TL;DR I purchased some cryptocurrency mining power in the cloud.I found that SHA256 mining is not that great, but Ethereum mining is more profitable.I plan on investing in more mining power.If you want to jump in right now here are my affiliate links:   Affiliate code for discount ODVnHM Previously I blogged how to mine Bitcoin on Azure (and why it is a terrible idea).In it I concluded that CPU mining is terrible with the advent of cheap USB ASIC miners and that you are better off purchasing one of them rather than wasting cloud computing credits.I did more research and discovered rather than purchasing hardware, and running them myself and paying for electricity, maintenance, etc. I could just purchase raw mining power in a specialised mining datacentre. I liked that sign up was simple, that you could allocate your mining power/payouts (see below) and most importantly that it had Ethereum miners (look out for future posts on Ethereum!).I decided up front to invest a bit over $100 in SHA256 & Ethereum mining and roughly distribute it between the 2: SHA256       USD $70.81        0.15 TH/s        $0.45 per GH/s      Lifetime contract Ethereum     USD $57.62        3 MH/s            $17.99 per MH/s    1 year contract The reason I liked Genesis Mining was how you could allocate your mining and payouts across the many altcoins.

Below I’ve included screenshots of the payout screens and my configuration.SHA256 The original Bitcoin hashing algorithm.Mining power is being added to this at a crazy rapid pace with ASIC manufacturers trying to cash in and mine as many Bitcoin as they can.bitcoin veiligProfitability of mining this will drop rapidly.bitcoin mining on i7Here I allocated my payouts as 90% Bitcoin (as that was the point of the exercise) but then 10% into Dogecoin.litecoin wallet android appDogecoin was created as a “fun” cryptocurrency and the development community has fun with using it as tips throughout Reddit.bitcoin 1 th/s minerI wanted a small trickle of this so that I could tip people.bitcoin pool url

X11 Built to be more ASIC resistant by incorporating 11 different hashing algorithms.I haven’t purchased any mining power in this mining algorithm yet, but I plan to in the future.Ethereum Not much in the way of options, as it has been designed to be a unique ASIC resistant algorithm.ethereum atm locationsThis is just for Ethereum mining.I’ve been mining for 9 days now and thought it would be a good time to analyse how my mining has been going.Payouts occur at the same time every day, meaning my 1st day only saw a partial payout on the day I signed up.I have removed the datapoint to make the graphs clearer. Ethereum The amount I’m mining each day has been trending very slightly downwards but is more or less stable.Profitability/day: $2.77 / 9 days = $0.30/day SHA256 Bitcoin Fairly stable mining, but it is trending down sharper than Ethereum.This is most likely due to the rapid pace that additional mining capacity is brought on globally from all the ASIC miners Profitability/day: $1.04 / 9 days = $0.11/day SHA256 Dogecoin A very sudden drop in Doge earned per day.

This can be explained by looking at the exchange (see graphs below).Dogecoin isn’t mined directly by Genesis mining, but instead Bitcoin is mined and then converted into Dogecoin.Over the last 3 days the price of BTC has gone down while DOGE has gone up, meaning during the daily conversion of earned BTC to DOGE the exchange rate is lower.Profitability/day: $0.20 / 9 days = $0.02/day Exchange rates for last 30 days Ethereum mining 1 year contact: $57.62 Daily profit: $0.30 Daily ROI: 0.30/57.62 =  0.0052 Yearly profit at current values^: $0.30 * 365 = $109.5 SHA256 mining Lifetime contract: $70.81 Daily profit: $0.13 ($0.11 + $0.02) Daily ROI: 70.81/0.13 =  0.0018 Yearly profit at current values^: $0.13 * 365 = $47.45 ^I do not believe that this will be the true yearly values.Exchange rates will fluctuate and amount mined per day will go down.I was interested in the SHA256 miners because of the lifetime contract that will always be mining until it is no longer profitable.

However I am wary of the long term profitability of it.The chart below from blockchain.info shows the crazy rate that ASIC miners are are bringing on more hashing power.This will rapidly diminish the amount of BTC I mine per day.I do not plan to invest more in Bitcoin mining as I don’t think it will economical to compete.I am very happy with the progress of my Ethereum miners.Ethereum is more resistant to ASIC miners and therefore the amount of global mining power brought should not reduce my profitability as much as quickly as it is with SHA256.Ethereum mining is also almost 3x as profitable per $ as SHA256 mining (0.0052 vs 0.0018).Because of this I plan on purchasing more Ethereum mining power as well as some X11 mining power.But I will not be investing any further in SHA256 mining.I’d like to get some data points from the X11 miner to share next time.Remember if you want to signup for your own, here are my affiliate links to get a discount ODVnHMuTorrent recently made headlines for bundling cryptocurrency-mining junkware.

Out of all the junkware programs bundled with installers, cryptocurrency-miners like Epic Scale are some of the worst.Modern malware makes money by using this technique to mine Bitcoin, too.Even if you don’t care about most junkware at all, cryptocurrency-mining software is something you really don’t want on your computer.You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency.It’s a digital currency, and new units of currency are generated by “mining.” This is a computationally intensive task, and it requires a lot of processing power.Essentially, the computer is rewarded for solving difficult math problems.This processing power is used to verify transactions, so all that number-crunching is required for the cryptocurrency to work.That’s an extremely basic explanation — read our in-depth explanation of Bitcoin for more details.Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency.The Epic Scale junkware bundled with uTorrent’s installer doesn’t attempt to mine Bitcoin — it attempts to mine Litecoin, which was inspired by and is very similar to Bitcoin.

Mining programs tap into your computer’s hardware resources and put them to work mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, or another type of cryptocurrency.And no, even if your hardware is used to generate money for them, you don’t get any of it.They get all the money from putting your hardware to work.Worse yet, your desktop computer or laptop at home just isn’t powerful enough to profitably mine Bitcoin, Litecoin, or other cryptocurrencies.Doing this profitably requires specialized mining rigs with specialized hardware and cheap electricity.So, even if you put your computer to work mining Bitcoin for your own profit, you’d actually lose money.You’d run up your power bill as your computer draws more power, and you’d make back less than it would cost you in power.In other words, cryptocurrency miners like the Epic Scale crapware or other malware programs that work similarly just run up your electricity bill for a small little bit of profit.The only reason they can profit is because they’re not paying the electricity bill — you are.

You pay more in electricity so the junkware or malware authors can make a fraction of that in profit.We won’t even talk about the impact on the environment from using all of that extra power.But that’s a factor that shouldn’t be ignored.This is a bad deal so far.It would be better if you just paid a company like Epic Scale a few dollars and they avoided running up your electric bill — you’d save money.But the problem isn’t just a financial one.These types of software kick in when your computer is at a low-power state, putting those idle resources to work.So, instead of using a small amount of power and running cool, your computer will run full-blast when you’re not using it, fans kicking into high gear to dissipate all that heat.If the software isn’t programmed properly — or if it’s just too greedy — it may continue running even while you’re using your computer, slowing tasks down and ensuring your computer is running at full tilt all the time.Too much heat can actually cause damage, especially if your hardware is already flaky or if your computer is packed with dust and isn’t properly ventilated.

Really, we can’t stress it enough — there is no advantage to you in running a program like Epic Scale.You get absolutely nothing from it.Epic Scale gets everything, and you have to deal with all the problems.BitTorrent argues Epic Scale is completely justified in abusing your hardware because you agreed to it.If you clicked through the uTorrent installer and accidentally agreed to the Epic Scale offer because it was disgused to look like a legitimate license screen, it’s only your own fault for choosing to use Epic Scale.That’s the argument from BitTorrent, Inc.If you’re not a fan of it, try one of these uTorrent alternatives (or stick with an older version of uTorrent) and send a message.As a bonus, you can avoid all the junk they’ll try to slip onto your computer in the future.For their part, Epic Scale has a nice-sounding explanation of the issue on their website.They argue that they just want to “benefit high-impact charities” and “advance research science by providing affordable high-performance computation.” They say they “started with cryptocurrency mining as a way to advance the first mission.” In other words, for all their talk, they’re just mining cryptocurrency the same way that malware is doing right now, except in their case you have to agree to it first.

Ultimately, this argument is absurd.People would be better off donating to charities than running up their electricity bills, and a network of underpowered home computers with installer junkware on them isn’t the best way to provide “affordable high-performance computation” for research science.Their statement sounds nice, but their methods are absurd and a bit too similar to how criminals profit off of malware.The only difference is a dense EULA disguised in a software installer and a nice-sounding statement about donating the proceeds to charity.So it comes down to choice, they do give you one, unlike the malware, but it’s not a choice we recommend.Well, we can say one thing about Epic Scale — they have a better public relations strategy than Superfish does.No, we’re not anti-charity.Do you want to support charities?Then donate directly to them.Five dollars donated directly to a charity every month is better than $5 extra spent on your electricity bill with the charity only getting a fraction of that.