Tag: Mining

Following a massive decline in profits in the second quarter of 2018, computer chip manufacturer Nvidia has announced it is officially pulling out of its cryptocurrency mining activities.

Projected earnings for the second quarter of 2018 were estimated to be $100 million but huge losses across the cryptocurrency market meant the company only managed to accrue $18 million in revenue. Due to the decreased revenue, the Californian electronics giant was faced with no choice but to cease its interests in the cryptocurrency mining sector.=

Colette Kress, Nvidia CEO, made the announcement, stating that the company would not be committing to any further developments in cryptocurrency.

We are now projecting no contributions going forward,” Ms. Kress said.

Early projections were made in January when the cryptocurrency market was valued at $820 billion but a continued bear market has brought the sector down to approximately $300 billion today. The majority of cryptocurrencies have suffered an 80 to 90 percent decline in price this year with Bitcoin (BTC) suffering a 69 percent drop. The market correction follows an all-time high of $17,500 for Bitcoin at the beginning of the year, with the price now hovering around $6,000.

Loss of profitability for individual miners

As a result of increasing mining difficulty requiring growing investment in expensive equipment, many question whether cryptocurrency mining is still profitable for individuals. However, industrial-scale crypto mining facilities continue to be built by large corporations resulting in Bitcoins hashrate surpassing 50 quintillion hashes per second earlier this month.

Large cryptocurrency-focused operations such as Bitmain continue to benefit from significant profit in the sector. The company was valued at $12 billion last month and is now planning an initial public offering (IPO) to break into the mainstream economic sector. It foresees as much as $3 billion dollars in profit for 2018.

South Korean chip manufacturer, Samsung, also predicts large profits in the cryptocurrency mining sector this year.

Users looking to stream free content via Amazon’s Android-supporting TV and Fire sticks might find they are inadvertently opening up their connection to a crypto mining bot.

Cryptojacking, the term used to describe the method of hijacking a device and using the computing power to discreetly mine cryptocurrency, is becoming more and more popular. Open-source software such as Android is a prime target for such hackers.

It’s becoming common nowadays for Amazon TV and Fire sticks to be sold with pre-installed streaming software such as Kodi, which requires enabling ADB debugging – a developer option not meant for use by average users. Once enabled, the option opens port 5555 which the botnet ADB.miner uses to install its malware.

Once infected, a device will use system resources such a CPU and GPU power to mine for the Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency. The mined Monero is then transferred to a digital wallet owned by the hacker. A search engine that discovers internet-connected devices that are easily accessible found that there are currently 17,000 devices worldwide that are potentially vulnerable.

Research by Palo Alto Network’s Unit 42 estimates that around five percent of Monero in circulation has been mined in this way, equaling a total of approximately $143 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency. Due to the research not taking into account Web-based malware miners, the researchers admit that the real figure could be much higher.

Monero is popular amongst cryptojackers due to the additional privacy and anonymity it provides that other coins such as Bitcoin, do not.

The infection is not limited to Amazon devices – any product with ADB debugging enabled could potentially be infected, including mobile phones and tablets. If streaming or browsing on your Android device has become unusually slow of late, it’s possible you are providing some unscrupulous hacker with free Monero. Users who are concerned that they may be infected can use the Total Commander app to check for the presence of an app called ‘Test’ on their Amazon Fire or TV stick.

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Switzerland’s innovative Crypto Valley, or ‘the Zug’, has revealed its latest contribution to the blockchain sector: Gaimin, an innovative solution to the cryptocurrency mining supply and demand ecosystem.

Gaiman’s goal is to be the number one decentralized cryptocurrency mining network, all powered by consumer-level gaming computers. An official release reads:

Gaimin is an advanced AI powered platform which connects gaming computers to blockchain mining. Just like “Uber” is a platform that connects cars and their drivers (supply) with people seeking a ride (demand) in a very efficient manner, Gaimin connects the GPU and CPU resources from the user’s gaming PC (supply) to blockchain mining pools (demand) in the most efficient manner possible, to mine cryptos.”

The proposed client is to be full of interesting features for those with powerful rigs but are somewhat disenfranchised by the growing industrialization of cryptocurrency mining.

Gaiman’s proprietary AI will determine, in real-time, the most lucrative blockchains to mine to and automatically configure itself to mine that blockchain efficiently. It will also take a hardware analysis of one’s computer into account.

Further playing to their gamer demographic, the client will also display just how much mining time is required to be able to purchase items such as skins or games. Gaiman will also reward increased hash power to those who recruit users to the mining pool through a referral program. All profits will be paid out in either Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The Zug is home to the Crypto Valley Association, an independent but government-supported group utilizing Switzerland’s agreeable economic nature to ‘build the world’s leading blockchain and cryptographic technologies ecosystem’. The Zug known for its very low taxes, welcoming stance on FinTech developers and it’s long-term adoption of Bitcoin, widely accepted across the entire canton, which has a population of just over 120,000.

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Bitcoin Gold (BTG), one of the most popular Bitcoin forks, has gone on the record to reinforce the projects dedication to being ASIC-resistant.

The announcement, entitled ‘A Response to the ASIC Threat’, is directly related to news put out by Chinese crypto-mining giant Bitmain, who confirmed release of its new “ASIC” miner capable of mining Bitcoin Gold.

ASIC stands for “application-specific integrated chip”, essentially a computer chip designed for a single set of processes, In this case, Bitmain’s new chip is designed to compute a specific algorithm – the Equihash algorithm – which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Gold use for mining purposes. ZCash (ZEC) also uses the Equihash algorithm.

Part of the statement reads:

ASIC-resistance is central to our mission. Bitcoin Gold, BTG, was conceived while watching the struggle between ASIC miners and the rest of the Bitcoin community. The fundamental reason for BTG’s creation was to help wrest back the crypto space from the relentlessly monopolizing tendencies of ASIC mining. How? By returning mining power to commodity hardware that is more universally accessible to people around the world: GPUs, or “graphics cards,” which nearly anyone can acquire and use.”

The original codename for Bitcoin Gold was “BTCGPU” – GPU relating to consumer-level graphics card chips.

To prove their dedication to fighting industrialised mining, the development team is prepared to either modify the algorithm used by Bitcoin Gold or even propose an entirely new one for mining purposes.

This comes just weeks after the developers of privacy coin Monero (XMR) declared war on ASIC-mining, Changes were implemented that resulted in a hard fork which created four additional blockchains.

CNBC reported, using estimates from Wall Street investment firm Bernstein Research, Bitmain turned a profit of somewhere in the range of US$3 billion and US$4 billion in operating profits from the sale of their ASIC-mining chips and their cryptocurrency mining operations in 2017. Mainstay graphics card maker Nvidia posted similar profits.

It has only taken Bitmain four years to achieve these numbers, while Nvidia has been operating for twenty-four.

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