Sunday, June 29, 2014

Feathercoin Multipool

Hey lovely Feathercoiners,


as you know, its hard to mine Feathercoins and get any profit out of mining. So here we got a solution for you!


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Special thanks to the Team from CoinKing.io for the fast implementation of this service for Feathercoin!


Yay, finally I can mine x11 or x13 (got lots of problems because of heat lately), and get paid in FTC!


Official Feathercoin Referral Link: http://coinking.io/register.php?r=15539



Feathercoin Multipool

The Feathercoin Team

On this page, we would like to introduce to you some of our community members who’ve made significant contributions to Feathercoin.



Each member has their own field of expertise and has found a way to help out. This is the reason why Feathercoin is recognized as having one of the strongest communities gathered around a crypto currency.


Bushstar

35, Oxford, UK

Founder/Development


Peter Bushnell is the former Head of ICT at Brasenose college which is part of Oxford University. He is a keen enthusiast for crypto currency and has been involved in many projects the most known of which is Feathercoin for which he is lead developer. Peter lives by the open source ethos and believes that we are here to work together to progress the underlying software. It has been Peter’s task to oversee the development of Feathercoin and to make some of hard decisions to secure its future.


ghostlander

Development


Has been with Feathercoin development team since the early days. Currently leading the development on new hashing algo Neoscrypt. Contributes to all things technical when we’re talking code, he and Bushstar work closely together hashing out the technical details with other members of the development team too.

He is also the lead developer on Phoenixcoin after he volunteered to raise it out of the ashes, take care of their code and developments after previous devs abandoned the coin in dust. He is also the lead on Orbit Coin.


chrisj

34, UK

Promotion/PR


After fighting long battles with the trolls in the depths of the Bitcointalk forum (and he did slay many shills as they spread FUD in the BTCe trollbox in wee hours), Chris was on a long quest to find good people in the world of Bitcoin. Then on the horizon Chris spotted the Feathercoin forum.

“Finally a bunch of decent human beings in the Bitcoin space!”, he thought as he finished confirming his registration email (which had found its way into his spam folder by mistake).

Chris spent many glorious months inviting new members, introducing people to one another, writing newsletters, settling disagreements between developers and staying up until the middle of the night to take part in Interviews with like minded individuals in America.


Wrapper

50+ grey haired English

Development, analysis, testing


An early member of the Feathercoin forum, joining in the technical discussions. Helps out maintaining the forum, greeting new members, answering and analysing mining and technical support issues. Mentor for new staff. Monitoring the block chain network and some development and testing. We run a small home miner as a hobby and p2pool hub.

I am disabled, retired ill health, so am limited in what I can do. But with the help of my son and some friends, for the last year that has been 100% Feathercoin. I’ve got a PhD in Physics and was working as Maintenance Management systems consultant and Software designer at Manchester University before I retired.


Ruthie

Mid 30′s, Oxford, UK

Engagements


Been with feathercoin from early on, Ruthie is involved in helping introduce new users to the forum and organising meetups like The Oxford Crypto Group and feathercoin meets. Offers on going support to the Hull Coin Project, helps in building relations with merchants and organisations that support feathercoin, happy to reach out to new projects. Willing to pitch in with members when needed, always here to assist.

People ask how I got into feathercoin? I always say, “I never expected to be this involved, but there is something that draws you – the community spirit”.


Calem

Late 20′s, Australia

Project Management and Digital Media


Came across feathercoin after having his interest in crypto currencies rekindled in late 2013. On his days off he acts as a “night shift” forum mod due to his timezone. He has assisted the community in his spare time with forum moderation alongside supporting any projects able. He is currently working on adoption within Australia but works on other projects like the game “Feather Roller” as well as the Digital Media section of the forum. – “I came to the forum looking for an answer to a question, but ended up staying because of the community!”


iawgoM

Mid 30′s, Croatia

Website Development and Digital Media


In-house designer. Usually summoned when your Paint skills aren’t good enough. Joined Feathercoin as a miner in April 2013, liked the people, decided to stay and help around as much as possible. Besides doing graphics and web development/maintenance for FTC community needs, also available as a freelancer for other cryptos (portfolio here).


uncle_muddy

Late 30’s, West Midlands, UK

Development and Merchant Adoption


Became involved with feathercoin in late 2013, he has helped feathercoin along its journey with the Prostate Cancer UK fundraiser, developing a building the OpenFeathercoinATM, assisting with the organisation of meet-ups, and is now working on featherPay the handheld PoS terminal.


ChekaZ

22, Germany

Allrounder


I am a German student who became involved in Feathercoin at May 2013. Since then I have been helping with merchant adoption in Germany with Dahms Winery being our first merchant. I also like doing my own little projects such as spearheading the special limited edition bottles of wine from the winery, also have taken a dabble in some development work and made MinerX – a mining tool for beginners.


Wellenreiter

50+, Germany

Technical Development


Grey haired German, working as network specialist for a large company. Linux fan. Got involved with Feathercoin in summer 2013. Started with mining, and still mines with low hashrates. Does some programming and testing. Creates the Linux install packages and Android releases.


MrWyrm

30’s, Cumbria, UK

Forum Moderator


In his very early thirties, he’s a community and people power enthusiast working in IT and retail systems. He found Crypto Currencies late but instantly fell in love with the technology and its potential to help communities. When not involved in crypto currencies he’s tending to his allotment, crossing stupidly hot chilli peppers and is currently enrolled on a Natural Sciences degree.


xonar

49, Italy

Contributor


In early May 2013 I became owner of my 1st FTC, really not remember from what “faucet” – it came into my wallet… then I became a member of the community. I’m not a big writer, and not a great technician, but I love this community, it’s serious and at same time nice and interesting.


mirrax

30, Czech Republic

Trader, PR support


BTC and FTC literally changed my life. After initial big losses as fresh trader I gained some confidence. Enough to quit my work and divide my time into my familly, hobbies and trading. FTC was first coin I was involved with and I have no intention to quit.

Education: electronic engineering degree. Last job: 4 years chinese goods imports.


Ilocans

Contributor


I discovered the world of cryptos in april 2013 when the bitcoin reached 60$USD. Almost 2 weeks after I discovered Bitcoins, Feathercoin was launched and I was one of the first miners. Since then, I am a strong supporter of Feathercoin and I am still mining with my small rig. I also helped by working a little bit with UKMark, translating to french, developing 2 android apps regarding FTC (FTC Miner Tool: a tool to track your rig on a pool and CryptocoinsManager: a tool to track the balance of your FTC wallet and also for other currencies), working with Wellenreiter on the Feathercoin Android wallet.

I can’t be really present very often because I have a family and a lot of work. However, I read the forum very often, I am supporting Feathercoin because I love the community since day one and because it is the first coin I could really mine and because I can be involved in its evolution.


Nathaniel / RIPPEDDRAGON

Contributor


Mined FTC from the beginning and helped push us through our hardest mining times post launch, never lost faith in the coin. Joined the dev team briefly but my full time dev job took up too much time for me to contribute anything useful. Mined WDC at the start of UNOCS (I still hold some of all 3 coins), helped with bugs in PXC/WDC, and helped nutnut with bugs in his pool software. Actively helped others in our GPU mining community for a long time. I developed power optimization strategies for GPU miners here and was able to boost electrical efficiency close to 50% while mining scrypt. I no longer mine FTC as I am a GPU miner but still hold FTC for our bright future!

I am currently working on building out a half rack GPU farm in my employer’s data center. Each 4u machine runs and cools 6 GPUs effectively while running at full power. I just finished getting my first 2 4u servers running 24/7 and I have 3 more 6 GPU 4u server chassis arriving late this week or next Monday at the latest. I am moving toward building a scale-able cloud mining service for GPU miners even if the current market just isn’t there for it.


Vizay

29, Sweden

Project management


I’m a Swedish chap closing in on 30 with an almost annoyingly positive attitude and a strong belief that the world can be made better than it is today. Working as a ICT Engineer at ///, mainly focused on building internal cloud services for the R&D dept here in Stockholm. When I don’t work I spend a lot of time with my daughter and girlfriend, enjoying life with them. First got involved with crypto through a colleague that introduced me to Feathercoin in December -13. Started out with mining, mainly just for profit, but quickly saw that there’s a whole lot more to crypto than just making quick bucks and moving on. It’s the philosophy around crypto that makes me stay, I want to be part in making the world a better place, and I believe there’s big potential for crypto to play a key role in that process.


Tuck Fheman

North America

Forum Moderator

Involved with the Feathercoin community since a few weeks after launch, because it’s the most friendly/helpful community in all of cryptocurrency! Created/maintains several Feathercoin blogs and is a former trollbox FUD fighter. Helped fund Kevlar’s LINK protocol project with other community members.


T4rQu1N

Contributor


I don’t have as much time to engage as regularly as I would like, nor do I have the technical skills to support development work. What I do have, is a passion for this coin, and more so the community that defines it. My promise, is to do everything I can to mentor, support, and inspire anyone willing to make an intellectual contribution!


Lizhi

38,China Beijing

Forum Moderator

I am a chinese technocrat, a keen enthusiast for crypto currency. Full of love for Feathercoin, believe that technology can change the life. I know that when people use FTC, I would be proud. I read the forum very often. In the meantime, I set up chinese-language of FTC website, I did it for the greater good. Let’s go ahead, we work together to establish our history.


mnstrcck

Toronto, Canada

Contributor


Besides enjoying spending any free time I have outdoors in the Canadian wilderness, I run my own business focused on online marketing services for small to medium sized businesses. I also double as a project manager on new media for Canadian film and television.

Crypto-currency interests me, and I’ve spent the last year learning about it as much as possible and gotten involved with the Feathercoin community. It’s been a ton of fun!


and many more…

source: https://www.feathercoin.com/about/meet-the-feathercoin-team/




The Feathercoin Team

Ultimate guide to CGMiner

Settings you will need to understand to truely tweak your gpu. I will explain how to adjust each one later but you must understand each of these settings:


Intensity: How hard the miner is working. Each increase by one is DOUBLE the previous number of threads:

I:13 = 8192 threads

I:14 = 16384 threads

I:15 = 32768 threads

I:16 = 65536 threads

I:17 = 131072 threads

I:18 = 262144 threads

I:19 = 524288 threads

I:20 = 1048576 threads


As you can see this makes a major impact from level to level. You can use a comparison chart (Wiki) for all settings to get a good starting point for your gpu. If your feeling more crafty you can use xintensity.


Also with the new miners intensity limit has been increased up to 25. If your using a 290/290x you may want to go beyond the normal spectrum of 20 to see what happens thumb.gif (thanks for the reminder bargulator smile.gif)


xIntensity: Very new and still experimental and as far as I know only available from the kalroth release (see below). Seems to work flawlessly so far and gives a much more wide range of intensity. You can only use xintensity OR intensity NOT both. Calculated instead by the number of shaders your gpu has and multiplied by xintensity (Shaders*xI). So for example my 7870 and 270x have 1280 shaders, so any number I put in as the xintensity would be multiplied by 1280. both 80 (102400 which if you view above is equal to 16.7ish) and 111 (142080=17.25ish) seem to work really well on single thread I am not decided yet which is best will take some testing still biggrin.gif. Due to this I have also been able to get 2 threads to work which was not possible in the past. Its actually more productive and less system intensive to run 2 threads. I managed to get mine to run at xintensity=4 gpu-threads=2. This was NOT possible using normal intensity increases, Thanks kalroth!


Gpu-Threads: Now with the release of xintensity more cards will be able to hash at 2 threads and lower intensity. The reason you want this is less rejects. It may not work on all cards but its worth a shot. Alot of 280x/290x have no problem running 2 threads at a good hashrate (as they generally run at i-12 or i-13 with 2 threads anyways). My 7870 had to run on 1 thread to get the most performance. You will likely always end up on 1 or 2 threads.


Thread-Concurrency: This will be a tough one to tweak aswell. Best results are generally shaders*n+1. So for example my 7870 has 1280 shaders and i ended up personally thinking the best results came from 1280*8+1=10241 and also from 8193 which turns out seems to be a great number for MANY different cards using 2 threads. You will likely want to start with whats most common in the wiki.


Worksize: Can vary majorly from card to card. Alot of the tahiti and pitcairn cards use worksize 256. But you will still want to refer to the comparison chart (Wiki) to get the best starting point for your card. Then you will want to at least attempt multiple variations: 64,96,128,256 its possible any variation could see improvements. Most 7870 are at 128 or 256 while I personally got MUCH better results from 96. TRY EVERYTHING you never know what your card could do.


Device: Sets which gpu to use. I highly recommend using seperate cgminers for seperate gpu. You will have to make seperate config files (will explain later). But you want to set to “device” : “0″ for your first gpu then 1,2,3 etc for others. If multiple gpu of the same types end up on the same settings you can run them in the same cgminer window, again much easier to tweak seperately though (Easier to mine seperate servers, coins etc).


Queue, Scan-Time and Expiry: All these settings have to do with the work being accepted and givin back to the server. In most cases you will see much less stales and generally better wu/m from setting queue=0 scan-time=1 and expiry=1. Its very difficult to see results from adjusting these settings but best to either set them that way and forget about it or set to stock. Seems to help on multipools more then others.


Those were all the settings you will be tweaking in cgminer to get the best results from your card. I will explain below how to set everything up but you will first need to download the miner. As mentioned above as far as I know Kalroth’s release is the only one with xintensity. If you are not going to use xintensity then I recommend using sgminer. You can use the same settings for either one with only one minor difference I will mention below:


DOWNLOAD YOUR MINER


NEW MINER SGMINER 4.1 does xintensity, rawintensity and still follows the same sgminer updates. Will be updating guide soon with more info but heres the spot to get it if you need:


http://www.gigacog.com/sgminer-4.1.0.zip


another link if needed


https://www.dropbox.com/s/e9lk9yq7gshcn7o/sgminer-4.1-windows.zip


cgminer 3.7.3 Kalroth (highly recommended for optimum tweaking):


http://k-dev.net/cgminer/


sgminer 4.0.0 (recommended for normal settings, windows release in first reply):


http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1va8g2/ann_sgminer_400_release/


Either miner will work great and are much improved over the original cgminer 3.7.2 release.


CREATE A CONFIG


Once you have your miner downloaded and unzipped to a place you can easily access. You will then want to go into notepad and copy this:


CGMINER KALROTH:

Code:


“pools” : [


"url" : "stratum+tcp://mainpoolswebsite.com:7777",

"user" : "poolusername.workername",

"pass" : "workerpassword"

,


"url" : "stratum+tcp://backuppool.com:3333",

"user" : "backupuser.backupworker",

"pass" : "backupworkerpass"


]

,

“xintensity” : “4″,

“worksize” : “256″,

“lookup-gap” : “2″,

“thread-concurrency” : “8193″,

“temp-cutoff” : “90″,

“expiry” : “1″,

“failover-only” : true,

“log” : “5″,

“queue” : “0″,

“scan-time” : “1″,

“device” : “0″,

“gpu-threads” : “2″


SGMINER:

Code:


“pools” : [


"url" : "stratum+tcp://mainpoolswebsite.com:7777",

"user" : "poolusername.workername",

"pass" : "workerpassword"

,


"url" : "stratum+tcp://backuppool.com:3333",

"user" : "backupuser.backupworker",

"pass" : "backupworkerpass"


]

,

“intensity” : “13″,

“worksize” : “256″,

“lookup-gap” : “2″,

“thread-concurrency” : “8193″,

“temp-cutoff” : “90″,

“expiry” : “1″,

“failover-only” : true,

“log” : “5″,

“queue” : “0″,

“scan-time” : “1″,

“device” : “0″,

“gpu-threads” : “2″


As you can see most of the information is either from above or self explanatory. Insert your pools website information and worker name + worker password. Again you must refer to the wiki to get yourself a good starting point. Find what others used and insert the information accordingly. You will end up adjusting later to get the most out of your card but for now get a good starting point.


The first config is pre-setup for my 7870 and my 270x at 2 gpu threads using xintensity. The second config is for sgminer and is pre-setup for regular intensity on a 280x with 2 threads. Results may vary and you will likely need adjustments even if using the same cards. Although recent reports show that the 270x settings seem to be working for multiple people at around 500kh/s biggrin.gif.


Make sure you change everything you need changed including worksize, intensity, gpu-threads and thread-concurrency. (referred to on the wiki as -w -I -g and –thread-concurrency)


Make sure you setup a back-up pool SEPERATE from the one you are on. If they have there own backup pool you will want to add a 3rd pool and make sure its seperate from the originals. Always have one pool from a completely different website as you never know what could happen! Failover-only will make sure that when a pool fails it goes to the backup. but when that first pool is available again it will switch back automatically.


After you have it all setup you then save your file into the cgminer folder. Make sure you name it cgminer.conf (or sgminer.conf for sgminer). If you end up accidently saving as a text file make sure you delete “.txt” from the end so it becomes a config file (should say cgminer.conf or sgminer.conf)


CREATE YOUR BATCH FILE


Then go back and make a new text file and insert this:


CGminer:

Code:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

timeout /t 4

cgminer.exe –scrypt


SGminer:

Code:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

timeout /t 4

sgminer.exe


Very similar but if using cgminer make sure you include –scrypt. If using sgminer it WILL NOT WORK with –scrypt included.


Use the timeout to give yourself time to re-size the miner as it will be locked in once it starts mining. Also if you set the miner to auto-start with PC you can increase the timeout to give your PC time to start-up.


Save the file as anything you want but add “.bat” to the end. Same as with the conf if you accidently save as .txt just remove the txt from the end and make sure its a .bat file.


TEST RUN!


That’s it you now have set-up your miner. All you need to do is run the .bat file and you are up and mining! Heres some of the info you will want to focus on and information about each:


kh/s: This is how hard your gpu is running. Generally this is what people watch as they tweak there gpu. Using a multipool can effect testing. Generally you want to do your tweaking on a single coin dedicated pool to avoid loss of kh/s during coin switch. Otherwise you may end up with a headache.


wu/m: This is the real major factor. kh/s is nothing without work being submitted. Ive seen some high kh/s on my card that produced horrible wu/m. This is wildly random at first and goes up and down significantly. But after hours it will even out. Sometimes you will see wu referred to on a ratio vs kh/s. Most the time you want atleast .9 ratio vs kh/s. so for every 100/khs you should have at least 90wu/m. This can vary though and has a little to do with luck and again will take a long time to even out.


[P]ool management / [G]pu management / Settings / [D]isplay options [Q]uit

Somewhat self explanatory but I thought I would mention. Press Q to quit you dont want to X out and lose work. Also you can access most of the settings from your config from inside of cgminer while its running. This is the best way to adjust xintensity. Simply press G for gpu management and a new menu will pop up. press x for xintensity and adjust up and down 1 intensity at a time and you will find the “sweet spot” ever 3 or 4 intensity levels that give your card a boost. Just gotta find the right sweet spot that gives good wu/m and kh/s combination.


HW: This should ALWAYS be 0. There may be some bad luck with a pool that causes errors but that is extremely rare. This number has been 0 for me for over 2 months unless I have bad settings. HW means hardware errors. If you have ANY HW then you need to find the problem. Generally it means too low of thread concurrency OR too high of intensity (or sometimes too high of thread concurrency as well). Always adjust settings one at a time to pin-point the problem.


A:, R: These are work accepted and work rejected. you can see rejects represented by a percentage on newer miners. This can vary from pool to pool based on connectivity but you will want this to be super low. If you have a good pool connection it should be as low as 1 percent or even lower. multi-pools will have higher rejects due to coin switching as well as p2pools tend to have higher rejects too. Even under extreme circumstances 4%+ is too high you generally need to lower intensity or find other solutions.


Most of the other information is irrelevant. keep an eye on GF: as this is getwork failures. if this keeps going up too much you have a really bad connection to your pool and may want to consider switching pools. after 24 hours i have about 150 getwork failures on a somewhat bad pool connection (to give comparison).


TWEAKING TIME


Now that you kinda understand what your working with wink.gif (its all confusing at first, give it time biggrin.gif). Its time to do some tweaking to optimize performance.


Some cards do extremely well with the wiki settings and you may not be able to get much more out of them.


At first you will want to start by changing the worksize. This settings fairly easy to tweak. Here are all the work-size possibilities you should try:

48,64,96,128,192,256,288,320,384,448,480,512

Start with your wiki setting and move up and down to see what happens. If hashrate increases keep the new setting. When you are done tweaking everything else, you may want to go back to worksize to make one more attempt to assure best setting.


You will next want to start tweaking intensity. If you used regular intensity just try to push it up one and see if it works better. If not go back down. fairly simply done just by increasing the intensity in your conf file and saving it. then re-open cgminer. Or you can do this within cgminer by pressing G then I and entering the new intensity.


If you ended up using 1 gpu thread you likely are already at a higher intensity. This can generally be pushed up a bit but you wont want to go too high as later on your overclock wont get to push you as far biggrin.gif. Also you may want to consider using a very low xintensity (3,4,5,6) and attempting 2 gpu threads (with kalroths cgminer). This is newly discovered for cards that could not previously do this. Generally gives you less stales and less stress on gpu. It will not work at all it seems at any setting except 3 for myself. But once I found that sweet spot it has been the best.


Anyone using 2 threads already may want to attempt to use xintensity to adjust by smaller increments. Once you start using xintensity in your config file it can then be adjusted within cgminer. Press G to go to gpu management then press x. You now can type in your chosen xintensity. I recommend if using 1 thread getting close to the same xintensity as you would for normal intensity (remember shaders*xintensity=threadcount compare above) then going up or down one by one watching this number:


You will see every 3 or 4 intensity steps the number will go up. then for 3 more be low, etc. For example i had really good results at 1 gpu thread xintensity=111. but at 110,109,108 it was all bad, then 107 had very similar results to 111 but seemed to have a worst wu/kh ratio. but likewise the other direction aswell at 112,113,114,115 all bad and 116 seemed to do ok. This will take some serious time to figure out and pinpoint but you can squeeze more juice out of any gpu! But I still highly recommend attempting to get 2 gpu threads to work as its generally more productive.


The reason we are looking at this k number and not kh/s is it shows results from changes faster. kh/s seems to be some sort of average while k seems to be right now speed. So its easier to see in real-time the changes from one xi to the next. Make sure you let it run for at least a few seconds on each increase or decrease to be sure of the speed change.


For even more tweaking there is now a feature in the kalroth release called rawintensity. This is quite literally just the intensity threadcount. This is a much more fine tune and will take a ton of time to tweak. but if you want to spend some more time getting every little bit you can then use rawintensity to take it another step!


The last thing I usually mess with is thread-concurrency. Assuming the setting from wiki worked ok (they generally do). You should attempt multiples of your shaders aswell as multiples of 1024. Go up and down from your original wiki setting and see what works best for your gpu. Theres likely going to be a large range that performs similar. You will want to end up somewhere in the middle of too high tc (generally choppy) and too low tc (hw errors). If the wiki setting falls in the middle its probably where you should keep it.


Many people have reported that thread concurrency is best found by shaders*n+1. So Take your shaders multiply by a number usually 3-10 add 1 and test. I ended up on 8193 personally with my 270x and 7870 and it seems to run best on MANY different gpu.


Theres no one specific setting for any of these, some just perform better at different settings then others. Even the exact same 2 gpu from the same company same model may have 2 completely different optimal settings.


Just dont forget to keep an eye on HW: This will tell you if you have any hw errors. Also wu/m again is the most important of all as it represents the actual work submitted (what your pool pays you for). Also dont forget wu/m takes a LONG time to even out even 24 hours before its steady sometimes (you will get used to watching it and understand kinda how it works). Wu/m is about luck (Difficulty of each submitted work) but luck over time will always even out.


Lastly you may want to do some clean-up in your cgminer folder before starting overclocking. Everytime you changed thread-concurrency, worksize OR gpu threads it created another bin file. This bin file is used everytime you start cgminer and keeps your settings stored. Once your at your optimal settings you can just delete all of the bins. It will create a new one with the same previous settings and you wont have 20 bin files anymore. Also I am sure you noticed everytime you start cgminer with one of those settings changed it takes a much longer time to start because it creates the bin file. Once you have your settings locked in and a bin file made cgminer will start much quicker.


OVERCLOCKING


Overclocking can be very frustrating. Many cards can respond differently. You will need to tinker with both core and memory clocks at the same time in order to optimize your settings. You can even end up at different clocks for different cgminer settings.


Use a program like MSI afterburner or Sapphire trixx or something. You need on the fly controls to really optimize each gpu.


Sometimes you will see the same results from 1340 mem as you will from 1500. Sometimes not. Depends on memory, brand and card. Core clock can also be the same way. My 7870 likes a much lower clock between 975-1010 is optimal but it still runs almost the exact same kh/s at 1300-1340. So when you think your going up sometimes its better to go down! Try everything!


My current clock settings:

7870: core clock 980, mem-clock 1358 runs at 425kh/s. Can push around 435 at 1010,1360

270x: core clock 1160, mem-clock 1498 runs at 500kh/s. Can push up to 505ish with minor tweaking (reports show these settings work on multiple 270x)


This can be HEAVILY effected by the bin file created by the miner from different driver versions. I do NOT suggest using the new 14.1 drivers for pitcairn cards. For both my 7870 and 270x there was a MAJOR loss in kh/s. Have also seen alot of bad reports from others aswell. 13.11 or 13.12 are recommended.


Your overall goal is to attempt to undervolt aswell as increase kh/s by possibly underclocking. You will want to start as low as possible and hope that your core responds well to low clocks. For example if you get 420kh/s at 980 clock but you get 425 at 1250 clock then its likely better to go with the 980 as your power bill will show it. Memory clocks are likely to end up higher but do not draw as much power.


Do your best to find your optimal core and memory clocks. adjusting each by 20mhz at a time at first then when you get to the “sweet spots” adjust up and down slightly until you find the magic numbers. You will see the results in cgminer. You can adjust while running cgminer it will take a few moments to regain speed (unless you hit a bad spot tongue.gif). Once you find the highest possible generally best to back off just a tad.


Lastly after finding those optimal settings you will want to try to undervolt your gpu. This is done by lowering the vcore which on some gpu can be locked. In MSI afterburner you can try going into settings and selecting unlock voltage aswell as extend overclock limits (you may not even have these options). If it works you may get voltage unlocked. Otherwise there is other methods like flashing the bios if you really want to undervolt. The goal is to turn down the voltage as far as you can to save power. if you lose some serious wu/m after undervolting you may have to go back up a bit. I did myself it seemed to work fine but then i realized it was not submitting nearly as much work. So keep an eye on it before and after undervolting to assure its working properly.


Once all is said and done you can use a program like VBE7 to edit, save and flash your bios to permanently have these clocked miner settings. Its better to do this if you plan on using for mining only as using msi ab or another program everytime can be a pain and can cause conflicts with some other programs like cgmonitor. Even though afterburner runs everytime your start your pc its better to always be clocked properly. Flashing bios is the optimal way to do this but in most cases IT DOES VIOLATE THE WARRANTY! FLASH AT YOUR OWN RISK!



source: http://www.overclock.net/t/1461916/tutorial-ultimate-guide-to-tweaking-amd-cgminer-3-7-2-kalroth-edition-sgminer-instructions-included-aswell-get-the-most-hash-out-of-your-gpu



Ultimate guide to CGMiner

Saturday, June 28, 2014

X11

There has been lots of chatter in the crypto-community surrounding X11.


If you have yet to hear about it, we are not referring to the Honda motorcycle or anything to do with the X Windows System. We are referring to the new X11 hashing algorithm for crypto-currencies. Some believe its the “algorithm of the future”, others find it too complicated and prone to errors.

Many miners have been forced out of the ‘mining race’, primarily in Bitcoin, because of the rapid advancement in the development of mining technology. CPU and GPU equipment is not as fast at processing transactions as ASIC equipment is. The more ASIC equipment attached to the network, the more the overall network hashing power increases, along with the level of difficulty. If you do not have the budget to keep your computer hardware up to date, or up to speed, your costs will quickly become higher than your profits. At that point you either have to take a loss, switch to mining a more compatible crypto-currency or upgrade.

Flow chart concept with a descision.As a result a lot of time, effort and resources have been put into the development of technologies and strategies that can prolong the takeover of ASIC technology. X11, because of its complexity, fits into this category. The more complex the process, the more time-consuming it becomes rather than power-consuming – which isn’t what ASIC was designed for.

X11 was first introduced to us through the crypto-currency Darkcoin which was released earlier this year in March, created by Evan Duffield and Kyle Hagan. In the abstract of the coin’s whitepaper it stated that Darkcoin uses:

“An improved proof-of-work using a chain of hashing algorithms replaces the SHA256 algorithm and will result in a slower encroachment of more advanced mining technologies (such as ASIC devices).”

X11 has 11 rounds of hashing and uses 11 algorithms: blake, bmw, cubehash, echo, groestl, jh, keccak, luffa, skein, sharite and simd. This is similar to that of Quarkcoin, which has 9 rounds of hashing from 6 hashing functions (blake, groestl, blue midnight wish, jh, SHA-3, skein) and was released in 2013.

Many miners who have jumped on board to mine the crypto-currencies utilizing X11 claim to be experiencing reduced power and heat generation with their equipment. For some miners this could simply be due to outdated or insufficient equipment. For others its the algorithm, which is barely friendly for GPU mining. In the Darkcoin forum one community member, LimLims, explains:

“The answer is that some kinds of processing are extremely easy to scale up on a GPU to 100% utilization. In distributed computing parlance, these are called “embarrassingly parallel” problems, because they are trivial to scale up on parallel computer hardware. X11 is relatively more difficult (compared to scrypt) to parallelize on a GPU with perfect efficiency. This is because the code has to coordinate 11 different hashing algos, each of which is computed in a different way and in a different timeframe. So hypothetically we might have optimized an X11 miner as well as humanly possible, but it still only manages 50% utilization of a GPU.



source: http://bitcoinbarbie.com/x11/



X11

Vericoin: The Altcoin You Can Spend Wherever Bitcoin is Accepted

Vericoin has launched an innovative and potentially game-changing approach to gaining merchant acceptance that could shake up the altcoin world should the service gain broader usage.


Launched in May, vericoin is a proof-of-stake altcoin that features a variable interest rate which fluctuates depending on how many coins are staking. As more coins are used to stake and support the network, the interest rate climbs.


One of the ways in which alternative digital currencies seek a broader audience is through expanding merchant acceptance. Companies like Coinkite and CoinPayments.net enable payments in altcoins, but it remains unclear exactly how successful these efforts have been at expanding the number of merchants that take alternative digital currencies as a payment method.


To date, roadblocks have emerged owing to the infrastructure an altcoin needs to be accepted by merchants and the varied willingness on the part of these businesses to accept a potentially volatile digital currency.


Enter VeriBit


Vericoin sidesteps these obstacles entirely with VeriBit, a value-added service to the network that enables people to make smaller bitcoin purchases with their vericoin. VeriBit acts as a go-through for vericoin spenders, facilitating purchases for consumers at any business that accepts bitcoin.


This new service opens up the tens of thousands of merchants currently accepting bitcoin to consumers who wish to use vericoin.


CoinDesk spoke with co-creator Patrick Nosker, who said that prior to a feature like VeriBit, those who wanted to use an altcoin to make a payment had to exchange a set amount for bitcoin. But, because of factors such as exchange fees and the natural volatility of a marketplace, consumers face the real risk of losing value prior to making their purchase.


Nosker said:


“It’s not very simple for a beginner. So what we made is a transaction layer between exchanges and the user.”


VeriBit is geared toward smaller transactions rather than large ones. Currently, there is a spending limit of 0.15 BTC (roughly $87 at press time), though according to Nosker, this cap is expected to rise in the future.


How VeriBit works


VeriBit is designed to be a user-friendly way to pay for bitcoin purchases using vericoin. The vericoin development team acts as a payments processor for these transactions, operating one wallet for vericoin to be deposited into by a paying consumer and another one that pays out to the payment destination in bitcoin.


VeriBit


To make a payment, you first enter the address you want to send bitcoin to and how much BTC you wish to transfer. After you’ve entered in the information, VeriBit calculates how much vericoin you need to send, plus a 2 VRC transaction fee.


You then have 20 minutes to send your vericoins to the address, after which the wallet operators – currently the vericoin development team – complete the transaction and send out the BTC to its destination.


According to Nosker, the feature stays funded through donations and the exchange of vericoin fees for more bitcoin. He said that VeriBit was developed largely to build more services into the network rather than make money off of user transactions, saying:


“We didn’t want to get into the exchange business or make tons of money doing this. It’s really just to make vericoin usable immediately. [The fee] just covers the cost of doing it.”


Ultimately, he said, the goal is to create an incentive for consumers to use an altcoin by allowing them to spend it wherever bitcoin is accepted.


Vericoin’s anonymity service


In addition to VeriBit, the vericoin team has also developed several other services that appeal to both mainstream consumers and more seasoned altcoin users.


One of the major forces in altcoin at this time is the anonymous transaction movement. This cluster of altcoin projects, led by projects like darkcoin and XC, focuses on anonymizing transactions to render them invisible to detection efforts.


Nosker noted that anonymity, by and large, is not a feature that appeals to most people. But in acknowledgement of demand for such functionality, the team produced a tool to hide transations though it stopped short of instituting it across the vericoin network.


VeriSend


VeriSend is a transaction-mixing service that, for a fee, scrambles vericoin transfers and makes them harder – but not impossible, Nosker clarified – to detect.


He added that the vericoin team at one point looked into creating a standard anonymizing system, but ultimately passed on integrating one.


In the future, VeriSend will be added to the alt’s wallet, at which time users can opt to use VeriSend or not.


Text-based management


Another vericoin-based service, VeriSMS, functions as text-based gateway and wallet system that links the cell network to the vericoin network. Vericoin users can load vericoins onto this wallet and use the SMS network to make transactions.


VeriSMS works on an international level. According to the VeriSMS webpage, there are a variety of gateway numbers that can be used in the US, Europe and Asia.


The service offers three commands to users. The balance feature can be used to actually create a wallet address and later utilized to check the amounts currently deposited. Users can type in addresses to send transactions and set passwords for their wallet. This creates a simple security feature should a person’s phone be compromised.


Nosker cautioned that VeriSMS remains in the alpha stage, and that there are risks to using it, telling CoinDesk:


“It’s not perfect. We’re still ironing out bugs with it.”


Nosker added that the team is exploring other projects, including one that could facilitate vericoin-to-fiat transactions, that tie in to the ultimate goal of making an altcoin that is as consumer-friendly as it is functional.



source: http://www.coindesk.com/vericoin-altcoin-spend-wherever-bitcoin-accepted/



Vericoin: The Altcoin You Can Spend Wherever Bitcoin is Accepted

WinkDex, the Bitcoin Index Created by the Winklevoss Twins

The Winklevoss twins, notoriously known for suing Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing the idea of Facebook from them, have just had their Bitcoin index, WinkDex, added to the Bloomberg dashboard.


DuckDuckGo added Bitcoin to their search using Chain.com, Google added Bitcoin to Google Finance using Coinbase, and now Bloomberg with WinkDex. Bitcoin is suddenly everywhere!



The Winklevoss twins promise to be providing a public API in the near future, presumably an API that would enable developers to easy access data they have collected and crunched on WinkDex. You can apply for early access to the API.



source: http://www.followthecoin.com/winkdex-bitcoin-index-created-winklevoss-twins-now-bloomberg/



WinkDex, the Bitcoin Index Created by the Winklevoss Twins

Coined

The story of Bitcoin, and other digital currencies, is being explored in a new documentary, titled “Coined”.


A work in progress, Coined is currently raising $72,000 on the popular crowd funding platform Kickstarter. With 19 days to go on their crowd funding campaign, Coined has raised almost $9,000 at the time this post is being written. To donate towards the documentary, go here.


The documentary team has already shot over 20 hours of footage, including interviews with the creators of Dogecoin, and footage from the Dogecoin sponsored NASCAR race at Talladega (where we, team Follow The Coin, actually accidentally ran into the Coined team!).


We caught up the with director of Coined, Chris Higgins, to get more info.


How did you get into digital/crypto currencies? What was that experience like for you?


I read my friend David Wolman’s book The End of Money and it got me thinking about, you know, money. I had heard about Bitcoin for several years at that point (mainly on NPR) but hadn’t actually looked into it. So I started poking around online in 2013, first to see if I could mine Bitcoin with my laptop. (I know, stop laughing.)


I ended up finding Litecoin and the whole altcoin scene, which was much more approachable for the hobbyist like me. So I started looking into what it would take to build a mining rig.


Right around that time, Adam Cornelius, my old friend and occasional comrade in filmmaking, showed up and said, “I’m thinking about building a Litecoin mining rig.” So that was that.


What triggered the idea for Coined?


So Adam and I built this mining rig in December 2013. He bought the parts, we both assembled them, I fought with Linux video card drivers for a few days, and then we sort of sat back and watched it do its thing.


Adam was at a Bitcoin meetup in Portland when he ran into Billy Markus, who programmed Dogecoin. Turns out Adam was mining Dogecoin at the time (he was using multipool, and it had pointed him at Dogecoin — remember, this was late Dec 2013/early Jan 2014). Adam and I had been talking about doing a documentary for a while, and here it was, this story starting in our own back yard. So we grabbed our cameras and went to Billy’s house. We were interviewing him in January 2014, very early in the life of the coin.


When we flew to New York City to film the Dogeparty in February, we knew we had a solid story. Here were hundreds of real people converging in a real place, next to the New York Stock Exchange, to celebrate a cryptocurrency. As filmmakers, seeing something that was formerly an online-only phenomenon (and thus, kind of boring to see on film) turn into a literal party…well, that was the moment we knew we had a documentary on our hands.


How many digital currencies are covered in Coined?


Hard to say at the moment, since we need to shoot another hundred hours. icon smile Coined


We have about 20 hours on Dogecoin and Bitcoin, with some discussion of Litecoin in there as well, plus some other altcoins here and there. But that’s primarily because we have been interviewing people in the Dogecoin scene.


Our goal for the film is to focus on:


1. The concept of digital currency as a whole. In other words, an exploration of the value of any currency and looking into how these things go digital.


2. Specific incarnations of these currencies (such as Dogecoin, Bitcoin, potentially any other currency) and the stories of their creation and use.


3. An exploration of how the rise of digital currencies fits in with the rise of other currencies throughout history. People have been creating currencies for millennia…this is a very new take on a very old idea. How is this different? How is this the same? And so on.


What is the one thing people should know about digital currencies?


That all money is a shared agreement — we agree that some token (dollar bill, coin, etc.) has value and then it does — and that the embodiment of that token is irrelevant. The fact that digital currency is “just bits on a computer” is the same thing as a dollar bill being “just ink on paper.” The value isn’t in the bits or the ink, it’s in the agreement that we share when we say that thing has value.


Do you mine?


I’ve done CPU mining on various laptops, but stopped when the weather warmed up. Adam has a GPU mining rig and has mined tons of oddball coins. (He was very excited to mine a Breaking Bad themed coin at one point, if I recall correctly.)


We are also building mining rigs for the movie; they’re available as rewards on the Kickstarter.


How would you explain Dogecoin to your mom?


Dogecoin is a digital form of money that started as a joke, then became very real. It actually has value, but it’s accessible by people with very little money, unlike other digital currencies like Bitcoin. People who use Dogecoin tend to value sharing, inclusivity, and charitable giving. A culture has grown around Dogecoin that emphasizes this kind of sharing culture, where “tipping” is common — if you make a cool thing online, I can tip you some Dogecoin for it, just by typing a command into Twitter or Reddit. It’s a way to put your money where your mouth is, and reward work and projects that you value. It also has a picture of a cute dog on it.


What’s the most surprising thing you have learned during the process of creating Coined?


That /r/Dogecoin is exactly as susceptible to flame wars and drama as any other online community. icon wink Coined In other words, for something that is lighthearted and fun, there sure is a lot of drama that goes down on the subreddit. I’m curious whether that’s simply how online communities work (to some extent, it is) but also I wonder whether that’s what happens when you mix money into an online community — stuff gets real, and everything is amped up.


The other thing that surprises me is how willing everybody is to talk about the concept of money. When I say I’m working on a documentary about how money is changing, and turning into this virtual thing, people engage with that idea. It’s not just nerds, it’s everybody. Quite honestly, I thought that interest in the “What is money?” question would be limited to finance nerds and tech nerds. But no, not at all — this is genuinely something that everybody cares about, because, let’s face it, everyone uses money.


Is there anything else you would like to add?


Yeah, two things I’d point out:


1. The Dogecar video has only 500 views. That’s dumb. I think people simply haven’t noticed that it exists yet. Dudes, this is 15 minutes in the pit with Josh Wise!!! This is what /r/Dogecoin gave us 3,000,000 Dogecoin to go and film! HERE, LOOK! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_EpAAzQUVQ


2. Our documentary is designed to be inclusive. Whether it’s $1 or $10, we want people to get involved and join our community, share their stories, ask questions, etc. And yes, we take tips (see our FAQ on the Kickstarter) if you don’t dig the whole fiat currency thing.



source: http://www.followthecoin.com/coined-the-first-digital-currency-documentary/



Coined

XC NEWS

It has been a while since we last did an article on XC , formerly X11Coin; And maybe that’s a good thing, as we have some very nice updates to bring to the CryptoArticles audience. The team behind XC has been revealed, and there is a Tor stick available, so let’s take a look!


The biggest news is the fact the XC developers have decided to reveal their identities, after much eager anticipation from the community. Do keep in mind this is not a complete list, as there will be more roles to be filled as XC progresses.


From the looks of it, there is one lead developer and one co-developer behind XC. There is also a community manager, social media manager/consultant, a web developer, a PR & media liaison, and, of course, someone taking care of branding and design.


All in all, the XC team looks pretty solid. What strikes me as most interesting, is that pretty much everyone involved got into Crypto in 2012 or 2013. Just goes to show how far the Crypto world has come since then.


You can find the official announcement and more information about the XC team here :


http://xc-official.com/XCPlatform/14-06-16%20Team%20Announcement%20D.pdf


In other news, the XC team have developed a Tor stick, which runs a secure XC wallet by connecting to the network via Tor, and makes your coins portable. No installation is required, as it is just plug-and-play.


You can find out more about the XC Tor Stick here :


http://xc-official.com/XCPlatform/xc-tor-stick/14-06-25_Press_release-XC_TOR_Stick.pdf


Last but not least, the XC team have also revealed their short-term roadmap for the currency. On July 7th, we will see REV 2, as well as the launch of the new website , a social media revamp and updated XC wallet logo.


Later on, there will be REV 2.5 and REV 3 , XC Tor sticks being shipped to the community, Encrypted Messaging will become available, a marketing campaign will be launched, and many more things will be taking place shortly.


You can find the XC Short-term roadmap here :


http://xc-official.com/XCPlatform/XC-Short-Term-Roadmap.pdf



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/xc-news-meet-the-team-tor-stick-and-short-term-roadmap



XC NEWS

Vertcoin Community Uneasy With Developer Silence

Vertcoin is currently down 15% and is looking for the bottom, which has gotten many users on the edge. The coin claims to be an evolution of Litecoin, using an “Adaptive N-Factor” to determine how much memory is required to compute the hashing functions.


The developers are currently known to be working on private addresses for Vertcoin along with a brand new wallet, but the price dip has made some users ask questions. Developer silence may be normal for the Bitcoin community, regarding Nakamoto, but Vertcoin seems to be experiencing conflicting ideas.


Vertcoin Debate


While one side of the conversation wants the developers to be more vocal and transparent with the community, the other wants to drift away from them just like Bitcoin. This has led to some interesting discussions among the community along with a few ideas to bring communication back.


“I would personally like to see this community wean itself off its dependence on the developers. What I mean is instead of hanging on their every word, or lack of, we should each focus on what we can do to develop this coin,” user depboy said, “For technically gifted people, that may mean involving themselves in creating software which adds new functionality, or improves in some way on what we’ve already got.”


However, not everyone shares that same sentiment. Some want more response from the developers and would like to create a link between the two. Some just want an update.


“We need someone to make a link between us, the community, and them, development team, and we also need someone to advertise Vertcoin,” Whazee said, “Technology is an important thing, but we have to face the reality. Communication is the only thing that matters. We can’t afford to miss that part because it’s what makes a coin’s success.”


But there are people out there that believe the silence is a positive move.


“It may actually be good that the developers are separating themselves from the community, as this will put a lot of the creativity and development in the hands of the community and not just the central developers for a truly decentralized coin,” Vertcoin user SnoopDoge_ said, “In a truly decentralized system you have just as much power as the Vertcoin developers when it comes to releasing software and managing the coin.”



source:http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/vertcoin-community-uneasy-developer-silence/2014/06/23



Vertcoin Community Uneasy With Developer Silence

Dogecoin Creator Jackson Palmer To Leave Dogecoin Community

In an unexpected turn of events in the Dogecoin community, the creator of Dogecoin Jackson Palmer has decided unsubscribe from the Dogecoin subreddit. Through a public argument between himself and Alex Green, creator of the platform Moolah.io, over UltraPRO seeking trademark, Palmer has publicly shown intention to take a step back from the Dogecoin community due to the mass amount of internal issues brought to the public forum.


CCN

“Given that I just can’t be bothered dealing with the massive amounts of hate you’ve somehow had directed at me though, in the past 24 hours, I’m going to step back and let you run this community here on Reddit from now on, which you obviously own,” Palmer said to Green, “Unsubshibing. Peace.”


Green responded to this sentiment with anger, “Really? Are you going to respond with that? That is ridiculously childish. You’re being pissy because you no longer run the community. I never have, and I never will, and I will never want to. Personally, I will be very glad once you step back from this coin and let the community run it.”


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Green also went on to add an edit, furthering his response to the statement, “No. It’s just that the community sides with us because we haven’t let them down. On the other hand, they seem to not agree with a number of your points and arguments.”


The Dogecoin subreddit is the main source of community within the digital currency. While they are stretched over many social media, Reddit has provided them a solid forum that contains a large majority of the community activity.


Prior to this, Palmer released the email correspondence between himself and Jay Kuo, General Manager of UltraPRO. The introduction of the email debunked any fear that Jackson had prior to the trademarking announcement.


From Jay Kuo


Hi Jackson,


No, we didn’t file a trademark with the intention of going after any existing vendors. One thing we learned was the value of a property can often be supported by uses outside of legal rights. We are, however, creating and selling products through a license of Kabosu’s image, and we needed a defining name for the product line, and ‘doge’ was the obvious choice.


Jackson’s unsubscribing statement arose after Green filed on opposition to UltraPRO trademarking the term Doge. “Unlike Jackson, I am not willing to sit back and have my customers and this community be at the mercy of Ultra Pro’s good will,” Green said, “Utter bullshit, and I would recommend that each and every one of you take that on board.”


Green spoke at length about his issues with select member of the Dogecoin community, along with his uneasy feeling by being attacked so often. Green has been the victim of public attacks by prominent members of the Dogecoin subreddit in the past, and has addressed his opposition swiftly each time.


“Just once, I would like to announce that we’re doing something to help the community, and not have a bunch of throwaways with obsessive stalking compulsions, try and convince the community that I am trying to eat a baby,” he said, “Just once, I would like prominent members actually try and reach out to us, as opposed to claiming I’m the second coming of Hitler. At the end of the day, our platform has been around for half a year now, and our core business is continuing to do well, and make our customers happy.”


Palmer ended his statements with one final goodbye response to Green, leaving the Dogecoin community to wonder how long their creator will take a step back.


“You’re way too trigger happy with your legal team nonsense, and it puts a real damper on any of the fun we used to have around here. Like I said, I’m stepping away from this sadly cult-like subreddit.”



source: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/dogecoin-creator-jackson-palmer-leave-dogecoin-community-calls-cult-like/2014/06/24



Dogecoin Creator Jackson Palmer To Leave Dogecoin Community

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Feathercoin: Interview With Peter Bushnell

In this past month, it seems like alternate cryptocurrencies have been all the rage.



Earlier last month, Sunny King released Primecoin, a prime-number based cryptocurrency that is the first to attempt to make its mining algorithm simultaneously serve some kind of social value, and the currency was mentioned on BusinessInsider less than two days after launch. The currency then grew quickly, getting its own gambling site and exchange within three days. The surprising thing is that Primecoin is not unique in this. Over the past two years, we have seen the development of over seventy alternate currencies with features ranging from a smaller or larger number of coins to faster confirmations and radically different alternatives to Bitcoin’s proof of work.


One of the less radical alternatives in the alternative cryptocurrency, or “altcoin”, scene is Feathercoin, a currency introduced by Peter Bushnell on April 16, 2013. On a technical level, Feathercoin started off not being significantly different from Litecoin; the only change was an increase in the final currency supply from 84 million to 336 million. Later on, however, the currency developed other small differences; one change is faster difficulty retargets, allowing the network to adjust more quickly to changes in network power. Another is an advanced checkpointing system, which lead developer Peter Bushnell says will make Feathercoin “more resilient to 51% attacks than Bitcoin or Litecoin.” More importantly, however,Bushnell explains, the real attraction of altcoins is not necessarily just the minor details of their core features, but also the surrounding ecosystem. The ecosystem around Bitcoin is bloated; major changes to the main client are always met with great opposition, and for good reason – a billion dollar economy depends on it. “Feathercoin,” Bushnell writes, “by comparison is dynamic and agile. It is hard for people to get involved in Bitcoin in the same way that they could be involved in Feathercoin, we are still young and look to remain open to new people and ideas. Feathercoin has proved that it is able to evolve when faced with problems and looks to become more resilient than Bitcoin.”


Some of the newest developments around Feathercoin include the United Open Currency Solutions Group (UNOCS), an advocacy group made in collaboration with WorldCoin and PhenixCoin, a system to protect against attacks known as “advanced checkpointing”, and an E-bay style marketplace. Feathercoin now has the sixth largest market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, placing it above Novacoin, Primecoin and Devcoin but below PPCoin, Namecoin and the “big three” of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ripple. In this interview, Peter Bushnell shares his thoughts on why he created Feathercoin, the current situation that alternative currencies are in, and the promise that they offer for the future.


Vitalik Buterin: What’s your personal background? What were you involved in before Bitcoin, and how did you first find out about Bitcoin? What about the currency interested you?


Peter Bushnell: For the last eleven years I have been working as Head of IT at Brasenose College which is one of the colleges that make up Oxford University. It is a long time to be in any one place and now that I’m working with crypto currencies life is a lot more fast-paced and infinitely more interesting. I first heard of Bitcoin from New Scientist many years ago, before I actually become involved myself. When I first arrived on the scene in late 2011 I started mining Bitcoin, which was very unsatisfactory as I could only mine 0.1 coins a day. I was not mining as a means to make some money but just to play and collect some coins; I have always had an enthusiasm for technology and computers which is why I ended up working in IT professionally. Finally, I found Litecoin, which at the time was very young and had hardly any value, and the joy of Litecoin was that I could actually mine many of them. When I first found Litecoin there was a fair bit of enthusiasm surrounding it, and many saw it co-existing happily with Bitcoin – which I believed to be true.


What interested me about Bitcoin was the fact that it worked. When I read the New Scientist article I was intrigued as I imagined it would be a tough task getting a value attached to these Bitcoins, but there the markets were which gave Bitcoin its value and allowed the whole world to trade with one another almost instantly without having to use the traditional and costly banking systems.


Vitalik: What made you decide to create an alternative cryptocurrency?


Peter: I am a big supporter of Litecoin, but I found that it had run out of steam as there seemed to be little effort to progress, my emails to Litecoin devs went unanswered and I had to question what I really knew about Litecoin. Having a Scrypt coin made sense as GPU miners were soon to be looking for a new home with the coming of ASIC miners, and I was waiting for another Scrypt coin to jump on to and had in my mind what I wanted ideally. Mincoin came along, but it launched without a Qt GUI and had very large rewards for initial blocks. This seemed largely unfair. We then saw the Russian Novacoin launch which was pre-mined before it was launched to the public, and I also saw that as unfair.


I had the idea of a coin that simply followed on what Litecoin had started with Bitcoin by having four times as many coins as Litecoin; that seemed to be the next natural step. It occurred that I could code the coin myself, which is exactly what I did. The good news since Feathercoin launched is that Litecoin woke up and did something – competition is a good thing.


Vitalik: I understand it, Feathercoin’s only two technical differences from Litecoin are 4x faster difficulty retargets and 4x more coins. Why did you decide to change these aspects of Litecoin? Why are these features important? Are there any other differences between the two that I’m missing?


Peter: The core difference at the beginning was simply four times as many coins, like Litecoin having four times as many coins as Bitcoin. Since our launch we have changed to incorporate a four times quicker difficulty adjust which works better for a network smaller than that of Bitcoin or Litecoin. This shows the willingness to evolve to deal with problems that our network is faced with.


Right now, we are working on a feature known as advanced checkpointing. Currently blockchain checkpoints are compiled into the client which has to be redistributed. To protect against attackers orphaning genuine blocks, checkpoints will be issued after blocks have been created. Advanced Checkpointing prevents 51% attacks and is an example of where smaller coins contribute to all crypto currencies. Smaller coins have to deal with a lot of things that do not concern Bitcoin or Litecoin. With Advanced Checkpointing implemented Feathercoin will be more resilient to 51% attacks than Bitcoin or Litecoin.


Vitalik: Could you explain to me how this advanced checkpointing mechanism works?


Peter: Feathercoin experienced 51% attacks where the attackers managed to orphan genuine blocks and get their own mined blocks accepted by the network. This is very frustrating to the miners and exposes users to the risk of reversed transactions. Bitcoin includes a checkpointing system to solve this problem, where certain blocks can be hardcoded into the client so that your client will only ever connect to the blockchain with those blocks in it.


Advanced Checkpointing works by providing a feed of checkpoints that clients subscribe to. When a block gets created it will be checkpointed automatically by a single node in the first iteration of the software. This checkpoint will be put into a feed which other clients will be subscribed to. The other clients will pick up this checkpoint and will start rejecting blockchains that do not include the block referenced in the checkpoint. This is not mandatory as clients can opt-out. If the feed goes down, the network carries on as normal and when the feed comes back it starts checkpointing from the end of the network blockchain.


This system needs to be distributed to be made more resilient and move away from the centralization that this introduces. This solution upsets the purists but is the lesser of two evils. We have experienced several 51% attacks on the Feathercoin network and we would rather see the network out of attackers’ hands. The attackers that have been targeting us have 3GH Scrypt or 3TH SHA-256 of mining power. The attackers have excellent knowledge of exactly how the network operates and have run some impressive attacks. Our hashrate is to high for them to attack Feathercoin right now but they could get more hash power but for now they have moved on to other smaller coins. With attackers like this out there everyone should be worried.


Vitalik: If someone on the street (or the internet) asked you “why should I use Feathercoin?”, how would you answer?


Peter: Feathercoin is a very active coin with a lot of enthusiasm. We have very different pressures compared to Bitcoin which is making us evolve much faster than the lumbering giant that Bitcoin has become. It is indeed hard for Bitcoin to move too fast without creating a lot of upset. Feathercoin by comparison is dynamic and agile. I always encourage people to visit the Feathercoin forum as anyone can get involved. We are a transparent coin with an active community. It is hard for people to get involved in Bitcoin in the same way that they could be involved in Feathercoin, we are still young and look to remain open to new people and ideas. Feathercoin has proved that it is able to evolve when faced with problems and looks to become more resilient than Bitcoin.


Vitalik: Much of the Feathercoin community’s emphasis so far, as I understand, has been on creating better software, tutorials, marketplaces and the like. Why not simply make better software, tutorials and marketplaces for Bitcoin?


Peter: We need diversity if something is going to survive, it is simply the survival of the fittest. A lot of people complained that Litecoin was going to damage cryptocurrency, which to me seemed absurd as Litecoin was clearly trying something new. What I find disappointing is how many people with Litecoin in their pockets now throw stones at Feathercoin for those same reasons. Having many coins trying different things will allow us to explore what works in cryptocurrency; as long as these coins have some value on the market then they can be used to send money around the world.


Vitalik: What is your opinion on the state of alternative cryptocurrencies in general?


Peter: I believe that cryptocurrencies right now are in a bit of a lull. There are some major obstacles that we are faced with which makes things seem a bit gloomy to some. Gox is a good example of the troubles experienced dealing with banks and payment processors. What people do not realize is that are so many people working to solve some of these obstacles and there are already several solutions coming on to the horizon. The world of cryptocurrency is going to look very different in a couple of years’ time.


Vitalik: What role do you see alternative cryptocurrencies playing in the future? Do you expect any of them to overtake Bitcoin in the near or mid-term future? If so, what would be some of the factors driving such an outcome?


Peter: Alternative cryptocurrencies is where we are going to see the real technical progress made. Bitcoin needs to try and maintain a steady course, whereas the other currencies can evolve much faster. Feathercoin has more coins than Bitcoin by design so that it can exist as a lower value coin. This is supposed to remain true, and Feathercoin should not threaten Bitcoin’s value directly. Since Feathercoin is an open source project leaves, any innovations made in the client can be picked up by Bitcoin. As long as Bitcoin remains active and adapts then I expect it to remain a strong force for cryptocurrency adoption.


Vitalik: Feathercoin, Worldcoin and PhenixCoin recently partnered to form the “United Open Currencies Solutions Group”. Could you explain in more detail what this organization is, and what its objectives are?


Peter: The idea behind UNOCS is that working together we can do more than apart. UNOCS gives us a name under which we can undertake joint projects. I would like to see more coins work together rather than just view everyone else as a threat. It’s not a merger; even though we have this partnership together, we are all still independent coins. The organization’s first project will be the UNOCS Bridge, which allows merchants to accept all UNOCS coins without having to wait for transactions as all the coins are held in the system. The system handles exchanging between coins and eventually will allow people to move to fiat. That is the long term goal – to ease movement between crypto and fiat. here does seem to be a lot of people working towards solutions like this which I find very reassuring, as moving from fiat to crypto and back can be far more difficult than it should be. I find that the legacy banking seems to be somewhat hostile to cryptocurrency.


Vitalik: What are some of your future plans with Feathercoin, both in the near and long term?


Peter: The main objective of Feathercoin is to survive long term, to continue to adapt to the world it finds itself in. There are many opportunities for cryptocurrency and we do not intend to miss them. There are places in the world local currency is having trouble where cryptocurrencies could be a real solution, we are looking to lower entry requirements to cryptocurrency by implementing SMS based wallets. This increases access to Feathercoin in places that do not have high end smart phones available. I hope that cryptocurrency can solve some of the financial problems that the world faces today, giving anyone with a basic phone access to a cryptocurrency account puts a lot of power back into the hands of the people. You can see that all these efforts are working to a time where cryptocurrency finds its critical mass. Cryptocurrency is going to be the biggest technical innovation since the birth of the Internet.



source: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6263/feathercoin-interview-with-peter-bushnell/



Feathercoin: Interview With Peter Bushnell

The Realm of Feathercoin

If you think you missed out on the crypto currency craze, think again; the race is set to be a long one. The media loves to typecast Bitcoin as a fad that will pass in due time, but the only place digital currency seems to be headed – in the opinion of this author – is upward.


There is evidence of it in other currencies that have been popping up, like TerraCoin and Litecoin. But there remains an underdog who has garnered more popularity in a few short weeks than Litecoin could muster in over a year: welcome to the big leagues, Feathercoin.Users on Bitcointalk.org have a mixed bag of emotions regarding Feathercoin, but user aikklond puts it best: “Grasp the economy basics of supply and demand. How many brands of Credit Cards are there? How many Stocks are listed in NYSE? How many coins do you think a 7+ Billion population needs? Feathercoin is a wild success, and it will not be the last.”

Part of its popularity is due to the fact that it is newer and easier to mine than other digital currencies, but I wanted to dig deeper to see if any special elements set Feathercoin apart from its counterparts.Feathercoin operates on the same platform as Litecoin, with Scrypt-based hashing algorithms that run on GPUs. This is crucial because Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm that favors ASIC mining hardware traditionally known to cause trouble.


ASIC hardware does outperform GPU hardware, but since it is so potent, it will eventually render GPU Bitcoin mining redundant. The last thing that digital currencies need in their fledgling state is to be self-defeated, so a Scrypt-based crypto currency is designed to safeguard against the effects of ASIC mining.

Feathercoin has an upper hand with block rewards, offering two hundred coins per block chain with a total of 336 million total coins planned to be circulated. Bitcoin, on the other hand, will only ever circulate 21 million coins.Despite the technical differences, Feathercoin has another edge over Bitcoin and Litecoin that plays to its advantage. The forum community, cultivated by John Manglaviti and Peter Bushnell, consists of over 1,000 users, all of whom volunteer their time to make the Feathercoin useful in various markets.“Our users believe in the coin and they believe in each other,” says Manglaviti.

With 11 established sub-groups ranging from miners to artists, Feathercoin is operating in an almost grassroots campaign fashion. The aim is to be the digital currency for everyday transactions.And the entire community is behind this ideal, casting aside personal attacks and elitist attitudes so that they might all see Feathercoin at the top of the market one day.“You can talk about what might be wrong with the currency,” says Manglaviti. “But you have to be willing to pick up the shovel and work.”

In their upcoming release, Feathercoin will be focusing on improving their customer experience in an effort to make transactions and currency exchanges as simple as possible for any new user. While it does remain a bit complex at the current moment, a team of volunteers has created a host of tutorials for beginners who want to join the Feathercoin movement.That is, after all, how I found myself downloading the client, encrypting my wallet, and beginning to mine digital currency for the first time in my life after only 30 minutes of light reading.Bitcoin is tied up in its own size and has difficulty adapting quickly, but Feathercoin, as it is said, is digital currency without the weight.



source: http://tech.co/a-foray-into-the-realm-of-feathercoin-2013-06



The Realm of Feathercoin

BlackCoin Team Developer Creates True Smart Contracts

A member of the BlackCoin development team has created a new method for eliminating risk during peer-to-peer transfers.


This revolutionary protocol, called BitHalo for Bitcoin and BlackHalo for BlackCoin, will be not only the world’s first “smart contracts” client, but also make contracts unbreakable.


BlackCoin, a top 10 digital currency by market cap that secures its network entirely through proof of stake, announced today that a member of the BlackCoin development team has created a new method for eliminating risk during peer-to-peer transfers. This revolutionary protocol, called BitHalo for Bitcoin and BlackHalo for BlackCoin, will be not only the world’s first “smart contracts” client, but also make contracts unbreakable.

Unbreakable contracts will protect Bitcoin users from future Mt. Gox-type collapses. They will also provide a number of other benefits in the financial world including eliminating derivative markets volatility, the creation of decentralized exchanges that do not depend on a “middle” coin, unhackable wallets, good faith employment contracts, real world bartering, backing of commodities such as Bitcoin cash, and two party escrow.

BitHalo and BlackHalo will make Bitcoin and BlackCoin the first digital currencies to feature smart contracts. The protocols do not require the use of any central server or host to organize the transactions. The protocol itself takes advantage of BlackCoin’s scripting system, meaning no changes are required to the Bitcoin network for it to run, and that immediate adoption is possible. The program uses “Double Deposit Escrow,” which encourages parties to complete real world deals in good faith by making the reward lower than the value of default. This process allows contract bridges to form, as well as micropayment channels, allowing for potentially unlimited transactions under the same contract. Once the deposits are set up, the actual exchange begins.

BitHalo/BlackHalo developer David Zimbeck said, “The protocol uses risk, reward and agreement to circumvent malleability, which was ironically once thought to prevent these types of protocols. Almost every sector of the economy that involves third parties runs the risk of loss to the consumer. This protocol now gives individuals full control over who they decide to trust and how they decide to structure that trust.”

Zimbeck continued: “I chose BlackCoin because of its fast transaction times, a massive advantage when engaged in contracting. Bitcoin transactions can take well over ten minutes for their first confirmation, while BlackCoin normally confirms in well under a minute. Trust and agreement are the basis of society so this technology affects everyone.”

The BitHalo and BlackHalo applications will become the basis for an umbrella app called NightTrader. NightTrader builds on top of BitMessage and allows for decentralized order books, servers and native communication protocols. NightTrader focuses on “agreement” between computers by filtering messages. Peer-to-peer U.S. Dollar and Chinese Yuan exchanges will be an immediate feature in the client.

About BlackCoin

BlackCoin is a transparent and accessible digital currency that operates entirely through proof of stake. Proof of stake offers a number of advantages over proof of work systems including much faster confirmation times, less selling pressure due to its unminable protocol, and independence from expensive and energy-intensive mining. The digital currency is supported by the BlackCoin multipool, which pays out in BlackCoin. The BlackCoin Foundation consists of a worldwide network of brand ambassadors, who lead a vibrant international community of BlackCoin advocates.



source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/06/prweb11956245.htm



BlackCoin Team Developer Creates True Smart Contracts

Saturday, June 14, 2014

BlackCoin’s Decentralized Exchange “BlackHalo”

With the BlackCoin’s community push to be globally recognized and adopted, new technologies and innovations are pouring out of its community.


Dzimbeck, a known digital currency enthusiast and programmer, spent the last several months creating what he calls “BlackHalo” and “BitHalo” which are the worlds first functional smart contracting clients. He believes that it will solve many real world problems like trusting strangers and eliminating middle men. Using a technique called double deposit two party escrow, a person can trust a stranger from anywhere in the world to honor an agreement of any kind. This is not limited to Bitcoin. The secret was making the risk of cheating the contract higher than the reward of honoring it. Parties will not be able to extort from each other because of a filtered messaging system built right into the Blackcoin client. So now, anyone can buy Blackcoin from anywhere in the world peer-to-peer with complete strangers. This allows for decentralized exchanges, derivatives, guarantors, bartering, backing of Bitcoin cash, good faith employment contracts, elimination of malleability and basically any agreement imaginable.



The biggest innovation BlackHalo announces which directly affects countries such as China is person to person international transfers with untrustworthy parties. No longer do you have to worry about your favorite Bitcoin exchange being closed down or the person in charge running away with their pockets full of your money. You can initiate transfers straight from yourself to someone else right from the wallet without the need of a company or person in the middle. They can be from anywhere in the world. Payment options can include Western Unions, Paypal, Moneygram, Bank Wire, cash or whatever the counter-party is willing to accept. You can pay them knowing they can’t break the contract due to the advanced deposit each party made to insure the deal. The contracts are unbreakable. This will ensure your BlackCoins are safe in your pocket without the worry of losing them due to someone’s negligence or corruption. Additionally, large deals can take place with small deposits using micro-funding where coins are continuously sent under the security of the same contract. The contract works like a bridge and unlimited transactions can take place on top of it.


Another technology that BlackHalo brings to light is the announcement of working joint accounts. This is beneficial to you if you are a business man or a family man. What this allows is for you to share your joint account to your business partners or your spouse while also added an extra layer of security to ensure that your money is completely hack-proof. If needed you can take this a step further and password protect your keys with an added layer of encryption. This new innovation resembles many of the day to day banking solutions that bank accounts already provide. With BlackHalo you can also set up a Two-Step send. This is an option for joint accounts and maximizes your security. For example, if you have a business partner and you want to agree on all purchases together, then you can both control a key, giving 50% control of the account. If one person disagrees, then the transaction does not go through.


How does this magic happen? Through BlackHalo’s contract system. It is now possible to construct contracts within the wallet between you and a contractor. To our knowledge, BlackHalo is the only two-party electronic contracting system anywhere in the world. What this allows is for the client to automatically destroy a contract if the needs are not met. This is important in the daily business world where if the contract is not fulfilled, that person does not receive the funds in escrow.



The smart contracts can be sent in the BlackHalo encrypted messaging system named NightTrader which builds on top of Bitmessage. NightTrader will build decentralized exchanges, servers, message filtering and python contracts. It creates a totally new system of client networks which use what Dzimbeck is calling “naive communication protcols.” This allows clients to communicate and use the same risk and reward system for agreeing on messages and data without the use of centralized servers. This prevents threats and extortion since clients can filter the messages and allows for all kinds of wonderful products to be created from the platform itself.



source: http://www.followthecoin.com/new-info-on-blackcoins-decentralized-exchange-blackhalo/



BlackCoin’s Decentralized Exchange “BlackHalo”

LIMITED EDITION CRYOBIT BLACKCOIN COLD STORAGE CARD

Time for some BlackCoin news that involves physical cold storage. Sounds intriguing, right?


CryoBit, a company who produce cold storage options for Crypto, now also offer cold storage cards, which are designed for BlackCoin usage.



These CryoBit cards are extremely limited edition, as there will only be 100 CryoBit BlackCoin cold storage cards ever made. These cards are made out of an AMS 5524 stainless steel construction which is dye-sublimated gloss black and laser etched with its serial production number. Short version : they look damn sexy!


These BlackCoin CryoBit cold storage cards are fire proof, flood proof , and well, stainless steel is supposed to be nearly indestructible in itself, right? The fellows over at CryptoCoinsNews took it to the test, and you can read their full review here.As far as pricing goes, each card will cost $40, which is a complete bargain for such a collector’s item. Payment can be done via BlackCoin through CoinPayments, but only for the first 25 orders , so you’ll have to act fast if you want to get one.



Note: The cards require a PRE-ENCRYPTED Private Key to be supplied. Normally there is a generator on the page to generate an encrypted version of your private key, however CryoBit is working to implement that into the order page — until then please encrypt your private key at your own risk, and please test that you can de-encrypt it before supplying the key in your order.


For some help on how to encrypt your key before you preorder: http://walletgenerator.net// Go there for a place to temporarily encrypt your private key and such in the meantime while CryoBit implements a generators to encrypt your keys on the order page.



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/get-your-extremely-limited-edition-cryobit-blackcoin-cold-storage-card-now



LIMITED EDITION CRYOBIT BLACKCOIN COLD STORAGE CARD

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Search engine queries

Economists are licking their chops thanks to bitcoin’s public ledger and the fact that the currency is completely digital.


Perhaps, for the first time, they can see exactly how supply and demand affect prices. And they can correlate those price movements with various factors like supply and demand, fiat exchange rates, the price of gold and even the number of search engine queries that take place in a given time.



Ladislav Kristoufek of the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, recently released a bitcoin study (arxiv.org/abs/1406.0268) that demonstrates how search activity can help predict short-term price movements in bitcoin.


Bitcoin-related Google and Wikipedia queries “are positively correlated with the Bitcoin price in the long run,” Kristoufek writes. “For both, we observe that the relationship somewhat changes in time. In the first third of the analyzed period, the relationship is lead by the prices whereas in the last third of the period, the search queries lead the prices.”



My interpretation? He’s saying that prices hikes outpaced search queries at the start of a bull run in bitcoin prices. When search queries outpace price movements, bitcoin could be due for a correction. That could be a clue for bitcoin daytraders to monitor. There is a caveat though:


“Unfortunately, the most interesting dynamics remains hidden in the cone of influence and it is thus not too reliable,” Kristoufek continues. “Apart from the long run, there are several significant episodes at the lower scales with varying phase direction hinting that the relationship between search queries and prices depends on the price behavior. Moving to the safe haven region, we find no strong and lasting relationship between the Bitcoin price and either the Financial stress index or gold price.”


I’m surprised he found little correlation between the Financial stress index and gold price, but that makes me optimistic about the future price of bitcoin because I believe the currency will ultimately win over a decent chunk of the gold bug crowd.



source: http://crypt.la/2014/06/06/search-engine-queries-can-predict-bitcoin-prices/



Search engine queries

CoinKite Implements BlackCoin

BlackCoin, the little PoS coin that could, is finally on its course to the beautiful endless bounty that is digital currency space.


Thanks to the great folks at CoinKite! It was a match made in the stars; BlackCoin was poised to be the perfect utility for merchants. BlackCoin is efficient, secure and most importantly — fast. These specific attributes appealed greatly to the kind folks at CoinKite, and the rest from there is, how they say – history.


The great team at CoinKite decided on a contest to determine which Altcoin they would be supporting next on April 8th. They had a laundry list of criteria — which luckily — BlackCoin fit the bill on all accounts.


Must have a fiat to XXX exchange—at least one somewhere in the world.

Two or more BTC/XXX exchanges.

Be based on bitcoin source (ie. nothing wild like ripple).

Not have a obnoxious name that we would be embarrassed to say/promote, and a commonly used three letter code.

Preferably, have a block interval of >1 minute.

Must have a blockchain explorer we can deep link into (bonus: reliable and fast).

Addresses that are not confusing compared to bitcoin (ie. different first letter is needed).

More than one major mining pool: cannot have a single pool operator controlling all blocks.

Must have client binaries for major systems such as OSX, Linux

Finally, we need you to put your money where your mouth is! We’ve setup a pool for each candidate altcoin, and the first which accumulates more than ฿25 in value wins. You can vote by contributing coins, or simply by increasing the value of your altcoin relative to Bitcoin on the exchanges and in real life.


Up to 75% will be used to fund development and testing costs, and remainder donated to a charity of our choice.


If a coin doesn’t reach the goal in 3 months (May 1st, 2014) the entire balance for that coin will go to charity.


Following the start of the contest, no less than mere hours later, the BlackCoin community rallied together and secured a total of 265,372 BLK (or BC, more on this later), valued at more than 25BTC at today’s exchange rates. A record breaking effort from the BlackCoin community; that amount of BlackCoin would be well over 75BTC in value at todays prices. That is a 3x gain over the price since April 8th. Impressive, to say the very least.


Moving Forward

Now, although the additional criteria was fulfilled rather quickly, that does not mean that this implementation did not have some form of community backlash. People in the community argued the rule requiring BlackCoin to have a 3 letter code was unnecessary, upsetting some users in the community who maintain a special attachment to the current use of ‘BC’. Some stating that having CoinKite implement the acronym ‘BLK’, instead of the commonly used ‘BC’, as “pointless” – and would only frustrate and confuse current users of BlackCoin. The arguments against that have been the long term vision of BlackCoin as a financial device, and how the normal nomenclature calls for a 3 letter code to signify BlackCoin on tickers and other financial systems. Although many can understand certain community members attachment to the old BC symbol, CoinKite needing to have BLK as its ticker is still in its infancy. The issue could certainly smooth itself out over time as more merchant services copy CoinKite and use the ticker BLK in lieu of BC. Ultimately, only time will tell the outcome of this small issue.


More Than Just A Processing Service

Why is BlackCoin’s partnership with CoinKite just so pivotal to the BlackCoin ecosystem when companies like Coinbase and BitPay already exist to serve any capacity of merchants? The importance here, lies in the unique approach that the creators of CoinKite are choosing to implement. Not only is CoinKite a payment processor/web wallet exchange; but instead of just processing Bitcoin like its competitors, CoinKite also accepts Litecoin and Blackcoin. However, it doesn’t just stop there. CoinKite provides a digital currency debit card-esque solution in addition to it’s aforementioned web wallet.


The CoinKite card, in essence – is your portable, non-digital wallet to access your coins when you’re on the go. Users can accept BlackCoin/Bitcoin/Litecoin from friends, family, as well as use them with participating merchants. This allows the remaining 99% of the worlds population to be able to access their funds without the use of the internet. This also alleviates Apple’s current blockade of wallet based apps from its App Store, making it so even the iPhone crowd can review their balance from a browser or CoinKite iOS app (if these opt to release one in the future) and still be able to use their digital currency. The alienation of the 99% of users who have frankly never heard of digital currencies will not end unless the killer app, or the killer product is made to merge that bridge between geek utility, into fully functioning monetary alternative.


You can also use a CoinKite branded terminal for the acceptance of digital currencies at your store, too! These terminals are available for purchase directly from CoinKite. This means that any merchant wishing to take advantage of BlackCoin’s blazing fast transaction speeds (when compared to the competition), as well as reaping the benefits of adopting BlackCoin while it is still in its infancy can do so. This allows the opportunity in making exponential gains with possible future rises in BLK’s price for holding a percentage of sales in BLK in lieu of a direct conversion into fiat currencies. Merchant’s also escape from all the credit cards fees and other fees from their participating financial institutions — allowing smaller businesses to operate with less overhead (aside from the subscription with CoinKite). CoinKite and Blackcoin is the perfect combination for any new or existing merchant!


What’s in it for the average joe who wants to get into digital currency?

This is the biggest part! CoinKite and BlackCoin’s partnership allows for the ultimate in place and form utility. You are able to control your funds directly from CoinKite’s site, monitoring all out-going spending and receiving right from the site. With the addition of the debit card; allowing new users to spend their newfound digital currency will be easier than ever! CoinKite’s awesome platform allows you to be able to completely have control of your finances with the push of a button, making the introduction into digital currency a little more like having a bank account/debit card — relieving some of the stress and learning curve that is usually associated with learning to use BlackCoin (setting up your wallet, downloading the blockchain, learning about private/public keys). Those things can immediately turn off new potential users. That is why CoinKite is the best vehicle to launch BlackCoin forward into mass adoption.



source: http://www.followthecoin.com/coinkite-implements-blackcoin-june-1st-little-blackcoin-aims-stars/



CoinKite Implements BlackCoin