Bitcoin Share Price News Ever imagined transacting worldwide without any dependence on any type of currency? That’s what the concept of blockchain is. Bitcoins are discovered rather than printed. Computers around the world 'mine' for coins by competing with each other. The best resource for learning how to mine bitcoins and other bitcoin mining essentials. Or changes in BTC rate and mining difficulty Revenue in vacum* Price.

Note: Our guide on Bitcoin mining has been fully updated. This feature was first published in November 2015. Mining is the process of using a computer to perform complex calculations on blocks of data which maintain the Bitcoin network.

Miners are rewarded for their efforts with a certain amount of. Bitcoin (BTC) is fast becoming the province of people using specialized (application-specific integrated circuit) devices, although if you have one or more powerful graphics cards you may still be able to generate a small profit by assembling your own mining device. You'll learn more about this in the following steps.

The actual profit you make will depend on a number of factors. The first is your 'hash rate' – in other words, the actual processing power of your machine. Computers designed for mining, or 'rigs' as they're commonly known, require large amounts of electricity, which will increase running costs. The complexity of mining also rises over time. Keep your Bitcoin wallet anonymous, protect your mining bounty from pirates With super fast servers in 90+ countries & apps for all devices, ExpressVPN provides unrivaled speed, reliability, security & unblocking. Try risk free today with an exclusive 49% discount and a 30-day money-back guarantee! The Bitcoin itself is a very volatile virtual currency and while it has recently made huge gains, it may also plummet in value.

Bear this in mind if you plan to hold onto any BTC you mine rather than selling immediately. If you want a rough idea of how much you can make from mining, use one of the many online profitability calculators (for example, the one at ). While you can technically try to mine Bitcoin on your own, it's very unlikely that your rig will singlehandedly solve the complex sums necessary to receive a reward. Instead, you'll need to join a mining pool.

As the name suggests, this is a pool of multiple machines connected together, engaged in a collaborative mining effort. The Bitcoin rewards reaped are shared amongst everyone who contributed processing power to the effort. However, note that the way in which profits are shared can vary from pool to pool. You can learn more about pooled mining on the. • If you just want to buy bitcoin instead, check out as well as a list of the.

Prev Page 1 of 15 Next Prev Page 1 of 15 Next 1. Choose your miner. One easy – but not cheap – way to get started with Bitcoin mining is to buy an ASIC device such as the AntMiner S9. These devices have been specifically designed for mining Bitcoins which means they'll generally give you the greatest return on your investment. However, as mentioned, these ASIC devices are expensive. The S9 for instance currently retails for around €2,100 (about £1,860, $2,490). You will usually need to buy a separate power supply unit which will set you back something like another €300 (£265, $360).

These devices are usually designed specifically to mine Bitcoin and will not function well if you try to use them to mine other cryptocurrencies (if, say, Bitcoin should happen to fall drastically in value). Alternatively you can build your own Bitcoin mining rig.

While these aren't as efficient in terms of power and hash rate, they require less upfront expense and can mine other currencies besides BTC. In the simplest terms these are computers with multiple powerful graphics cards installed. These GPUs might be primarily designed to render complex graphics when playing games, but they also lend themselves well to coping with the complex calculations involved in Bitcoin mining. To get started, you'll need to purchase a case for the machine. Most of these are a simple metal frame to allow heat to dissipate easily.

You'll then need to choose a motherboard and graphics cards for mining, such as the AMD Radeon RX 580. If you need some more advice, see our guides on choosing the and for mining. You'll need to assemble the machine and install the OS and mining software yourself, so you should only go down this route if you are tech-savvy and familiar with computers.

If neither of these options appeals, you can rent hash power from cloud mining companies. These firms have dedicated data centers devoted to mining Bitcoins. As they are centralized they can buy machines in bulk and use efficient methods to generate electricity. Most companies will offer you a fixed amount of Gigahash Seconds (GH/s) of mining power for a fee. The advantage of this approach is that you don't need to buy any expensive hardware. The fees for cloud mining will vary, however, and another point to be wary of is scammers posing as cloud mining outfits. Electra ECA Mining Hack.

See the for a list of reputable cloud mining companies. Image credit: Marco Krohn (Wikimedia Commons) Prev Page 2 of 15 Next Prev Page 2 of 15 Next 2. Set up your Bitcoin wallet. Once you've made the decision that mining is right for you, you'll also need to set up a Bitcoin wallet to store your profits. If you're mining as an investment and don't plan on spending any of your coins soon, consider using a website like to create a 'paper' wallet. Make a note of the 'public' address which you can use to receive payments.

You can check the balance of your Bitcoin wallet safely at any time by visiting and entering your payment address into the search bar at the top-right. Don't let anyone see your private keys as anyone with access to your paper wallet can control your virtual cash. If you plan to regularly cash out your BTC or make payments, consider using a software wallet instead.

The lightweight is available for all major desktop operating systems and Android. When you create your wallet, Electrum will generate a 'seed' of a dozen random words to use as a private key. This means you can restore your Bitcoin wallet if anything happens to your computer. If you use a software wallet like Electrum, try to do it on a machine that isn't connected to the internet so your BTC can't be hacked. This is known as 'cold storage'. The Electrum website has for setting up a 'watching' wallet for day-to-day use which can show your balance but cannot make payments itself.

Or for full instructions on setting up secure offline storage, see our article on. Prev Page 3 of 15 Next Prev Page 3 of 15 Next 3. Pick a Bitcoin mining pool. Head over to the and click on 'Sign up here' at the top-right. On the registration page choose a username, then enter your email address and password. The Slush Pool website will send you a confirmation email.

Click the link to validate your email address. You'll see that a 'worker' has been created for you, so you can begin mining. Although it's not compulsory, you should ideally have one worker per device. Visit at any time to view and create workers. Prev Page 5 of 15 Next Prev Page 5 of 15 Next 5. Funded mining. You need to tell your mining pool where and when to send the funds from your mining exploits.

On the Slush Pool website you can do this by clicking 'Settings' at the top-right, then click 'Bitcoin' on the left. Choose 'Payouts' then click the 'New Wallet' button. Paste in your public address for Bitcoin payouts here.

If you're using a paper wallet this should be clearly marked. In Electrum you can view your current receiving address by clicking on the 'Receive' tab. Click 'Submit' when you're done. Some miners also allow you to choose the payout threshold – in other words how many BTC you need to have mined before the Pool sends funds to your wallet. This is important as while it's risky to leave large amounts of BTC in an online wallet, transaction fees for sending BTC across the network are currently very high, so you could end up paying a lot for multiple smaller payments.

Choose freely and wisely. Prev Page 6 of 15 Next Prev Page 6 of 15 Next 6. Mining pools are a popular target for hackers for obvious reasons. To make sure no one can potentially pilfer your Bitcoins, first check that your pool uses SSL. This means your connection is secure – in most web browsers you'll see a padlock icon (in the address bar) if this is the case.

Certain mining pools such as Slush Pool also allow you to secure access to your account by using two-factor authentication. This introduces a second step for a successful login, and is therefore another hurdle to prevent hackers from breaking into your account. In order to use this you'll need access to a mobile device and an app such as Google Authenticator or FreeOTP. Prev Page 7 of 15 Next Prev Page 7 of 15 Next 7. Grab Bitcoin mining software. Whether you're using a specialized ASIC Miner or your own rig, the device is going to run very hot when trying to mine BTC for you. Therefore, be sure to place your mining hardware somewhere with good ventilation so the heat can dissipate easily.

Generally speaking, the cooler your mining machine, the more efficiently it will perform. Make sure to factor the costs of air conditioning and/or a heat pump into your mining calculations to be certain you’re still running a profitable enterprise. If you live somewhere cold, you could follow in the footsteps of and use the excess heat from mining as a 'data furnace' to heat your home. Prev Page 14 of 15 Next Prev Page 14 of 15 Next 14. Keep mining profitable. As research continues into specialist mining equipment and the difficulty of mining increases, the highest profits from mining are usually earned by data centers based in locations where energy is inexpensive such as China. As a hobbyist miner, you can maximize your profits by following their example by using ASIC miners and keeping electricity costs down.

While relocating to China may not be on the cards, you can increase the efficiency of your rig by using an efficient PSU. You can get help with this in the Pools section of the. An alternative way to get one over on the ‘big bully’ miners is to use renewable energy to power your mining machine – for example by installing solar panels on your property. If you do this, remember that the advertised wattage for devices is usually the optimal amount you'll receive under ideal conditions. Solar panels in particular are affected not just by the amount of sunlight they receive, but by surface area, the angle at which they're placed, and the direction in which they're facing. Speak to a qualified installer, fully explain your needs, and get things right. To get started, consider using an electricity usage monitor to measure the energy consumption of your mining device in kWh (kilowatt hours).

These are very inexpensive and available from any hardware store. Remember that the reward for mining Bitcoin halves every 210,000 blocks. You can find a more detailed explanation of this on the, but essentially, this means mining becomes less profitable over time, unless you can increase your hash rate – or the value of Bitcoin increases. Can You Still Ethereum Classic ETC Mine here. Image credit: Thamizhpparithi Maari (Wikimedia Commons) Prev Page 15 of 15 Next Prev Page 15 of 15 Next • • • • •.

Mining bitcoins – a process that helps manage bitcoin transactions as well as create new “wealth” – is the new Beanie Babies. Luckily for us, however, bitcoins seem to be going up in value and should maintain their value over time, unlike your mint condition Tiny the stuffed Chihuahua. But how do you get bitcoins? You can begin by buying them outright, but the market is currently wild. At $188 per coin, the direction of the bitcoin is anyone’s guess right now and, unlike equities, these things don’t split. In short, you should probably mine. But what is bitcoin mining?

Think of it as work done by groups of people to find large prime numbers or trying keys to decrypt a file. You can but just understand that for every block mined you get 25 coins or, at current rates, $4,722.25. Currently a single bitcoin is valued at $188, an alarming result that is probably caused by money movements related to Cyprus and a general bubble-like excitement over the platform in general. In fact, many wager that the DDOS attacks on many bitcoin-related services are direct action by hackers to inject instability in order to reduce the price. As it stands, mining solo is very nearly deprecated. The process of finding blocks is now so popular and the difficulty of finding a block so high that it could take over three years to generate any coins. While you could simply set a machine aside and have it run the algorithms endlessly, the energy cost and equipment deprecation will eventually cost more than the actual bitcoins are worth.

Pooled mining, however, is far more lucrative. Using a service like “Slush’s pool” (more on that later) you can split the work among a ground of people. Using this equation. (25 BTC + block fees – 2% fee) * (shares found by user’s workers) / (total shares in current round) While this is simplified, it is basically how the system works.

You work for shares in a block and when complete you get a percentage of the block based on the number of workers alongside you, less fees. Using this method, I have been able to raise about $1.50 over the weekend by running a dormant PC. The astute among you will note that I probably used twice that amount of electricity. Being a neophile, I’m surprised it took me so long to start mining. Explained how to set up a pooled mining account so I thought it would be interesting to share the instructions. Get a wallet. You can either store your wallet locally or store it online.

Is an online wallet that is surprisingly simple to set up. Wallets require you to use or download a fairly large blockchain file – about 6GB – so downloading and updating a local wallet may be a non-starter. Like all wealth storage mediums, keeping your bitcoins “local” is probably a better idea than trusting a web service, but that’s a matter of private preference.

There is no preferred wallet type and there are obvious trade-offs to both. Privacy advocates would probably say a local wallet is best.

You can download a local wallet but make sure you keep a copy of your data backed up. Once you’ve created a wallet, you get an address like this: 1BEkUGADFbrEShQb9Xr4pKPtM8jAyiNQsJ. This, without the period, is a direct way to send bitcoins to your wallet. Make a note of your address. In Coinbase, the wallet address found under linked accounts. To mine in a pool you have to work with a group of other miners on available blocks.

The most popular is Slush’s Pool found. You can also try guilds like as well as a number of other options. Each of the pools is characterized mostly by the fees they charge per block – 2% for Slush’s pool, for example – and the number of users. Pools with fewer users could also have a slower discovery time but pools with many users usually result in smaller payments.

How can you be sure the pool owner doesn’t steal all your bitcoins? However, as one pool owner, Slush, notes. In theory, as the Bitcoin pool operator, I could keep the 25 BTC from a block found by the pool for myself. I’m not going to do this, but I completely accept that people do not trust the pool operator. It is their freedom of choice, and Bitcoin is about freedom.

For simplicity’s sake, I’m using Slush’s Pool and have created three workers. First, create a pool login. Then add workers. The workers are sub-accounts with their own passwords and are usually identified by [yourlogin].[workername]. I have three workers running, currently – one on my iMac and two on my old PC.

You must create workers to mine. The instructions are very straightforward for most services so don’t become overwhelmed. Like any online club, you can dig deeply into the subculture surround bitcoin as you gain experience. I like to think of it as a financial MMORPG. Also be sure to enter your wallet address into the pool information. This will ensure you get your bitcoins. There are a number of mining options for multiple platforms although OSX users may find themselves in a bit of a pickle.

Miners use spare GPU cycles to power the mining operation, much like services like SETI@Home uses spare cycles for finding intelligent life. Miners, on the other hand, use these cycles to help handle peer-to-peer processes associated with bitcoins. Thus by doing “work” you are maintaining the network as well. Is the simplest solution for Windows users as it allows you to create miners using almost all standard graphics cards.

You can download it. Is also a popular solution. Both require you to enter your worker info and pool and they’ll start mining.

Linux users can run miners like. An excellent guide to installing a miner on Ubuntu is. OS X users can use, a two-year old command-line program that will mine using OpenCL. Sadly, it uses deprecated calls to Bitcoin and is quite a bit slower.

As a result, you need to run your own proxy,, that allows Diablo to connect with services like Slush’s pool. Both of these programs usually run without issue on OS X although you may need to install. To mine I’ve created a script that I run in Terminal that simply runs the proxy in the background and then connects Diablo.

Note the last two arguments are necessary for Mountain Lion. ./stratum-mining-proxy-master/mining_proxy.py &./DiabloMiner-OSX.sh -u WORKERNAME -p WORKERPASSWORD -o localhost -r 8332 -w 64 -na is far easier to run – you simply click an icon and enter some data – and both have very rudimentary, text-based interfaces. Running Diablo on my iMac has not had much effect on application performance under OS X although it does slow down my Windows 8 machine considerably. Keep your mind on your money. Bitcoins are baffling in that they are wildly simple to use and mine.

Speculators, then, would probably be able to throw hundreds of machines at the problem and gather bitcoins like raindrops, right? As more bitcoins are found, they become more difficult to find. Will help you understand what you’re up against but understand that this isn’t a sure thing.

I’ve run my systems for a weekend and seen a mere $1.50 – enough for a coke – but other users may have improved hardware and methods to succeed. In short, if it costs more to run your hardware than you gain in bitcoins, you’re probably doing something wrong. Good luck in your journey and enjoy your first foray into this wild and wooly world.