Mirena bitcoin miner
21 comments
Confirmations bitcoin exchange rate
The media is buzzing these days with stories about bitcoin , the most popular of available crypto currencies. First proposed in and implemented in , recent bubbles and crashes in the exchange-rate for the bitcoin have everyone talking about it. And while the volatility and investment possibilities of bitcoin are intriguing, to me the truly interesting aspect is the role of the bitcoin miner. As the name implies, bitcoin miners — which are generally either computers or specialized hardware — are responsible for mining new bitcoins.
However, that is not their primary function. Those individuals running bitcoin mining software are, in effect, running the bitcoin transaction processing network in a peer-to-peer fashion. And you can actually come out ahead financially. There is specialized hardware on the horizon that may make it much less profitable to mine bitcoins. Check out this hardware chart and this calculator for more information. However, most of the bitcoin mining software is aimed at Windows and Linux. BitMinter is a great service for trying out bitcoin mining with minimal effort.
BitMinter functions as a bitcoin pool and as mining software. Their mining software is a Java app. While Java can be a good choice for providing a single app for multiple platforms, recent changes in the Java runtime environment on OS X mean that the BitMinter app may not run without some work. If that is the case, simply click on this knowledgebase link from Apple and follow the instructions. Afterward you should be able to launch the. If you are still having trouble, launch them from the command line with the javaws utility:.
And you are now off and mining. This is the number of hashes per second your hardware is performing. And, while the BitMinter miner is one of the easiest to try on OS X, it is worth noting a few downsides:. While this is outside the scope of this article, know that you will need to pick a pool to participate in. Mining pools are collections of individuals mining common blocks of bitcoin transactions. This means you get paid small fractions every couple of hours instead of waiting months or even years for larger, rounder payouts.
You can read more about the available bitcoin pools here. These utilities remove the Java requirement and offer performance improvements while also letting you participate in the pool of your choice. For some, BitMinter client is the fastest. Thanks for the clarification. I was simply using those terms to differentiate between the various miners. The only thing that differentiated them was over-clocking and minor tweaks. Overclocking led to so much instability that the downtime greatly outweighed the loss in raw speed.
I love your articles, they got me dabbling in it pretty hard now. Thanks for the info, very helpful! Hi Matt — thanks for the kind words and feedback. Do you know why this may happen. Make sure the driver is loaded. Your email address will not be published. You may use these HTML tags and attributes: Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. If you are still having trouble, launch them from the command line with the javaws utility: And, while the BitMinter miner is one of the easiest to try on OS X, it is worth noting a few downsides: Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.