The Wave Machine

The Simple Wave

1) Register a new CEX.io account
    Yes.. Do it Now.. it takes only a minute to verify your account with the email they send you.

2) After verification, log into your new account and click the large blue button "Fund Account"
    There are 2 ways of funding. Use the big long code number as your wallet address to transfer Bitcoins from an exchange or copy/paste the code you received from a Voucher.

3) A Voucher is a gift of Ghash and will start mining as soon as it is entered in your account. A Bitcoin deposit will take some time to be verified like any other Bitcoin transactions. (This is what miners do.. verify transactions)

4) When you have Bitcoins shoing in your account balance you can purchase Ghash on the trade page.
     You can click the "Instant Buy/Sell" under the trade window. You enter the amount of Bitcoins you have and click Buy.
     It will make a purchase at the current price and is easier than trying to chase prices for a better deal.
     The trades are very very fast and hard to pinpoint when you are not experienced.
   
5) Check the CEX.io FAQ for more detailed information.
    You will start mining as soon as you purchase any amount of Ghash.
    Go to the Ghash.io page (link at the top of your account page) to see your miner in action.

6) Blocks are mined every 10 minutes in average but may take any time from a minute to hours... Then you get a reward according to the amount of work your miner did. (Ghash amount).
    Your first payout reward may be negative due to the maintenance fee and the timing of your purchase. But subsequent blocks will get you a profit.

NOTE that Ghash.io will not display an accurate amount of GHS if you have less than 4.2 GHS but your daily average payouts will always be correct.

It takes Money to make Money

Apart from registering a new account (using the link above. Please... I do get a small referal bonus and it doesn't cost you anymore)
You need some Bitcoins to get the wave going.

There are several ways to acquire BTC:

1) You can try one of the many "Faucets". They give free BTC but the process is very slow. Google "BTC faucet"

2) You might be able to sell something and be paid in BTCs. Still a rare thing but eventually this will become more common place.

3) There are a few Bitcoin ATM in some big cities. They take your cash and give you a printout with a QT code that you can scan with a smart phone.
    I haven't tried it and can't give more info about this.

4) Purchase BTC with Cash. In Australia the easiest way is to make a purchase from BitTrade Australia
    You fill the online form for $50 minimum.
    Get and email with a reference number.
    Go to the selected Bank branch and make an over the counter deposit within 4 hours.
    You receive the Bitcoins soon after at the Address you supplied.
    You can use the address code from your CEX account page to get the BTC directly deposited but make sure you have the correct numbers. BTC transactions are always final and cannot be reversed. No exceptions. Be careful.

5) It is still possible to mine some alt coins like dogecoin or quark using your home computer then exchange themfor BTC at one of the big exchanges. (I use Coins-E)
     Consider your electricity cost of running your PC 24/7 as your cost of investment.

6) If you register a new account with CEX.io and contact me after 15 minutes I may be able to send you a Voucher for a small amount of GHS to help you get started.

Boosting the Wave

You always get the same basic income from mining as a percentage of your GHS. On average it is around 1% per day.
Compare with your "High Interest" saving account of 4.5% per Year

So there again you are faced with several possibilities.

1) You can purchase or mine more BTC as above.

2) You can directly re-invest your mining rewards into more GHS mining power.

In this case this works like a compound interest account. Every 10 minutes (average) the small mining reward is put to work straight away to earn more.

Advanced Method:
There is a system that will reinvest automaticaly for as long as your computer is running and online. You are mining alt coins 24/7 remember.

You need to generate an API key from your CEX.io Profile page. Copy both the API and secret numbers before activating it. Once activated the secret is that.. secret.
Go to Cexchanger Assistant and fill the form.
  
Now you can go Surfing...

Surfing the Bitcoin

Lets look at the general process. (from a total newbie point of view)

Here comes the wave:

$ Money (fiat currency) ==> Bitcoins BTC ==> Ghash/s mining power ==> BTC ==> $ Money

Now there can be a few variations depending on your situation.

To acquire Bitcoins you can purchase them on an exchange. You send $$ usually using a bank deposit to the dealer and receive your Bitcoins to your wallet address.

or you can use your hardware (CPU, Video cards or ASIC) to mine some alternate currencies like Dogecoins or Quarks. You then trade those coins on an exchange (crypsy, bter, ext..) I use Coins-e myself.

You then withdraw your Bitcoins from the exchange and send them to CEX.io

Why CEX.io ?

CEX.io is a Bitcoin commodity exchange that lets you purchase Ghash of mining power in exchange for BTC.

They maintain the hardware and setup the mining for you. Instantly. No fees. No tech knowledge required.
And you own  the small piece of hardware and can resell it anytime you want.

Go on.. Sign up now.. it's free and easy. Even if you don't have any BTC yet.

What's in it for me (and you) ?

If you signup a new account using my link to CEX.io then I get a 3% bonus for the Ghash you may purchase. This doesn't have any effect on your own account at all. It's just my reward for advertising their system.

If you post a comment below with your email address then I will send you some IXC (Ixcoins) and DVC (Devcoins) These are minor currencies that you mine at the same time as BTC (Bitcoins). You can withdraw them and trade them on an exchange as you wish.

The Advantages of using CEX.io

For Bitcoin mining you now require a powerful ASIC system. A home computer is not powerful enough anymore.

Search eBay for ASIC in the Computer category and you may find:

- USB Block Erupter - 333Mh/s for $50 to $75
- USB Antminer - 1.6Gh/s for $95 to $135
- Butterfly Labs - 30Gh/s for $960
- Butterfly Labs - 50Gh/s for $1900
- Avalon 2nd generation - 200Gh/s for $5800
etc..
The cost of the hardware is from $150 to $30 per Ghash/s according to how much money you are willing to throw at it.

Then you have to pay for postage and wait for delivery. Those eBay ASIC are second-hand. New ones may take up to 3 or 4 months on preorder.

Then you need some technical knowledge to set it up. (not easy)

Then you need the room and lots of cooling fans and you have to pay for the electricity to power all your hardware. (not cheap)

At CEX.io you simply purchase any amount of Ghash you can afford.
The minimum is for >=0.00000001BTC (much less than $0.01) but less than 1Ghash won't do much..
The price of Ghash vs. BTC varies all the time with the number of buyers and sellers. Actually some people like to "day-trade" their GSH

At CEX.io your purchased Ghash start mining instantly in the Bitcoin largest pool.

No need for complex setup.
You start receiving the proceeds from mining automatically when the pool finds a block (variable time - be patient)

No need for extra costs.
The hardware maintenance and power costs are included in every payment you receive  and are very small.

You Own the hardware you purchased in the form of Ghash. This is an important concept to keep in mind.
It means that when you are done mining and/or want to use your Bitcoins for some other venture, it is easy to resell the Ghash and withdraw your Bitcoins.

It is easy to purchase more Ghash using your mining earnings as often as you want.
This is another important concept. It works like a form of compound interest.
Your small earnings per day will get larger and larger without any new cash injection.

But you can also follow the Bitcoin prices. Buy low and increase your Ghash and withdraw to sell High.
You have complete freedom to manage your assets.

Still reading?

What are you waiting for? 

Go to CEX.io and signup now.

SHA256 scrypt and CPU

The Second Wave

There are several types of Cryptocoins and methods of getting them apart from spending some cash (fiat currencies)

The first and best known is the SHA256 algorythm as used by Bitcoin miners. Unless you are an expert in cryptographic mathematic all you need to know is that they involve a lot of very complex calculations.
Bitcoin was originaly mined by ordinary computers but the difficulty of finding blocks soon forced the use of GPUs (video cards) and later FPGA boards and then ASICS machines.

ASICS are pieces of hardware with dedicated chips designed specifically for mining Bitcoins. They can be very expensive and rare.
They are sold in advance with a delivery time of months. This means thyat by the time you receive your $20,000 machine the difficulty of mining has increased and you probably need a more powerful one.

This rules out the possibility of Bitcoin mining for most small operators.

Some other cryptocurrencies started to appear that were a lot easier to mine. They also have an increase of difficulty with time built in.
The upside is that it is very unlikely that new ASICS will be developed for those.
Those currencies use an algorythm called scrypt.

There are also a small number of Coins (e.g. Quark) that can only be mined using a CPU.

So now I could start mining.
 
That is after doing all the research into which coin to use, which scrypt to setup, getting a wallet, etc..

In a nutshell this is the basic process:

Once you selected a Coin you need to download the corresponding wallet. This is the equivalent of a saving account. The wallet lets you generate addresses for sending and receiving the corresponding coins.

Then you have to wait until it has downloaded the "Block Chain" This is the complete list of transactions for that coin. This can take a long time...

Next you choose a pool to mine for. Although it is possible to mine solo this is not advised as it could take weeks before you find any coin.
A pool is a group of miners working together to increase their chances to find a valid block (and earn coins)
You get a share of the rewards according to the amount of calculations you provided. Known as hash/s and Khash/s even Ghash/s
When you join a pool you are given the actual links to start mining as well as the proper scrypt for your hardware.
There are different scrypts for NVIDIA and AMD cards as well as CPU
You also need to create a "worker" for each piece of hardware. And finally you give your pool account a deposit address from your wallet.

When you have a properly setup the miningr rig you will start seeing <yay!!!> in the display. This means that your miner has found a piece of the puzzle and you get credited with a number of shares from the pool.

The pool usually calculate the amount of coins that you earn and you will see "unconfirmed" transactions. Which will later become "confirmed" and accumulate until you reach the minimum amount needed for a transfer to your wallet.

Monitor your computer miner as well as the pool and your wallet for a couple of days...

Ok now that you have some coins what to do with them?

You need to find an Exchange to trade your coins. Generaly all the alternate coins are traded against Bitcoins.
The exchanges have transactions fees and some have restrictions on the minimum amount needed before you can withdraw your funds.
Always double read the fine print.

Trading at the exchange is like trading on a share market or on FOREX.
You can see the price and volume charts and the market depth of buyer and seller. And prices change in real time.

You can speculate on the prices of your coins going up or you can sell them as you go.

Once you have a few Bitcoins you can also keep them and speculate on a price rise or sell them for fiat money.
There is a website accepting Bitcoins for Australian dollars with a minimum transaction amount of $50 AUD

The downside of all of that is the electricity costs. A powerful rig can chew up a lot of Kw and give you a nasty surprise on your next power bill.

A lot of people will say in the forum that it is not profitable to mine any coins on a home computer.

My view is that I spend electricity money to generate Bitcoins instead of purchasing tyhem directly.

There are too many scams trying to sell crypto-coins and the reputable exchanges ask a lot of transaction fees.

NOTE: I didn't supply links to any website, forum, pools, exchanges, etc.. and leave it to you to do some research.

The First Wave

The First Wave

A few months ago I read an article on some News website about Bitcoins.

Of course I was intrigued by the possibilities offered by this new form of currency and in particular the ability to actually "mine" cryptocurrencies.

But a quick research about BitCoin soon revealed that one needed more than a home computer to achieve anything.
The market had already been captured by a few very large systems using application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) Even the small USB types that you can buy on eBay for about $50 could not deliver more than about $0.11 a day.
Larger ASIC units sell for more than $10,000 if you can get one at all (mostly in the US) and take months for delivery after you have paid for them. (and by then the mining difficulty has increased and you need a bigger more expensive one)

So I put the idea in the proverbial too-hard-basket and moved on.

Some time later another news article came to my attention. This time it was about some guy who purchased a Ferrari using BitCoins as payment. Interesting. This currency could actually be used for making purchases.
There was that early 2008 purchase of a Pizza for 10,000 BTC which at today's prices would value the pizza at $9.5 millions USD.

Also at about that time the Chinese government allowed the trade of Bitcoins (BTC) and the prices started to raise wildly going from about $130 in October 2013 to more than $1100 just a month later.
The prices later dropped after some false rumors about the chinese exchange having problems with cash transactions.

I wqas getting more interested and kept researching if there was any possible way to get on the bandwagon...