Who would have thought that the very same system that was built to create Bitcoin as a decentralized and independent platform would become so perverse and corrupt that it would end up doing the complete opposite.A Blockchain, is an open database maintained by a network of independent participants who get paid in cryptocurrency for their work.It is meant to be trusted, permanent, and public such that everyone can inspect it, but which no single user can control it.The system that Bitcoin uses to record and validate pieces of data into the Blockchain is called proof of work, a process which is difficult (costly, time-consuming) to produce but easy for others to verify.At the beginning (back in 2008), the idea was that every bitcoin user could produce blocks using their own personal computer, in this way everyone had equal participation.However, as Bitcoin gained market value, better and more efficient machines (ASICS) were created to produce blocks or how is also called “mine” blocks.ASICS are very powerful computers which are mostly produced in Asia, where companies find cheap labour.

They also consume a lot of energy, these two factors combined made China the best suited place to build “Mining Farms”, they have the manufacturers and the cheap electricity.A new generation of “Chinese Miners” came along and with them came the debacle of proof of work.bitcoin wallet ios reviewDon’t get me wrong, is not that the Miners are bad per se, it is just that their interests come in direct collusion with Bitcoin´s decentralized principle.raspberry pi bitcoin miner buyThey control the network and they decide on software updates, it is no longer 1 CPU — 1 Vote.So what happens when there is a software update that benefits the whole user base, but it affects the income of large miners?, well its simple: War Happens.Litecoin is a coin created by Charlie Lee that is very similar to Bitcoin, it also uses Proof of Work and it is also dominated by ASICs fabricated in China.bitcoin c'est quoi

Unlike Bitcoin, Litecoin´s community is pretty united in regards of upgrading their software into a more efficient protocol called Segregated Witness.This upgrade of the Litecoin Protocol is not as important for Litecoin as it is for Bitcoin, since their chain is far from being full, but what should have been an easy and ordinary soft fork has become a full on War between Miners and Users.And when I say miners I also mean Mining Pool owners, these are the guys who control large amounts of hashpower and need to update their pool´s software so that people who mine on those pools can support(vote) on the change of protocol.bitcoin yearly growthBut seriously, what can you expect from someone who tweets stuff like:What the Litecoin War is showing us is that this little guy from China, Jihan Wu, has more power than we all thought and he is decided to make a political statement out of Litecoin.bitcoin to vertcoin

He will not allow SEGWIT on Bitcoin and he will sure block it too on Litecoin just to show the whole crypto community how centralized the system has become.But how can Jihan have so much power?bitcoin las vegas conferencewell he controls the biggest ASIC manufacturer in the world - Bitmain and one of the biggest bitcoin/litecoin mining pools ANT POOL.bitcoin mollyHe is definitely a force to be reckon with and he does not want to negotiate.I don’t foresee Chinese miners giving up any time soon, they are simply playing the system to their advantage, we cannot expect them to have a sudden moral epiphany and change their attitude, they are business men and they will defend their profits with their teeth if necessary.The best choice for disappointed users is to move to better distributed coins, with a more efficient governance system, like Steem, Dash, Decreed, etc.Non the less, I believe the failure of Bitcoin´s Proof of Work will affect the credibility of the whole crypto sphere and it will take years for another crypto-currency to achieve the adoption Bitcoin has gained.bitcoin market arbitrage

Who isn’t curious about Bitcoin, the virtual currency whose origin story is rife with underground marketplaces, instant millionaires, and massive scams?ethereum miner listAnd the best way to learn more is to start participating yourself.Sure, you could hit up an exchange and drop four hundred dollars or more on a single bitcoin, but you can also get in for free by mining the coins yourself.Bitcoin has become too hard for regular people to mine, but the world of bitcoin-like “altcoins” is still wide-open to hobbyist miners.Here's everything you need to know to get started mining altcoins.This article assumes you’ve at least heard of Bitcoin, but you might not have heard of altcoins.“Altcoin” is a catch-all term for cryptocurrencies based on the Bitcoin system, which aren’t actually Bitcoin.Because Bitcoin is open-source software, anyone with some development experience can copy it and create their own currency.Of course, like Bitcoin, the value of any altcoin is equal only to how much someone will pay you for it.

Some altcoins, such as Litecoin, Peercoin, and even Dogecoin have active communities and economies—you can view a list of altcoins sorted by market cap here—but currently none are even a tenth as valuable as Bitcoins.Many altcoins have a devoted following, but be wary of anyone aggressively hyping a new altcoin or trying to convince you to get in on the ground floor—it could just be a modern version of the “pump and dump” scam that’s been around for decades.The Bitcoin software works this way: Every time somebody spends a bitcoin, that transaction is recorded in a public ledger.For example, if you have 10 bitcoins in your wallet and send 7 to someone else, that transaction goes in the ledger, and everyone knows that your wallet only has 3 bitcoins now.If you try to send somebody else 5 bitcoins tomorrow, that transaction will be rejected because it’s a matter of public record that your wallet doesn’t have the coins.For the system to work, the public ledger has to be completely trustworthy.

It has to be impossible for anyone to record a fraudulent transaction.Bitcoin accomplishes this using cryptography (hence the “crypto” in “cryptocurrency”), in a process that requires many computers, all connected in a single peer-to-peer network.In order to incentivize people to participate in this transaction-verifying network, bitcoins are periodically generated and awarded to the machines engaged in maintaining the public ledger.As bitcoin values have soared over the last couple of years, bitcoin mining has become a very lucrative business.As a result, companies have designed chips solely for running the cryptographic algorithms bitcoin uses for mining.These chips, called ASICs, are so good at mining that it’s pretty much impossible for normal, general-purpose hardware to compete.Even the burliest desktop PC with huge gaming GPUs won’t be able to generate enough money mining bitcoin to cover the cost of the electricity used in the process.AMD It’s still possible to be successful at altcoin mining using traditional PC graphics cards, like AMD’s Radeon R9-280.

Because altcoins are less popular, and because many altcoins use a different kind of mining algorithm called “scrypt” that can’t be solved by the ASIC boards, you can still feasibly earn these altcoins by running the mining program on your personal computer.You can then spend the altcoins or swap them for bitcoins at a cryptocurrency exchange. and Tiger Direct.For obvious economic reasons, the ease of mining an altcoin is basically inversely proportional to that altcoin’s value.Turning altcoins into cold, hard cash is also more difficult than monetizing bitcoins.Altcoins are great way to learn more about cryptocurrencies, but we wouldn’t suggest you quit your day job just yet.The mining process involves writing a short script to run in the command prompt.It’s only a few steps, which you muist follow exactly to ensure success.First, select a currency to mine—you can find a list of the most active altcoins at CoinMarketCap.) and download the client, which allows you to store coins in a “Wallet” on your computer.

Once the client is installed it will have to download the entire blockchain for the altcoin.You can join a mining pool before this process is done, but because you might need to run it overnight you should start now.Before you start mining there are two important decisions to make.The first is whether to mine solo or participate in a mining pool.When Bitcoin mining, payments aren’t received in a steady, gradual flow.Instead, they’re given out in big chunks when particular milestones are hit, to whoever hits those milestones.If you’re not running a bunch of super-fast mining computers, it’s possible you’ll never be the one to hit the milestone and receive the payment.In a mining pool, many users join forces to mine as a group, and all reward payments are split up among the group, according to how much computing power they’ve been contributing.This streamlines the reward structure and makes your payments more reliable.You can choose to mine solo, but for anyone just getting into altcoin mining, a pool is a better choice—especially if you’re not mining with a room full of powerful PCs.

The rest of this guide will assume that you’re mining in a pool.There are different pools for each altcoin, though some pools switch between different currencies, based on rising and falling values.There are pros and cons to each pool, but for the most part it won’t matter which one you choose.To find a popular pool, visit a community site for the coin you’re interested in mining—Reddit has active communities for all of the popular altcoins, for instance.The WeMineLTC workers page.We chose the WeMineLTC pool, which is very popular.There’s some concern in the Litecoin community that WeMineLTC is too popular, because if more than half of the total mining of a coin is being done by a single pool, the currency isn’t secure.Since it’s unlikely we’ll be contributing much mining power, that’s not a concern for us.The second major decision you’ll need to make is whether your want to use a CPU miner or a GPU miner.These are different forms of the mining software designed to utilize either your PC’s computer processor or its graphics processor.GPU miners are much more efficient, but only if you have a discrete graphics card.

AMD cards are much more efficient at altcoin mining than Nvidia’s, so much so that the street prices of Radeon cards have skyrocketed in past months.If you’d like to mine on a laptop or low-end desktop with integrated graphics, you’re better off using the CPU miner.We’ll show you how to use either one.You can even mine both ways at the same time, if you want to really get all the mining power you can out of your computer.Just watch that heat and power usage!A diagnostic tool like CPUID’s HWMonitor can help you keep tabs.To mine with your computer’s GPU, you’ll need a piece of software called cgminer.You can download a Windows executable at http://k-dev.net/cgminer/.You specifically want version 3.7.2 of cgminer, because later versions removed support for the scrypt hash function used by altcoins.(GUIMiner-scrypt is an alternative that also supports altcoin mining and uses a graphical interface, rather than the command line.)In our tests, Chrome said the cgminer software was malicious and blocked the download, but it’s not; you can either disable Chrome’s malware protection or use an alternative browser to download the program.Make sure to update your graphics card drivers, and if you have an ATI graphics card, download the optional OpenCL driver.You don’t need to install cgminer; just extract the contents of the zip file to a location on your hard drive.

Cgminer works from the command line, but you can also run it using a batch file.If you’re not familiar, a batch file is basically just a saved command prompt script, and you can write it in notepad.Before you do, you’ll need to get a few pieces of information from your pool service.You’ll need to know the following for your batch file:URL: The URL of your pool service.Not the one you plug into your browser, but the one specifically for mining.Any pool service will make this information readily available on the help or getting-started pages.Many have multiple URLs you can choose from, so you can pick the server closest to you.The URL will likely start with the word “stratum.”Port: The port number will also be provided by your pool service.It’s usually written immediately following the URL, separated only by a colon and no spaces.Username: The username you created when you signed up for the poolWorker name: Before you can mine you have to create a “worker” on your user account on the mining pool.

Each worker has a name, either picked by you or assigned automatically by the pool.Worker password: Similarly, every worker has a password.When you’ve created a worker and have all the info you need, go to the folder containing the cgminer.exe file, right-click anywhere and choose to create a new text (.txt) file.In notepad, type the following in, substituting your personal info for the bolded words: cgminer.exe —scrypt -o url:port -u username.workername -p workerpassword Now, hit Save, then go back to the folder and rename the text file you just created to “GPUMiner.bat”—minus the quotation marks.Windows will confirm you want to change the file type.Say Yes.Again, here’s what the end result should look like: Note the CPUMining.bat file.Finally, you can double-click on the .bat file you just created.Cgminer will take it from there, displaying your progress as you mine altcoins.Litecoin mining ain’t pretty.For a more thorough explanation of cgminer’s deep bag of tricks and tips on how to coax better mining performance out of your GPU, check out this excellent advanced guide to Dogecoin mining.If GPU mining isn’t feasible for your PC, you can still mine, though not as quickly.

The process is pretty much the same as for the GPU mining process, and you’ll still need the same information described above.The main difference is that instead of cgminer, you’ll download a program called cpuminer.Just like with cgminer, you'll need to create a batch file by creating a new text file in the cpuminer folder, entering a short script, then renaming it to a .bat file.For cpuminer, your script will look like this: minerd.exe -o url:port -u username.workername -p workerpassword And with that, you can use your GPU, CPU, or both to mine Litecoin or most other altcoins.When you start accruing coins in your account, you can visit the mining pool’s website and enter an address to have the coins sent to your personal wallet.You can find your wallet’s address in the “Receive” tab of the client you downloaded earlier.As soon as you start keeping coins in your wallet, you should enable encryption on it by clicking Settings -> Enable Encryption, and choosing a secure password.