Cryptocurrency Mining For Dummies. Peter Kent

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

      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