What is HeavyCoin?

Alright, before we get started, I'll do a quick rundown on what you're getting into. HeavyCoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency launched in March of 2014. It differentiates itself from other cryptos through its use of a completely new algorithm, HEFTY1, and it's decentralized voting system. HEFTY1 is an ultra-secure new algorithm that combines 4 different hash functions to secure the blockchain. As it turns out, this new algorithm has not only made HeavyCoin extremely secure, but also much more heat and energy efficient to mine.

The voting system is the other important feature in HeavyCoin. Basically, everybody in the Heavycoin network votes on how much HVC should be found in every block. Every couple of days, the votes are averaged and the reward size changes. This new system will allow miners to decide how many coins will eventually be in existence, how quickly those coins come into being and how long it takes to fully mint HVC.

More information of HeavyCoin can be found on the official website: http://heavycoin.github.io/

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Mining HeavyCoin

Now this is what you're here for. I'll cover first the basics of setting up a wallet, then figuring out what hardware you have and how to use it to help usher in a new currency.

Step 1. Setting up the Wallet

The first piece to any cryptocurrency is getting your own wallet. The wallet will contain your unique payment address that you will use to receive HVC from pools, other users, and someday your employer Download the wallet for your operating system from http://heavycoin.github.io/download.html and place the wallet in a secure place on your hard drive (If you want to learn more about securing your wallet look at This guide for Bitcoin Wallets. WARNING: If your hard drive fails or you wipe it for any reason without transferring those coins, you will never be able to get them back. PLEASE backup your wallet.dat to a secure location!

Open the folder and run "heavycoin-qt.exe". This will open the wallet, and it will automatically start syncing with the network. Go into "Settings" and "Options" and set the wallet to run on system login. This will help make sure your wallet is never too far behind the network, and ensure you get your coins quickly (and can confirm transactions).

Next get your address! Your address is in the "Receive" tab. With that, you're ready to move on to the next step!

Step 2. Determine Your Hardware (And fetch the miner!)

To find out what hardware you have you can either download and run GPU-Z or if you're on windows hit "Windows+R" and type dxdiag. The important thing to learn here is what the manufacturer of your video card is (AMD or nVidia) and what generation or card number it is. At the time of writing this, only AMD Cards running GCN (7000 series) and above, and nVidia cards are supported. If your card is older than this, you either need to wait and hope that a dev will extend support, or you can upgrade your hardware. Anyway, once you know your hardware, grab the right miner from one of the links below.

AMD Cards (7000 series and up): AMD Miner Download the AMD miner for your OS. Ignore the rest of the pool, we'll get there soon
nVidia Cards (500 Series and up): nVidia Miner NOTE: If your card doesn't work with v0.5, download v0.4

An always up-to-date Hardware Comparison and Configuration list is available on the Heavycoin Wiki: http://heavycoin.wikia.com/wiki/Hardware_Comparison

Step 3. Choose a Pool

Now that you have a miner, it's time to select a mining pool! There are a few things to take into account when choosing a pool.

1. What is the Pool's hashrate, compared to the network? Pools with a smaller piece of the pie will pay less often, but also pay more when they do. If you want to start mining and only check once in a while, small pools are great. However, if you will be checking every few hours (like I do) then you might want to go for a slightly bigger pool.

2. Distribution. The more pools there are competing with one another, the better it is for the network on the whole. This is because it helps to protect against what's called a 51% attack, where one pool could fake payments and create effectively counterfeit double coins. The realistic possibility of this happening is debatable; if a pool were to do this they would effectively be killing the coin and hence all their own profits. Even so, greater distribution helps raise the value of the coin.

3. Fees. Pools are run with servers, and like servers, running a pool costs a lot of time and money. Because of this, most pools will charge a small fee (usually 1% or less) in order to actually maintain their pool.

4. User Interface. Most pools will have you sign up and create an account. The advantage to this is that you can accurately monitor all of your workers (if you have more than one) and it gives you direct control of the frequency and quantity of payouts. Other pools (Currently only 1GH) only require you to configure the miner and aim it at the pool, and it will pay out directly to your wallet.

Now that you know what to look for, you are ready to choose a pool. A constantly updated list of pools is available on the HeavyCoin development page. For purposes of this tutorial, we'll use only zhpool. After creating an account with the pool, go to "manage workers" and

Step 4. Configure Your Miner

Now it's time to start mining! In this step we'll configure the miner you downloaded in step 2 to mine towards your choice of pool. To do this, there are a number of settings that must be set, depending on the pool, the card and the miner that you have.

AMD to zhpool: cgminer.exe --heavy --vote VOTE -o stratum+tcp://pool1.heavycoin.zhpool.com:40001 -u USERNAME.WORKERNAME -p PASSWORD  -I INTENSITY --no-submit-stale
nVidia to zhpool: nVidiaCCMINER.exe -a heavy -o stratum+tcp://pool1.heavycoin.zhpool.com:30001 -u USERNAME.WORKERNAME -p PASSWORD --retries 10 --retry-pause=10 -v VOTE

All items in Red need to be configured to your specific needs!
nVidiaCCMINER.exe - This is how you tell the bat file which miner to run. AMD folks, don't worry about this. nVidia folks, take a look at the Compute platform listing to select the right miner for you. miner numbers correlate with compute platforms.
VOTE - This is it! Exercise your democratic power! Your vote can be any number between 1 and 1024. The lower the vote, the higher the value of individual coins. The higher the vote, the more coins there are in the world.
USERNAME WORKERNAME PASSWORD - These three only exist if you are using a pool that requires an account. If that is the case, username is your pool username, and workername and password are the worker names and passwords you created.
INTENSITY - This option is only available to AMD miners. This sets the aggression at which the miner will run on your card. To find a list of configurations, look at the LINKHERE on the HeavyCoin Wiki.

An always up-to-date Hardware Comparison and Configuration list is available on the Heavycoin Wiki: http://heavycoin.wikia.com/wiki/Hardware_Comparison

NOTE: The AMD miner has TONS of other configuration options. Open up the README file in notepad++ and read through the options to add in other options. Just add them to the end of your command line or batch file.

Step 5. Other Mining Options

This is the bit where I announce and make available a bit of code that I wrote. Want to mine without having to worry about it slowing your system while you're sitting there? Great. I wrote a little program in C# that'll help you do that. Right now it must be placed in the same directory as the miner (and so must it's DLL and config file) and accepts the timer delay on line one, the miner exe name on line two, and arguments for the miner on every line after. A GUI version of this will be available soon.

Mine and Forget V1.0
Mine and Forget Source Code V1.0

Configure the program as is laid out in the readme, and if you want to really not have to think about it, put a shortcut in the startup folder and start the program on log in!

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Trading (for) HeavyCoin

HeavyCoin is a powerful cryptocurrency with a lot of potential, and when you mine it, you should be holding onto it for the day that you can spend it in the real world. That being said, sometimes you have to pay the bills, and even though mining HVC is costs about 50% less than most coins to mine, it still sucks up some watts. So in order to convert HVC into BTC and USD (or your own national currency) you'll need to use an exchange. Current exchanges are listed on the HeavyCoin website, but my personal favorite is MintPal and we'll be using it in our guide.

NOTE: For purposes of this guide, I'll only cover how to buy/sell HeavyCoin with Bitcoin. To buy and sell BTC with USD (or a local currency) take a look at exchanges like BitFinex, Bitstamp, and CoinBase.

First, create an account at MintPal. After you verify everything, go into your balances and create a deposit address for HVC (or BTC if you're buying HVC). Send your coins that you'll be using to the correct address. MAKE SURE YOU GET IT CORRECT, I recommend testing it first, sending a small number of coins to make sure you have the right target. Once you have the coins in MintPal, go to the exchange and take a look at the HeavyCoin/Bitcoin Market. In this guide we won't cover economic trends, though if you want to get into trading more, there is a lot of information available online. In order to buy/sell coins, just match your quantity and price to someone on the other side, and you're good to go! MintPal will handle the actual exchange, and as soon as they do you will be able to move those funds to and from your HVC/BTC wallets.

Keep in mind you can always mine other coins if you're worried about profitability and sell those coins to buy HeavyCoin. Once the days of the mint are over, this is what MultiPools will try to do.

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Conclusion

Congratulations! You are now officially a member of the HeavyCoin community, and a holder of some of the future of currency! Please come and join us in the Official HeavyCoin Thread and feel free to PM me with any questions you have!

If you found this guide to be helpful, please consider donating
HVC: HJWFdgUJPEw1oiLckBFPBzs8vCTLokCGgd

I'm going to dig heavycoin! The landlord of the guide is really useful, detailed and concise, thank you