[Ethereum update]

I've looked up for ETH threads about this but I couldn't find any, hence this topic.

Bitstamp has announced that they will start trading ETH in 3 days:

Ethereum update

Speaking of trading pairs, we are also happy to confirm that our preparations for launching Ethereum are in their final stages. As of Thursday, 17 August, Ethereum will be available for trading with USD, EUR and BTC. But that’s not all – to get things off to the best possible start, Ethereum trading fees will be heavily discounted until 1 January 2018 as follows:

(... rates ... see their announcement for details)

Generally, new pairs arriving on major exchange see a price increase due to the increased volume and market potential.

Do you think the market has already anticipated the new trading platform?

Hello,

Does anyone else here run a Litecoin full node with a "hidden" service address.

Anyway, I would be interested to add node manually since mine doesn't seem to connect to anyone over Tor.

I am currently running a full LTC node on mqgmba4o453jwdjd.onion:9333 that is stable and open to the public

Code:

litecoin-cli addnode mqgmba4o453jwdjd.onion:9333 add

...or add it to your litecoin.conf file or use litecoind -addnode=mqgmba4o453jwdjd.onion


If you are new to Tor, run a full node on a Debian or Ubuntu-based distro, you can easily add Tor to your Litecoin networks:

Code:

# apt-get install tor

Edit you /etc/tor/torrc file if you want to run your own hidden service and/or setup your ExitPolicy.

Next, make sur that Tor is running with your latest config:

Code:

# /etc/init.d/tor restart

Default settings should be good for a localhost-only proxy.

You can then (re)start your Litecoin daemon :

Code:

litecoind -onion=127.0.0.1:9050 -discover -addnode=mqgmba4o453jwdjd.onion

This will make your daemon connect to IPv4, IPv6 and Tor networks at the same time, and manually add my Litecoin node to your peers.

[zero-fee transactions]

While investigating my chart anomaly on www.bitcoinqueue.com I noticed that some zero-fee transactions were included directly into blocks, without "waiting" in the transaction pool first. I have seen two recent occurrences on the following chart:



Of course, by protocol, miners are allowed to do so (because they can). But eventually, this could lead to a "parallel market" of the confirmation process, where you pay directly (or indirectly) a pool to include your (possibly zero-fee) transactions into the next block that they mine, bypassing the original (Bitcoin Core) block constitution, fee-based algorithm.

What do you think?

[BitcoinQueue.com - Real-time Transaction Queue Statistics]

BitcoinQueue.com - Real-time Transaction Queue Statistics

BitcoinQueue.com is a simple stacked chart visualization of the transaction queue waiting to be included in the next block(s) of the blockchain.



It's pretty straightforward and it shows interesting data that I was willing to share :-)

https://www.bitcoinqueue.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitcoinqueue
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bitcoinqueue
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4o2udc/bitcoinqueuecom_real_time_bitcoin_blockchain/

If you find it interesting, make sure to leave feedback here.

[M]

MAAAPI
Matt's Alternative AntPool API

Info and usage

MAAAPI is an unofficial, alternative API for AntPool. It was created because the official API is currently unusable as a REST API, as it was intended. MAAAPI can be used instead, it is entirely compatible with the official API implementation and actually only acts as a proxy through CloudFlare attack mode filters.

Go to the website to register your API key and use MAAAPI

2016-01-08: Public AntPool block data API has been added!

How can I use it?

First, you need to register your API key on the website.

Then, as the base URL of your API calls simply use http://maaapi.mooo.com/api/... instead of https://antpool.com/api/...

What are the limits?

The default limit is 10 requests per 10 minutes. It is deliberately low because AntPool enforces a per-address policy of 600 requests per 10 minutes on its API backend. Since all requests from MAAAPI to AntPool are channeled through the same address, the limit needs to be low to allow many people to use it at the same time.

If you need a higher limit, please contact support and consider a donation.

Is it safe?

Yes, your API secret will stay secret. Of course, the traffic going through MAAAPI could be sniffed or logged, but there's not much harm that could be done with the API key. It's actually more of a privacy feature than a security feature.

HTTPS?

Yes, but only self-signed. If you would like to help paying for a trusted certificate, please consider a donation.

IPv6?

Yes, MAAAPI is IPv6 enabled

How do I use the AntPool API anyway?

Please refer to the official API guide on AntPool

How can I contact MAAAPI?

The easiest way is to send an e-mail to the contact address on the website or just leave a message here.

Donations

I am very grateful to those who will be considering donations to keep this service alive.

Donations can be sent to 1cYL4oUVD6Pfu4VRhs6veLoBpVMnL51Gi

Thanks a lot for your support!

Go to the website to register your API key and use MAAAPI

[Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?]

If you already know about the original version of this problem please don't spoil the answer too soon, let's keep it fun, thanks



Suppose that you're given the choice of three closed doors. Behind one door is 1BTC, behind the others, 1 satoshi. You pick a door, say #1, but you can't open it yet. The game master, who knows what's behind the closed doors, opens another door, say #2, which has 1 satoshi.

Then the game master asks you whether you want to pick door #3 instead of door #1.

Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

I've noticed this feature this morning, and I assume it is new: you can now use in-place editing for your posts right from topic pages. It's kind of a detail but still nice to edit typos etc. What do you think, did I miss something before or is it a new feature indeed?

[massive amount of generated coins that were never spent]

For various reasons, I'm interested in statistics and visualizations of unspent outputs aka UTXO in the blockchain. After some googling and research on this forum, I found that I wasn't the only one (example). I think indeed that there is a lot of useful information that could be extrapolated about Bitcoin usage patterns, using this kind of bottom-up approach.

Things could get really interesting if the stats and visualizations weren't only a snapshot at given time, but a series of them at regular (meaningful) intervals, watching the evolution as the coins are moving across time.

The closest thing that I found so far is Tim Swanson's article on CoinDesk (also on his blog). It's a very interesting read for sure, and the animation (YouTube video) is very nice. Unfortunately, as you would expect from any article, it's not an "active" dataset, i.e. the visualizations aren't updated with new data.

As an experiment, I started building a dataset myself, extracting all unspent outputs from the blockchain. The first thing that I noticed while doing this is the massive amount of generated coins that were never spent at the beginning of the chain (i.e. 2009 + early 2010). It would be interesting to postulate that these coins will actually never be spent, and to watch for any movement to confirm or invalidate that assumption.

Value of generated coins that are unspent as of March 18, 2015 (block height 348050)

Generation Year	Total Value
2009	1,078,402
2010	668,450
2011	58,345
2012	17,171
2013	19,362
2014	30,315
2015	45,252

Besides the special case of early generated coins, IMHO these statistics could greatly help analyze what I'd call cold coins:

• First criteria would be the age of unspent outputs
• Assuming P2PKH, another criteria of last activity for that pubkey can be added into the equation

Here's a screenshot from my work in progress (just a quick sheet in Numbers for now)



Unfortunately my dataset isn't perfectly accurate, I guess this is caused by the lack of support for P2SH in my extraction script. As a result, the grand total of all unspent outputs in my set is 14,021,913BTC while the actual total should be about 13,950,650BTC. However, IMO this shouldn't affect the overall relevance of the stats too much.

So, the purpose of this post could also be the tl;dr:

• How much interest is there for this kind of statistics and visualizations?
• Are you aware of any existing, active project for this, as I don't want to reinvent the wheel?
• What interpretations, if any, do you think can be done from this? (e.g. computing some kind of "adjusted" market cap)
• How would you represent the evolution of these stats across time (e.g. like the animation in Tim Swanson's article)

Thanks for your feedback

[up to 0.45 BTC for Bitstamp + 5% + fees (right now ~ USD 110.60 + PP fees) or other descent offer]

Hello,

I want to exchange PayPal US$ for Bitcoins. I just had a successful trade here but seller could only do $30 today.

I'm willing to buy more, up to 0.45 BTC for Bitstamp + 5% + fees (right now ~ USD 110.60 + PP fees) or other descent offer.

I can send PayPal first (could be by chunks, depending on your trust status and activity), I can do it as 'family & friends' payment. PayPal account is long time verified, and my Bitcointalk account has +ve feedback too, I'm a long time active member here.

I would only deal with reputable members, or you go first if untrusted.

Let me know if you have questions.

[100% of the electricity is produced by local hydropower]

Hello,

I've been mining "semi-professionally" and successfully (for a profit) during the 2013-2014 years, first with GPU farms and then ASICs. I had up to 60 GPUs running in 2 dedicated rented locations, and many different ASICs starting with ASICMINER Blades v1 (first was bought 50 BTC ) and then various like KnCMiner, Bitmine (*cough*) and then AntMiners.

By the end of 2014 with the price falling and difficulty rising, it became very hard to make any profits with mining for those living in Europe. According to Wikipedia, electricity costs as much as US$0.36/kWh in Germany, US$0.28/kWh in Italy, US$0.29/kWh in Belgium, US$0.40/kWh in Denmark, US$0.19/kWh in France, etc.

As far as I know, the cheapest locations in the world offers kWh prices starting around US$0.04/kWh, which makes it virtually impossible to compete when you're operating as a "home miner" in much of continental Europe. So, does that mine that nobody will ever mine any longer from the old continent

In my opinion, that would be logical, but it is sad and unfortunate that only the "mum's garage" option remains here (which is not really one for many of us, and actually amounts to stealing from her purse behind her eyes unless you're telling her exactly about the costs). But who would really run a >1kW machine 24/7 in the long run besides the most "charitable" miners, when it's costing you twice the mining value or worse?

Maybe there would be an alternate solution: a colo-style dedicated mining room in the middle of Europe, where electricity costs are low compared to the rest of the area, while staying too high to be really competitive if you only have ROI in mind. It came to my mind recently, because I had to buy my latest S5 through HASHNEST to get a slight hope of ROI, and it's not funny at all. Most of my excitement as a geek comes from the flashing LEDs in every corner, not from pure profit, which I actually never had in mind when I started GPU mining in the first place (remember the price in 2012...).

So, maybe a colo would defeat the LED flashing purpose, true... but, you would still have "real" control of your miners, i.e. you do whatever you want with them (pool, settings etc), they remain yours, and you can even see them on video/pictures with the LEDs flashing

One of the location that I used to rent would probably still be available, and I made the electrical wiring myself with plenty of power available, i.e. about 20 kW would be readily available to start (more could be considered, or another location as well).

For those who care, in that area, 100% of the electricity is produced by local hydropower from the Swiss Alps. So it means "green power", which is always a good thing to have in mind for those who are complaining about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin. And the other good news is that the power there is much cheaper than the average for Europe, i.e. it would be possible to get it from about $US 0.12/kWh and maybe even less by negotiating with the electrical company.

According to my quick estimations, it would mean you could hope to mine at about 50% profit-vs-costs ratio with the latest 0.5W/GHS miner generations.

There would be of course remote access to your miners with port forwarding and/or VPN solutions, with security kept in mind. Cooling is air-flow based (i.e. intake + outtake fans), using about 15kW inside the room with that system, I was getting max. 28°C inside during the summer, thanks to the cold climate of the Swiss Alps

The miners could be shipped or brought in person at a nearby location (within a few km), but the location of the room itself would be kept secret for security reasons*. To compensate, miners would have my real ID (passport copy) and I would give a live video feed from the room. I live about 10 minutes from there, so should anything happen that require my physical presence, it would not be an issue. There would be a signed, written contract with a guarantee to redeem your hardware at any (reasonable) time, and copies of the insurance policies covering theft and any other partial or total loss disaster. Exact terms of the contract have yet to be discussed between the involved parties, it's more of a community project/idea at this stage, and the aim of this topic is to gauge interest and open a discussion about its possible realisation or not.

* this can be discussed, I'm open about the idea of revealing the location to miners and/or have them visit, if the majority consensus among them is to make that possible because they trust each other enough. As far as I am concerned (but I may be biased), security would be much better if I were the only one with knowledge of the location, + another trusted 3rd party to work around the "bus factor".

tl;dr: a mining location in Europe to continue mining with your own hardware although with smaller (or even non-existent) ROI, depending on the future of Bitcoin price and network hashrate. Those with the most efficient miners could still hope for a "reasonable" profit, or even redeem their miners back to their homes should the future make it possible again

Thanks for your attention, please share your thoughts

Just kidding

HODL!

[SHACoin Live Difficulty Charts]

New to SHACoin? Read the forum topic

Since there is no one providing these charts already, I thought I would do it myself and share with the community.

SHACoin Live Difficulty Charts - sorry, temporarily offline - will be restored ASAP

Of course it is a work in progress.

I am currently working on many improvments already (scale, axis text, options and more stuff).
Please consider a small donation to fund development and pay for the server, thank you!

SHA: ShYnGZVM6jv1LHViey5PPtL2T9kum6AgPA
BTC: 1QCrwUqeDwPGbiyaAyfvwABGLDqr3ZQG4c
LTC: LiGAZ2YCF13bmJmH9WAZGwkEJcExmixg1g

Thanks!

Feedback is welcome of course

[Peu importe l'échange que vous utilisez, ne laissez jamais vos fonds (monnaie fiduciaire ou Bitcoin) dans les échanges. Dès que vous avez terminé l'échange, retirez les fonds ! Vous n'avez AUCUN intérêt à laisser vos Bitcoin en mains étrangères - aucun organisme d'Etat ou autre ne viendra vous sauver ("bail out") si l'histoire de MtGox se reproduit]

**** CECI EST UNE ANNONCE D'UTILITÉ PUBLIQUE ****

Peu importe l'échange que vous utilisez, ne laissez jamais vos fonds (monnaie fiduciaire ou Bitcoin) dans les échanges. Dès que vous avez terminé l'échange, retirez les fonds ! Vous n'avez AUCUN intérêt à laisser vos Bitcoin en mains étrangères - aucun organisme d'Etat ou autre ne viendra vous sauver ("bail out") si l'histoire de MtGox se reproduit

(et qui plus est, vous ne touchez aucun intérêt sur les dépôts, en dépit des risques que vous prenez)

**** MERCI DE VOTRE ATTENTION ***

(j'étais sur le cul quand j'ai vu que 90% des "nouveaux" ne se rendaient même pas compte des risques et utilisaient carrément les échanges comme si c'était des banques... vous êtes totalement inconscients !!!)

With the drop in prices in recent days, my experience is that it's a "safe" bet to enter for some GHS now, keep the mining profits and sell them for a bit more in the following days... what do you think?

If you agree with me, found this useful and don't have any GHS yet you can use my referral below, thx

[1. Using two PSUs on the same rig (MB)]

Hello,

If you have good EE knowledge, I will consider a small donation to you if you bring me high quality answers to my questions. I have been googling and searching this forum for a while, I have found several pieces of answers but also it's often just best guesses. So no offense to those like me who aren't clueless about electricity, but I really need someone that can convince me that he knows what he's talking about.

1. Using two PSUs on the same rig (MB)

For now, let's forget about risers and suppose I'm plugging the GPUs directly into the slots on the MB.

My understanding is that you have to consider the 2 PSUs as separate +12V rails. I already have all necessary wiring to use PSU 1 as main PSU i.e. driven by and powering the mainboard, and PSU 2 is also switched on by the MB at the same time using this.

Supposing my GPUs have 2x 6/8 pin connectors, I'd better use the same rail for a single GPU. It seems natural, makes sense.

Now if I have GPU 1 and GPU 2, my understanding is that it's ok to connect PSU 1 to 2x 6/8 pin of GPU 1, and PSU 2 to 2x 6/8 pin of GPU 2. In this case, obviously GPU1 will be powered by PSU 1.

GPU2 is more interesting: If my mainboard is powered by PSU 1, then GPU 2 will be powered by both PSUs: up to 75W from the MB i.e. PSU 1, and up to 75+150=225W from PSU2 through the 6/8 pin connectors.

Is everything that I wrote above correct?

2a. The Riser Mystery: The Truth About Powered Risers

After reading a lot of various, sometimes contradictory sources, I would understand the following and/or have the following questions:

• Powered risers are sometimes required, sometimes not, depending on total (all GPUs) power draw from MB and/or MB/GPU design
• When powered risers are required, is it only to offload the MB, or can it also be because the power lines inside the ribbon cable are too thin to carry required amperage and would overheat / melt?
• The latest powered risers that I have received only have 1 +12V line connected to the Molex. My previous batch had both +12V and GND connected, using a decoupling capacitor on the GPU side. I was disappointed, because I think it will only offload the +12V line and not the ground - if the reason for powered riser is ribbon overheating, the current will be sunk through the ribbon right? If that's not the reason, then it's still current sinking back to the MB instead of the Molex? Or not?
• So the ones with the GND and the decoupling capacitor are better, am I right or not? (seems obvious)

2b. The Riser Mystery: Cutting The Cord

• I have noticed that on the "new" powered risers (those with only +12V connected), pins B1 and B2 are only connected to the Molex +12V (not connected to the MB), then there's a jumper wire to pins A2 + A3 on the other side, but those ARE connected to the MB through the ribbon cable. I tested it with continuity check and it's positive. My conclusion is that both +12V from the Molex and MB must be the same line/voltage to avoid ghost currents between them
• Am I totally wrong about "ghosts currents" and are they actually a non-issue? I mean if +12V Rail A (Mainboard) is very loaded and actually say +11.6V, while +12V Rail B (Molex/Riser) is at low load and actually closer to +13V (these are figures I got from my own measurements), then there is 1.6V difference between both ends of the riser and a very low resistance, that makes a very high current and it will eventually smoke, won't it?
• Because I didn't want to take chances, I decided to cut the cord. So I cut A2 + A3 on the ribbon, so that the GPU would be totally isolated from the MB +12V lines. But I still have one question pending, it's about the ground. Since the powered riser only connects the +12V to the Molex, the current sourced by PSU 2 (Molex) is actually sunk to PSU 1 via the MB i.e. pins A4 + B4 + B7 of PCI-e...!?
• The best way to avoid this would be a riser with +12V *and* GND, totally isolated (cut) from the MB, right?

Phew that was a long post... thanks to anyone that can help me, electricity is still a strange beast to me ;-)

PS: my 2-PSU rig is hashing fine, so this is mainly about optimization and peace of mind...

Hey Ripple haters, you will just LOVE the new official homepage, check it out while it lasts

Hello,

I am looking for a first tester for my experimental virtual scrypt mining project.

Mining hashrate would be about 1200 KHS and the tester can keep the proceeds from the mining tests. Currently the alpha interface should already allow you to dynamically switch pools, so you can mine any coins and follow profitability.

There is currently only one slot available, but more to come.

Watch this topic for more info. Thanks for your interest!

I bought about 20x 7950/70 early this year just to mine bitcoins.

Everyone was calling me stupid, crazy... ASICs are gonna take over, they said.

I knew they were right, but I knew they were wrong.

Ironically, it is a BFL ad on Slashdot that brought my attention to the rising BTC price early February.

I bought many, many GPUs in the new and 2nd hand market in just 2 weeks (no pun intended), and soon I was mining bitcoins at the "crazy" rate of 8.5 GHS, at a difficulty of 3 million (yes, that's about 50 times lower than current diff).

I had ROI on all my purchase in just 4 month instead of the 9 expected month in my initial plan. Moreover, smart investments in stock markets allowed me to turn the profits into much, much more BTCs in the end.

Maybe I could have been just as fine by buying BTC instead of GPUs, but the fact is that GPUs are resellable even after a total crash of crypto-currencies, so the risk taken was less than buying pure BTC.

Also, of course, I could have bought BTC early Feb at 28$ and sold off just before Apr 10 at 250, but of course that is the time-machine thing. I can't say I regret not taking this move, in hindsight.

So I switched from BTC mining to scrypt, mostly LTC mining in the last few months, after the first ASIC wave. It was nice until the moment when profitability dropped to zero for me, at about 0.20$/KWh. After a couple of weeks mining at loss, the late price drop of LTC gave the final blow to unplug the rigs, and it saddens me

Although I used the profits of my 8.5 GH/s GPU power to reinvest up to my current 550+ GH/s ASIC hash power (already hashing for me, not labcoin style lol), which I hope was a clever move (time will tell), I kind of liked the direct touch with the mining rigs. Now most of my hashrate is spread out between friends' locations, group buys, virtual mining etc. and I only have about 10% of my hashrate physically at home.

tl;dr: buying GPUs in February wasn't that stupid after all. Buying GPUs now would be stupid, check BitFury, CoinCraft, CoinTerra etc. (avoid BFL of course, unless you trust them for some reason) if you want to enter the race -- good luck and be careful.

Cheers

Hello,

I am in need of an instant (urgent) 10 BTC loan for arbitrage reasons. Obviously, I can't tell much about it but I am willing to put my reputation on the forum as a first guarantee.

I have already traded 5 ASICMINER shares when they were more expensive than today with user gog1. Although he did not leave any positive/negative feedback (the reputation system was only introduced later), I want to earn "reputation" points and  that's why I'm giving an extra 0.1 on repay (total 10.6, + late fees in any) if your leave positive feedback and reference to this topic.

The 0.5 BTC / 24h is very generous IMHO, but I'm open to comments.

I am willing to share personal ID (Swiss passport, scanned, utility bill, CC statements...) with the lender.

So, summary:

* 10 BTC loan, as soon as possible
* 10.5 BTC repaid within 24h
* Any additional 24h will be paid extra 0.5 BTC / day
* +0.1 BTC if you leave positive feedback (just say you will, I will trust you)

edit: I also have a verified account of former CoinLenders, for what it's worth, if anyone minds checking

You can PM me or reply for public Q/A. Thanks.

I am looking for a reliable provider of Bitcoin reloadable VISA card.

A few services are listed on Bitcoin.info but nothing seems currently available as a viable option.

Any ideas?