by the iDrive simulation, which used 600 servers.uk bitcoin vat“Our study projected a year of mining at 100 percent processing power 24/7 and the assumption that the difficulty of mining (the calculating of hashes) would increase linearly,” iDrive noted in a blog post describing its experiment.ethereum token launch“In the end, we learned a lot about the interesting process of bitcoin mining, however, for us, the pros did not outweigh the cons.So, IDrive decided to stick with that we do best.” They’re not the only ones who’ve contemplated repurposing powerful equipment to pursue cryptocurrency, The 4,000-core Odyssey supercomputer at Harvard was secretly used to mine Dogecoin, the ironic virtual currency used primarily for online tipping.

The covert miner has had their computing privileges at the university suspended.Now that you have your Bitcoin mining hardware, your next step is to join the best Bitcoin mining pool.Mining pools are groups of cooperating miners who agree to share block rewards in proportion to their contributed mining hashing power.While mining pools are desirable to the average miner as they smooth out rewards and make them more predictable, they unfortunately concentrate power to the mining pool’s owner.Miners can, however, choose to redirect their hashing power to a different mining pool at anytime.Before you join a mining pool you will also need Bitcoin mining software and a Bitcoin wallet.The list below details the biggest Bitcoin mining pools.This is based on info from Blockchain’s pool share chart:Antpool is a Chinese based mining pool, maintained by BitMain.Antpool mines about 15% of all blocks.DiscusFish, also known as F2Pool, is based in China.DiscusFish has mined about 12% of all blocks over the past six months.BitFury is one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips.BitFury currently mines about 12% of all bitcoins in three data centers across Georgia.It’s a private pool and can’t be joined.BTCC is China’s third largest Bitcoin exchange.

Its mining pool currently mines about 7% of all blocks.ViaBTC is a somewhat new mining pool that has been around for about one year.BW, established in 2014, is another mining company based in China.It currently mines about 8% of all blocks.BTC.top is another new pool.It does not appear to have a website, so it may be a private pool.Slush was the first mining pool and currently mines about 6% of all blocks.Slush is probably one of the best and most popular mining pools despite not being one of the largest.Bitclub Network is a large mining pool but appears to be somewhat shady.We recommend staying away from this pool.GBMiners is another somewhat shady pool that should probably not be joined.The comparison chart above is just a quick reference.The location of a pool does not matter all that much.Most of the pools have servers in every country so even if the mining pool is based in China, you could connect to a server in the US, for example.If you just want bitcoins, mining is NOT the best way to obtain coins.Buying bitcoins is the EASIEST and FASTEST way to purchase bitcoins.Get $10 worth of free bitcoins when you buy $100 or more at Coinbase.Bitcoin mining tends to gravitate towards countries with cheap electricity.As Bitcoin mining is somewhat centralized, 10-15 mining companies have claimed the vast majority of network hash power.With many of these companies in the same country, only a number of countries mine and export a significant amount of bitcoins.China mines the most bitcoins and therefore ends up “exporting” the most bitcoins.Electricity in China is very cheap and has allowed Chinese Bitcoin miners to gain a very large percentage of Bitcoin’s hash power.It’s rumored that some Chinese power companies point their excess energy towards Bitcoin mining facilities so that no energy goes to waste.China is home to many of the top Bitcoin mining companies:F2Pool, AntPool, BTCC, and BW.It’s estimated that these mining pools own somewhere around 60% of Bitcoins hash power, meaning they mine about 60% of all new bitcoins.Georgia is home to BitFury, one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips.

BitFury currently mines about 15% of all bitcoins.Sweden is home to KnCMiner, a Bitcoin mining company based in Stockholm.KnCMiner currently mines about 7.5% of all bitcoins.The US is home to 21 Inc., a Bitcoin mining company based in California.21 runs a large amount of miners, but also sells low powered bitcoin miners as part of their 21 Bitcoin computer.Most of the hash power from the 21 Bitcoin computers is pointed towards 21’s mining pool.mines about 3% of all bitcoins.The countries above mine about 80% of all bitcoins.The rest of the hash power is spread across the rest of the world, often pointed at smaller mining pools like Slush (Czech Republic) and Eligius (US).Table of ContentsWhat is a mining pool?Get a Bitcoin Wallet and Mining SoftwareThe Biggest Mining Pools1.GBMinersBest Bitcoin Mining Pool ComparisonJust Want Bitcoins?Which Countries Mine the most Bitcoins?ChinaGeorgiaSwedenUSOther CountriesA Note on PoolsWhy are Miners Important?While we can see which mining pools are the largest, it’s important to understand that the hash power pointed towards a mining pool isn’t necessarily owned by the mining pool itself.There are a few cases, like with BitFury and KnCMiner, where the company itself runs the mining operation but doesn’t run a mining pool.Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily by routing their hash power to a different pool, so the market share of pools is constantly changing.To make the list of top 10 miners, we looked at blocks found over the past 6 months using data from BlockTrail.The size of mining pools is constantly changing.