Cryptocurrency Mining For Dummies. Peter Kent

Scoring Hardware Deals Chapter 16: Ten Types of Cryptocurrency Resources Cryptocurrency Market Trackers Mining Profitability Estimation Tools Cryptocurrency Reddit Pages Blockchain Explorers Data Visualizations Cryptocurrency Data and Statistics Cryptocurrency Wikis Cryptocurrency White Papers The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto Bitcoin Guides and Walkthroughs Chapter 17: Ten Criticisms of Cryptocurrencies and Mining Energy Consumption Wasted Processing Scalability, Transaction Speed, and Throughput Coin Distribution Fairness Market Bubbles and Volatility Centralization Scams and Rip-offs Hardware Price Inflation and Scarcity Fire Hazards Neighbor Complaints

      10  Index

      11  About the Authors

      12  Connect with Dummies

      13  End User License Agreement

      List of Tables

      1 Chapter 17TABLE 17-1 Estimates of Bitcoin’s Mining Power Consumption

      List of Illustrations

      1 Chapter 1FIGURE 1-1: Each block’s hash is stored in the next block of data. The hashes c...FIGURE 1-2: Your browser’s lock icon means that data submitted back to the web ...FIGURE 1-3: An example of a blockchain explorer tool, found at https://live.blo...FIGURE 1-4: The cryptocurrency is associated with an address in the blockchain;...

      2 Chapter 2FIGURE 2-1: The block subsidy and transaction fees being paid to a miner, from ...

      3 Chapter 3FIGURE 3-1: A live view at the time of writing of the full listening node count...FIGURE 3-2: A view at the time of writing of the average transaction fee as mea...FIGURE 3-3: A view at the time of writing of the average transaction fee as mea...

      4 Chapter 5FIGURE 5-1: A chart depicting the energy (joules) needed to produce the same am...FIGURE 5-2: A chart showing the immense hashing power — and its dramatic growth...FIGURE 5-3: Antpool’s statistics page; Antpool is one of the largest Bitcoin mi...FIGURE 5-4: A pie chart that displays the percentage of blocks found by mining ...

      5 Chapter 6FIGURE 6-1: Some enterprising miners position their mining rigs near oil rigs, ...FIGURE 6-2: The official website of Venezuela’s failed Petro cryptocurrency. Wi...FIGURE 6-3: Bitcoin Block Difficulty usually goes up, but sometimes comes down....FIGURE 6-4: This figure is a graph of the Bitcoin network’s block difficulty ov...

      6 Chapter 7FIGURE 7-1: The statistics page at Slush Pool, showing information from the cur...FIGURE 7-2: A historical graph of each pool’s hash rate contributions to the Bi...FIGURE 7-3: Genesis Mining sells hash rate packages. DASH starts at 5,000 MH/s ...FIGURE 7-4: Picking your operating system for the Cudo Miner software.FIGURE 7-5: Save your username — you’re going to need it later.FIGURE 7-6: Download your software.FIGURE 7-7: Enter your username to log in.FIGURE 7-8: The Cudo Miner app works in combination with the web console.FIGURE 7-9: The Cudo Miner web console provides detailed information about your...

      7 Chapter 8FIGURE 8-1: The WhatToMine.com profitability comparison site.FIGURE 8-2: CoinWarz.com, another very popular profitability comparison site.FIGURE 8-3: The top of the CoinWarz.com page, where you enter your hash rate in...FIGURE 8-4: Crypto-Coinz.net actually provides hashing power information for so...FIGURE 8-5: A cryptocurrency detail page on WhatToMine.com.FIGURE 8-6: The Bitcoin calculator at CryptoCompare.com.FIGURE 8-7: Bitcoin’s GitHub page.FIGURE 8-8: The Dogecoin Wikipedia page.FIGURE 8-9: BitInfoCharts.com’s hash-rate comparison page.FIGURE 8-10: The spectrum of decentralization.FIGURE 8-11: Chart from GitHub depicting the coin issuance schedule and inflati...FIGURE 8-12: Coinmetrics.io compares active-address quantities between differen...

      8 Chapter 9FIGURE 9-1: A graph showing the highest hash-rate SHA-256 mining equipment bein...FIGURE 9-2: Power consumption for a range of SHA-256 ASICs for Bitcoin hashing.FIGURE 9-3: You can find your electricity cost from your utility bill.FIGURE 9-4: SHA-256 Bitcoin network ASIC mining hardware, ranked by efficiency ...FIGURE 9-5: X11 DASH ASIC mining hardware, ranked by efficiency in terms of jou...FIGURE 9-6: Scrypt Litecoin network ASIC mining hardware, ranked by efficiency ...FIGURE 9-7: Equihash Zcash network ASIC mining hardware, ranked by efficiency i...FIGURE 9-8: Ethash Ethereum network ASIC mining hardware, ranked by efficiency ...FIGURE 9-9: A PDU manufactured by CyberPower.FIGURE 9-10: A power supply unit (PSU) sold by Bitmain, a major ASIC manufactur...

      9 Chapter 10FIGURE 10-1: A typical ASIC size and shape; the Antminer S9k.FIGURE 10-2: A Gray Matter Industries shelf designed to hold, and rack mount, t...FIGURE 10-3: A Bitmain power supply, designed for use with the company’s Antmin...FIGURE 10-4: The Antminer Z9 ASIC documentation showing the power connections.FIGURE 10-5: A typical PDU.FIGURE 10-6: Bitmain Antminer’s IP Report button on the ASIC which reports the ...FIGURE 10-7: The Bitmain ASIC configuration settings screen where you can set t...FIGURE 10-8: A preconfigured 8-GPU mining rig.FIGURE 10-9: The MiningSky V1 GPU Mining Rig — everything you need but the GPU ...FIGURE 10-10: The Rosewill 6U Dual PSU Aluminum Mining Case.FIGURE 10-11: An open-air GPU mining frame, shown after all the equipment has b...FIGURE 10-12: The ASUS B250 Mining Expert motherboard, which can handle up to 1...FIGURE 10-13: An AMD CPU that would be suitable to run a GPU mining rig. This C...FIGURE 10-14: A CPU heat sink with built-in fan (from Cooler Master). The pad s...FIGURE 10-15: GPU cards are popular among some miners.FIGURE 10-16: Average price of popular GPUs for cryptocurrency mining in 2019.FIGURE 10-17: A riser card designed to connect a single GPU card to a motherboa...FIGURE 10-18: To ASIC mine with NiceHash, pick an algorithm and server location...

      10 Chapter 11FIGURE 11-1: Purchase cost in U.S. dollars, at time of writing, of some of the ...FIGURE 11-2: Purchase cost of SHA-256 mining ASICs, in U.S. dollars per hash ra...FIGURE 11-3: A snapshot of an Amazon page showing ratings of various ASIC minin...FIGURE 11-4: Hash rates for a range of common GPU cards at time of writing, min...FIGURE 11-5: A comparison of efficiency (in J/MH/s) of various GPUs mining the ...FIGURE 11-6: Estimated power consumption of a variety of popular GPUs