Mining is down. The profitability of mining has fallen amid a decline in the price of bitcoin. What is mining and why is it needed

Along with the collapse in the price of bitcoin, the profitability of mining is also falling, notes Bloomberg columnist Tim Kulpan. If no one stops mining, they run the risk of suffering serious losses and discovering that they are working for nothing.

The fall of Bitcoin earlier this week by 70% from December highs has reduced the yield to almost zero. On Tuesday, the price of bitcoin dropped to $6,000. Under these conditions, only the largest and most efficient farms make any profit, but even they are teetering on the edge.

It is highly likely that miners who are not in the top four pools that buy equipment at wholesale prices (67% of the total computing power of the network are concentrated in their hands) are already losing money. The arms race among the participants has led to the fact that since December 18, when the price of bitcoin exceeded $ 19,000, computing power has jumped by 40%. Data from Blockchain.info shows that block confirmation difficulty has increased by 51% since then.

Miners tolerated an incredible increase in difficulty (it skyrocketed 18 times in two years) as the 21x rise in the price of bitcoin over the same period offset the costs and justified the investment.

If bitcoin stayed near the 50-day moving average at $13,200, the average miner could expect to make $80 per week at current computing power and difficulty. This estimate is based on the bold assumption that he is using Bitmain Technologies' Antminer S9 with a claimed 13.5 TH/s (retail price of $2,320) - one of the most advanced systems available on the market - and purchasing power from China at wholesale prices. . The profitability of older equipment will be lower, although many of those systems are still in operation.

If prices do not rise, then the average miner will lose $3 per week at current levels. Mining syndicates such as Antpool - they buy equipment at wholesale prices - will still earn, but their profits will fall by 90% from the level corresponding to the 50-day moving average.

The only way to increase profitability is to wait for prices to rise or some miners to leave the market and competition to fall. History shows that the latter is possible, but unlikely. In fact, those who have invested millions of dollars in bitcoin farms are holding on to their business in the hope that competitors will be the first to pass.

If this happens, then only the most persistent players will remain in the market, who will enjoy legitimate mining. Otherwise, a sad fate awaits them all.

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Mining in Russia will become unprofitable if 1 bitcoin costs less than $5900

About 5,000 mining devices are imported into Russia every month, according to RAKIB. Despite the large fluctuations in the exchange rate, mining is still an attractive investment, but already from the perspective of professional use.

Even at the current rate of $8,000 for bitcoin, mining remains profitable. However, if the pessimistic forecast of the Goldman Sachs bank is implemented, the “mining” of cryptocurrency in Russia will be on the verge and beyond profitability: the bitcoin rate may drop below $5,900 per unit, according to Goldman Sachs technical strategist Sheba Jafari. According to the author, this is exactly the limit, the achievement of which will make mining almost unprofitable even in comparison with bank deposits.

Based on the complexity of the computer network (the amount of calculations to create one digital coin), the critical BTC/USD rate at which mining can become unprofitable, depending on many variables, is up to $5900 per 1 bitcoin. This indicator includes not only the cost of the devices themselves, but also the costs necessary for its operation: electricity, cooling, rent, maintenance of staff, transport, Internet and depreciation.

Moreover, the bitcoin rate affects not only the profitability of its own production, but all other cryptocurrencies, which are largely related to its rate as a flagship cryptocurrency.

Hardware basis

A bit of history, so that later it will be clear where the difficulties arise when choosing mining equipment. After the number of participants in the decryption of cryptocurrency blocks became more and more, computer power was not enough. Miners adapted video cards for decryption, which have the most suitable architecture and maximum powerful computing power. Soon the complexity of the network increased and miners began to combine video cards, thus mining farms appeared. One farm on average consists of 8 video cards, the exact number depends on the capabilities of the motherboard and operating system.

Due to the constant increase in the complexity of the network, technological progress could no longer significantly increase the speed of calculations, so the number of farms began to grow. Owners of 100 - 1000 mining farms began to appear in the world, and gigantic areas were required to accommodate them.

Chinese factories for the production of computer components reacted to this. They created specialized processors that quickly performed mining operations for certain types of currencies and thus ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) appeared. They were created for industrial miners. ASICs were more convenient to place, easier to configure, easier to maintain, and they are much more efficient than video cards for their (underline!) Cryptocurrency.

ASIC devices can mine a limited number of cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash and Siacoin. Many other cryptocurrencies with a similar algorithm can also be mined on ASIC devices, while the rest are created on farms with video cards.

Mining profitability

Profitability largely depends on the rate of cryptocurrencies and the complexity of the network. At the beginning of 2017, when the bitcoin rate was around $700, the profitability of one ASIC or farm on video cards was $9 and $7, respectively. At the end of the year, when the rate was $19,000 for 1 bitcoin, the profitability reached record highs of $50 and $40 per day, but the relationship between the rate and profitability is not direct, since network complexity must be taken into account.

At the same time, it is easy to calculate the costs based on electricity consumption, the average power consumption of one device (mining farm or ASIC) is about 1.3 kWh, with an electricity cost of 6 rubles per kWh, one device burned electricity for $ 3 per day, 2.

Price instability

The dynamics of changes in the cost of mining equipment is one of the most important details of attention when buying. Sometimes the difference in price in one day can reach 40,000 rubles. The reasons for such jumps are several aspects: the BTC / USD rate, the hype - with high demand, the manufacturer cannot provide the desired number of devices, but he does not overcharge, prices begin to dictate outbids - hence the prices in the rest of the market. This is seen by the end stores, and insuring the risks associated with delays in their next orders, they also raise their prices.

All these reasons, including, are interconnected, as soon as the BTC/USD rate rises, mining efficiency increases, the payback period falls, and this attracts new buyers of mining equipment. Shops selling equipment and meeting the hype - raise prices and place new orders at the manufacturer. Factory accepting orders 3 months in advance. New owners of miners, by connecting new devices to the network, increase the computing power of the network and the software automatically increases the complexity of the network, the mining efficiency drops, the payback period increases, the number of new buyers of mining devices decreases, the prices for miners fall back.

For clarity, you can look at the market over the past few months. Until October 2017, the cost of mining equipment was almost constant with a slight increase in accordance with demand (for example, the popular bitcoin miner Bitmain AntMiner S9 in January 2017 in Russia cost an average of 150,000 rubles, in October 190,000 rubles). But since November 2017, when the BTC rate began to rise rapidly, the profitability of mining has grown significantly, the BTC / USD rate has grown every day, each miner has brought more USD per day and, accordingly, its payback period has been significantly reduced.

All this was instantly reflected in the market, all the interested masses of people decided to buy miners, there was a shortage of offers.

In December 2017, when the BTC / USD rate was at its peak, the payback period for the most popular bitcoin miner Bitmain Antminer S9 decreased to 4 months, there was a high demand for it, but it was actually unrealistic to buy it - there were offers to sell the Bitmain Antminer S9 miner at cost over 350,000 rubles. Equipment suppliers, collecting orders in Russia and placing them in China at the end of January, taking into account the New Year holidays in China, which take place in early February, predicted a shortage of equipment upon availability in Russia for the entire period of January-February.

Release of more powerful miners

The sharp fall in the bitcoin exchange rate radically affected the cost of ASICs. But even earlier, another factor acted - the emergence of new models. Now the prices for mining equipment in Russia have fallen to the level of the summer of 2017. There were offers with a price below the prices in China, as dealers in Russia were afraid of a further fall, and sold equipment at purchase price, since some of them purchased large quantities back in October, when the purchase price for February was below the current cost in Chinese retail stores:

- Bitmain Antminer S9 with a power supply - an average of 160,000 rubles (in China, by availability - 170,000 rubles)

- Bitmain Antminer L3 + with power supply - 145,000 rubles (in China, upon availability - 150,000 rubles)

- Whatsminer M3 with power supply - 125,000 rubles (in China - 130,000 rubles)

bitcoin. Chinese farm owners found an interesting way: seeing the high hype and order volumes, they began to upgrade local mining pools running on Bitmain Antminer S9: they sold current devices, and reserved space for the new Bitmain Antminer S11 miner, which has not yet gone on sale. Batches of used Bitmain Antminer S9 were shipped to Russia. The devices were previously checked, preventive maintenance, cleaning and packed as new.

It is also worth noting that the Chinese side of processing equipment orders has a certain chain of suppliers, dealers and the manufacturer itself. All of them closely monitor the hype and the BTC/USD rate, changing prices at lightning speed even in the process of concluding a deal.

The world of miners was in for an unpleasant surprise, the new Bitmain Antminer S11 is significantly more powerful than the Bitmain Antminer S9 (according to expert estimates, a 30% increase in power is expected). During their installation in large Chinese pools, there was an increase in the complexity of mining, which led to a drop in the profitability of existing farms. Taking into account the depreciation of BTC / USD in 2018, the total decrease in profitability in the New Year was five times compared to December 2017.

Dash. An even more dramatic story happened with devices for mining the Dash cryptocurrency, which appeared in September 2017. At the time of May 2017, the Dash cryptocurrency was very stable and was mined only on video cards, miners were consistently earning about $1000–$1500 per month on one farm. The hype began when iBeLink announced in June 2017 a new Dash ASIC miner - DM11G, its computational capabilities predicted monthly returns in the region of $5,000-$10,000 per device and it was the only Dash ASIC miner.

iBeLink opened pre-orders for this device for a short time in July with a shipment date in September 2017. The hype contributed to the rapid redemption of all quotas for the production of DM11G and the retail market for ASIC miners in Russia was flooded with offers to sell DM11G at prices of 1 million rubles for 1 device with delivery in September. But in mid-August 2017, when retail stores were already waiting for their orders for iBeLink DM11G, the Bitmain Antminer D3 device appeared on the BitMain factory website with a delivery date for November 2017, which also mines the Dash cryptocurrency, while about 70% faster. Later, the DR-100 device appeared, which made the iBeLink DM11G unattractive, and retailers faced serious overstocking with this weakest of the mining devices for the Dash cryptocurrency.

Retail buyers who did not pay in advance postponed the purchase until the situation stabilized. And those who paid for their orders instantly connected new devices to the network, noting high efficiency and monthly income in the region of $6,000. But the number of new devices on the network caused a spike in computational complexity without the Dash rising against the dollar. The payback period for one device increased from 3-4 months to 1 year, and retail prices for Dash ASIC miners crept down. Many retailers have been forced to close because could not meet the conditions for investors financing orders for batches of devices for a specific profit in a short time. As a result of all the events, the phased announcement of Dash ASIC miners, a sharp increase in network complexity and a fixed Dash/USD rate, the decrease in Dash mining profitability was almost 3 times compared to the beginning of September 2017.

Mining is still in trend

However, the demand for the purchase of mining equipment still remains. Now Bitmain Antminer S9 and iBeLink DM11G bring buyers a daily income of $9-11 and $3-5, respectively. Of course, those who bought the S9 at 350,000 rubles and more expensive than now, iBeLink DM11G, based on a yield of $120 and $50 per day, faced significant lost profits and a sharp increase in the payback period of investments. But there is still a demand for miners, and many players also resort to the services of traders or try to play on the exchanges themselves in an attempt to increase income. As a result, this leads to the expansion of professional participants in the crypto community.

What is mining?

What are the miner's Internet access requirements?

Mining traffic depends on the number of devices, their performance, as well as the minimum complexity of decisions that the pool accepts. For one properly configured device, the traffic is no more than 10 Kb / s, that is, a Dial-Up connection is enough, the main thing is its stability.

Miners without a stable wired connection often use 3G modems with the cheapest unlimited plan. If you have several tens or even hundreds of devices, you will need a thicker channel.

How much do miners earn?

The Bitcoin system is decentralized, it contains the principles of changing the complexity of generating coins, depending on the total capacity of the system. The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks so that on average six blocks are solved per hour. Thus, the change in difficulty occurs approximately every 14 days. But if the network power increases, then the complexity changes earlier (increases), and if the network power drops, then the complexity changes later (decreases).

You can calculate your earnings on. You just need to enter your speed in Mhash/s and click "Calculate". If you do not know your speed, then you can calculate it by the name and number of devices in this table.

The Bitcoin rate does not depend on the complexity, this complexity indirectly depends on the rate. Buyers of BTC do not care how difficult it was to generate these BTC.

For the current course, please follow the link below:
Latest Price - last completed transaction
Bid - demand
Ask - offer
Also, you can follow the course in real time on other sites, you can find the most complete list of them in the article.

How to remotely manage a farm?

On operating systems of the Windows family, you cannot use Remote Desktop (RDP) to manage farms, because it works with its virtual graphics card. Having stopped mining, you will not start it again, because. graphics cards will not be detected correctly. Use third party tools like TeamViewer, *VNC and more. Under linux (Ubuntu, XUbuntu, Debian) lightGDM does not allow getting graphics card resources in a remote console. With GDM everything works fine. Checked with cgminer, diablo.

How to start mining in solo mode?

Bitcoin mining in solo mode is almost impossible now if you do not have your own data center with several thousand modern ASIC miners. However, for some, solo mining is still effective.

Let's describe the process using Bitcoin as an example:

First, we go along the path "%appdata%\Bitcoin" (for example, in Windows 7: "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin"). We create a text file. Enter three lines into it:
server=1
rpcuser=user
rpcpassword=pass
(without quotes, come up with user and pass yourself). Then rename the file to "bitcoin.conf"

cgminer setup:

1. Go to the folder with cgminer

2. Create a txt file and enter into it:

Mining in pools

What is a pool?

Currently, everyone who finds a block receives 25 BTC. It is very difficult to do this alone, unless you have very large computing power. To solve this problem, there are pools, there can be many of them in the network. The pool brings together miners for the common search and solution of blocks. More detailed information about joint generation pools, their modes of operation and examples of setting up miners can be found in the article.

What happens if two miners enter the pool under one worker?

It all depends on the pool. Most pools allow multiple connections under a single worker. The pool simply takes into account all solutions from multiple devices in the same way as for one.

Do not forget that the worker on the pool is tied to a specific account, and all income is received by its owner. It doesn't matter where the devices themselves are and who they belong to.

I mine in the pool and find the block. Can I not give it to the pool and take all the BTC for myself?

No, it won't work. Each miner in the pool searches for a block according to the tasks of the server, from a technical point of view, this is equivalent to the fact that all devices that send solutions belong to the pool. When any of the miners connected to the pool finds a block, the reward transaction goes to the pool wallet. And only after that, the software that keeps track of the work of the miners distributes the reward between them. But if the owner of the pool is a scammer, he can appropriate all the found bitcoins for himself, and there is nothing you can do about it.

The owners of most large Bitcoin pools are known, but smaller fork pools are often anonymous. Therefore, when choosing a pool, be careful and withdraw what you have mined to your wallet as often as possible.

How can a miner check the honesty of the pool, that he gives all transactions in the task and does not ignore objectionable ones?

The miner at the time of generation cannot check what is included in the block and what is not, because. only the task for generating the block header comes to generation. The miner can learn about the bad behavior of the pool only after the fact, after receiving the finished block.

What is pool hopping?

Pool hopping is an intentional transition from pool to pool in order to catch a period of luck ("short" blocks) and thus earn more coins than it would be if you constantly work on one pool.

In fact, this is a cheat that pools are fighting with the introduction of a delay in the output of statistics, the introduction of rating systems and other methods. As a rule, on pools with a PPLNS accrual system, such jumps do not justify themselves, since even a short absence of a miner on the pool reduces his income for a long period of time (4-12 hours).

Questions about ASIC miners (SHA256 and Scrypt)

What is an ASIC miner?

ASIC (abbreviation for the English Application Specific Integrated Circuit, “Special Purpose Integrated Circuit”) is a microcircuit specialized for solving a specific problem. Unlike general-purpose integrated circuits, specialized chips are used in a specific device and perform strictly limited functions that are specific only to this device. An example of an ASIC would be a chip designed exclusively for mobile phone control, hardware encoding/decoding chips for audio and video signals (signal processors).

ASICs are used for mining because, due to a strictly defined structure, the process of manufacturing microcircuits is greatly reduced, and also because of the narrow specialization of chips, the productivity and energy efficiency of mining increase.

What is the difference between Scrypt ASIC and SHA256 ASIC?

The Scrypt hashing algorithm was designed specifically to counter faster devices - first graphics cards, then FPGAs and ASICs. Therefore, it is "more complex" than SHA256 (larger number, more rounds of calculation) and requires much more RAM to calculate it. This makes the production of such ASICs more costly.

What is dual miner?

This is a miner that can perform calculations simultaneously using two hashing algorithms - Scrypt and SHA256. The developers placed computing cores on one chip to calculate both algorithms, however, each type of core can only count according to its “own” algorithm. This makes such a device universal, but greatly increases the cost of production and heat dissipation, which does not have the best effect on payback. Now only one company produces this type of ASIC - in the past Gridseed, and now SFARDS.

What are ASIC miners?

Mining devices are available in several form factors, based on different categories of customers - compact, home and professional.

Compact miners are usually inserted into the USB connector and powered through it. In comparison with the "big brothers" they are the smallest and weakest. This is what the first generation chips from ASICminer - one of the first ASIC manufacturers for mining - called USB Block Erupter look like.

Its specifications are: 300Mh/s, 1.05V, 335MHz, 6x6mm. and 4.2 W at 1 Gh/s.

Later, compact miners were produced on chips from Bitfury and Coincraft, and even Antminer of the U * series, but were not in demand, as they brought purely nominal income and eventually turned into souvenirs.

Home and professional miners essentially differ only in size, case type and power consumption, all other characteristics are identical.

Home devices usually have cheaper cases and weak fans, they are smaller and lighter, and an average 600-700 W PSU is enough to power them. Typical representatives of this class are Antminer S1/S3/S5.

"Professional" miners are designed to be placed in datacenters and are usually mounted in 19” server racks. They have built-in PSUs (sometimes several) with a capacity of more than a kilowatt, a well-thought-out cooling system and powerful server fans, very noisy, but effective. Typical representatives are Antminer S2/S4, Terraminer from Cointerra, Coincraft Rig from Bitmine.

ASIC miners are compared according to the following characteristics:

1) Technological process of the chip

2) Throughput in Gh/s (GigaHashes per second) or Tx/s (Tahashes per second), where 1 Tx/s = 1000 Gh/s)

3) Power consumption per 1 Gh/s - for example, 1 W/Gh/s

4) Cost of 1 Gh/s - for example, $0.5 per Gh/s

5) The average temperature of the chip - °C (depending on the technical process, on average 40-60 °C)

Who releases ASIC for mining?

Own ASIC chips and ready-made devices based on them are now produced (or produced) by several companies:

• Bitmaintech
• Bitfury
• Avalon
• Innosilicon(Scrypt)
• SFARDS(Dual miner) - no longer produced
• Spondoolies-Tech- no longer produced
• KnCminer- no longer produced
• ASICminer- no longer produced
• Zeus(Scrypt) - no longer produced

Which miners are now the most reliable and popular?

Miners from Bitmaintech are rightfully considered the most deserving for Bitcoin mining, as the company has never seriously let its customers down. Bitfury is also reliable but does not retail.

The reward is distributed in the same way as on the PPLNS pool, but with some difference - the reward does not stay on the pool for some time, but goes directly to your wallet. P2pool works on the principle of "master your own".

By the way, it is p2pool that provides real decentralization - the most important reason for the success of Bitcoin.

What software is used in ASIC miners?

As you know, each manufacturer has its own firmware for the miner, but almost all include CGMiner or BFGminer due to the flexibility of settings and support for all methods of connecting to the pool.

The firmware of most modern ASIC miners is based on Linux and has a convenient web interface that allows you to manage network settings, connect to pools, adjust frequency and voltage, view detailed miner statistics, monitor malfunctions, update firmware, and much more.

Bitmain Antminer S5 interface:

There are numerous custom firmware versions, each with its own features, such as support for extranonse.subscribe or more customization.

How to "overclock" ASIC miners?

Most miners have the ability to overclock, the potential of which depends on the manufacturer and chip technology. Antminers from factory frequencies are usually overclocked by 10-30%, while KnC chips can sometimes be overclocked almost twice. But be extremely careful with the overclocking of miners, power consumption rises sharply from an increase in frequency. Chips or power circuits may not withstand overclocking, as a result, you may lose both the miner itself and other equipment.

On some ASIC miners, the operating frequency is deliberately lowered to increase stability (for example, Bitmain Antminer S2 and S4). As a result of overclocking, you can get a much more productive, but less stable miner.

What power supply to use for ASIC miners?

In modern mining devices, 6-pin power connectors have become an unspoken standard, similar to connectors for connecting additional power to PCI-E video cards. They were chosen for their small size and maximum compatibility with mass PSUs.

In choosing the ideal power supply, the opinions of miners (people) differ. Some prefer used server PSUs due to stability, good efficiency and low price, others prefer ATX power supplies for home PCs due to the fact that depreciation (gradual reduction in price and wear) hardly affects them. When choosing a power supply for the miner, you need to look not at the total power of the PSU, but precisely along the + 12V channel. Here the choice is up to you.

To run an ATX power supply without a motherboard, you need to close 2 pins as shown in the image:

GPU mining and archive

What video cards are suitable for mining?

The older models of Radeon HD video cards of the 5xxx, 7xxx and R9 xxx series show themselves in the best way in mining.

Old NVIDIA video cards, due to their architecture, show a low level of performance in this type of computing. But starting with the GTX 7xx series based on the Maxwell architecture, with the latest drivers, Nvidia cards are not inferior to Radeons and even often surpass them in energy efficiency.

For GPU mining, / Nvidia CUDA must be installed on the computer, as part of the driver or separately.

What cryptocurrencies can be mined on video cards?

Since Bitcoin, Litecoin and their direct forks using the same hashing algorithms (SHA256 and Scrypt) are already mined on specialized devices (ASIC), only those cryptocurrencies remained for video cards where ASIC development is still impossible or unprofitable.

It is still possible to mine altcoins on the GPU with the following algorithms:

X11, X13, X15, Scrypt-N, Scrypt-jane, SHA-3 (Keccak), Quark and all others for which GPU mining software already exists.

How many graphics cards can I use on one computer?

The driver limit is a maximum of 8 cores, that is, 8 video cards or 4 dual-processor video cards. It is worth noting that the more cores are used, the more unstable the system behaves. Running and managing from 6 video cards on 1 computer can already be quite problematic, and it will not work on any motherboard, OS and driver version. The requirements for the PSU are also increasing, most often risers are required, preferably with additional power, in order to reduce consumption from the PCI-E bus of the motherboard. Also, with an increase in the number of GPUs, it is necessary to install more RAM.

What should I do if one or more of the installed video cards are not displayed in the miner?

There are many options. why this might happen. You can remove the video card from the devices and let it be found again. If it does not help, then check if there are any remnants of deleted or rearranged cards in the system that are causing failures.
There are times when the video card goes into "hidden devices", then before deleting it is necessary to configure their display as follows: on the "My Computer" icon, right-click, select "Properties" (or Win + Break). In the system properties, go to the "Advanced" tab (for Vista, 7, 2008, etc. in the computer properties, you must first click "Advanced system settings") and at the very bottom click the "Environment Variables" button. In the system variables, create the DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES variable and assign the value 1 to it. After that, open the device manager, turn on the display of hidden devices in the View menu and delete the hidden video cards.

The speed has dropped after updating the driver, what should I do?

Starting with driver version 11.12, the problem of 100% CPU core utilization has been fixed, but the mining speed has dropped slightly compared to version 11.11 and previous ones. To restore the previous speed, unzip the contents of the archive to a disk in the Windows folder with a replacement. If the system informs that the file is busy with the process, then close the miner program. There are two folders in the archive, for each of the bitness of the OS.

On one of the video cards, the performance is significantly lower

This problem can occur on the "first" video card that displays an image on the active monitor, but the monitor is not connected to it.

In this case, you need to connect a monitor or "stub" to this card. First, insert the DVI>VGA adapter, then insert the 75 Ohm resistors as in the diagram:

This problem occurs quite rarely on a wide variety of systems and its origin can be due to, for example, outdated drivers, BIOS, or simply an unfortunate hardware combination. If you are unlucky, use the method described above.

The Guiminer window is not displayed, only the tray icon. How to fix?

This glitch is due to the fact that the miner window is displayed outside the visible limits of the screen. You can overcome it in two ways:

1. Highlight the Guiminer tab in the taskbar to make it active. Press the key combination Win + Left Arrow. The miner window will be displayed at the left border of the screen.

2. Close the Guiminer program. Open the poclbm.ini configuration file, it is located in %appdata%\poclbm (for example, for Win7 it is C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\poclbm) and change the values ​​in the "window_position" block to the following:

"window_position": [
546,
353,
579,
318
]

After that run Guiminer again, the problem should be gone

Radeon HD 7*** is not detected in miners on Windows XP, what should I do?

Radeon HD 7*** is not displayed in the miners, because Windows XP does not support OpenCL for series 7*** and above. This limitation in AMD drivers, applies to all versions of Windows XP. We can recommend using more modern operating systems, such as Windows 7 or 8.

What to do if the video card is not visible through the 1x riser?

Different motherboards and video cards have different attitudes to if instead of PCI-E 16x the connection goes through PCI-E 1x. PCI-E 1x bandwidth is enough for mining, and the PCI-E standard itself supports such a feint, but the video card connection signal can go through unused contacts, and the video card will not be able to work correctly. In this case, the easiest way is to close the hotplug signal on the connector with a wire, for this you need to make a revision by connecting the contacts in the connector in this way:

Blue screen of death and error 0x000000ea ati2dvag, what to do?

You need to uninstall the drivers and reinstall them. The nuance is that after removal, 2 ATI libraries remain in the Windows / system32 folder, which are not automatically removed even by special utilities such as Driver Cleaner. They need to be removed manually, and then install new drivers.

I have problems with reducing the memory frequency on the video card in AfterBurner, what should I do?

If downclocking of RAM fails, try to write in the configuration file

UnofficialOverclockingMode = 2

If this does not help, then you can try the following trick:
We go into the Profiles folder, it is located at the MSI AB installation site, go into each of the video card profiles, look for the Defaults section in each profile, do this:

Format=2
powerlimit=0
CoreClk=750000
MemClk=600000
FanMode=1
FanSpeed=25

Then we put there:

Format=2
PowerLimit=10
CoreClk=820000
MemClk=300000
FanMode=1
FanSpeed=44

Voila, if there are 4 or more identical cards in the system, just launch AB, set "synchronize settings of identical GPUs" in the settings, the default memory frequency for everyone will be the maximum (default), and not the one specified in the profile, but press the hot button profile and everyone is set to 300mhz.

Today it is difficult to find a person who would not know what mining is and how profitable it is. This is partly true. But, as you know, no kind of earnings, especially "super-profitable", can bring income indefinitely. And a natural question arises - when will mining end?

With the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, the popularity of a new method of earning, the so-called "mining", has also grown. There are legends that for many of the enthusiasts at the forefront of this new industry, he brought fabulous profits. And today it is difficult to find a person who has not heard about mining. However, today the prospects for mining as a means of earning are far from being as bright as, for example, a year ago. And there are reasons for this. Let's try to imagine the prospects of this type of business.

What is mining and why is it needed

To understand the future of mining, you need to understand its essence. The first question that arises when assessing the profitability of mining is what do they pay for? Many people think that “mining” cryptocurrency is akin to mining gold, silver or platinum. But it's not. There is a code that allows you to receive cryptocurrency for some activity (to be exact - mathematical calculations). And if the code allows you to get a new token, then it is so in the code.

In its technical essence, mining is the process of maintaining the functionality of the blockchain of a particular cryptocurrency. As you know, a distributed network needs a certain number of "links" that ensure its operation. For activities to ensure the health of the network, the owners of the "links", or as they are also called "nodes", are rewarded. In fact, they select a key for a block that stores information about a transaction in a particular cryptocurrency. The presence of such blocks ensures the preservation of information and authentication of transactions.
Thus, mining is essential for the existence of almost any blockchain.

Mining and market

As with any paid activity, the cost of mining depends on the demand for it and its supply. And here the usual market mechanisms, described in the 18-19 centuries, operate. The fact is that if there are too many miners, more than necessary for the network to work, blocks and, accordingly, new “coins” are formed too quickly. First, it leads to inflation. Secondly, there is nothing to store in new blocks - there is not enough information about transactions in the network for everyone.

To regulate this process, a tool such as "network complexity" was created. It lies in the fact that with too much aggregate computing power of all miners, when blocks are mined too often, the complexity of the network is recalculated and it becomes more difficult to mine new blocks. As a result, the appearance of a new block and, accordingly, the payment of remuneration for its formation, occurs at the frequency laid down in the concept of the network. For example, in Bitcoin it is 10 minutes.
In addition, as the number of blocks mined increases, the reward for each newly mined block decreases. Thus, two processes take place:

• It becomes more difficult to mine blocks - each individual miner or farm receives a reward less and less;
• The reward becomes smaller - with the extraction of each new block, the miner receives less money.

As a result, the profitability of mining falls. It needs to be emphasized. That a couple of years ago, when the complexity of networks was low, mining brought tangible income. But today it is already too late to start individual mining, since the complexity of all more or less well-known cryptocurrency networks is very high.

Mining industry

With the growing popularity of mining, an entire industry has formed for this type of activity. And if earlier, video card manufacturers only slightly upgraded the chips to make them more suitable for mining, then in the past few years, ready-made devices designed exclusively for cryptocurrency mining have been sold.

Once again, demand creates supply. When the income from mining on “old hardware” drops, manufacturers offer a new device that allows for much more calculations per second. BUT. If there is no growth in cryptocurrency rates, profitability still falls, as the network has become more complex again. And economically, mining is not profitable.

More about farms

In addition to the fact that cryptocurrency mining brings less and less money on one particular device, its cost is growing, i.e. mining costs. Let's not forget that just buying a device is not enough. The equipment needs to be serviced. This includes the supply of energy and ventilation, and the cleaning of the same coolers.

When it comes to mining attempts on one home PC, such problems are almost invisible. But the income from such activities today is also close to zero. To overcome the problem of increasing complexity, mining equipment is combined into so-called farms or pools. Due to the operation of the relevant protocols and parallel computing, the effect of the operation of the farm is much higher than that of the individual operation of all the devices included in it. But service becomes much more difficult. It is necessary to choose a room (the noise from many devices is very noticeable), provide power.

Today there are farms consuming 40, 60 and even 80 MW. Such a volume of energy requires corresponding costs for it. It is necessary to ensure ventilation of the entire room, and this is also the cost and maintenance of the ventilation system itself. As a result, all these costs (costs) reduce the profitability of the farm.

When creating pools, devices located in different geographical locations are united. They can be computers belonging to different owners. At the same time, by joining in a pool, they are able to produce complex enough calculations to compete in the market.

Recently, the offer to rent equipment from an existing pool () has become popular. Anyone can deposit a small amount into the account and participate in the distribution of income. There are no problems with the purchase of equipment and its maintenance, maintenance, etc. The question arises as to why pool owners need this. Precisely then, in order to reduce their risks associated with the complication of the network and the fall in profits. Unfortunately, the amounts paid to "contributors" make it possible to recoup the investment only after many months - more than it would have been required to recoup the farm before.

Is it worth it to start

Despite the fact that the calculations show a drop in the profitability of mining, there is a lot of noise around it now and many people are trying to start doing it. However, it's not too late. As calculations show, even the most powerful miners (the so-called ASIC miners) available in public stores and bulletin boards will pay off no earlier than in a year or two, even with the current level of network complexity. And we are not talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum.

For example, the same Dash. It is enough to look at the complexity of the network, as well as the power and cost of modern ASICs, to understand that mining is unprofitable. After all, with the entry into the market of powerful equipment, its wide distribution, the complexity of the network naturally grows. As a result, equipment owners are forced to "jump" from one cryptocurrency to another, changing protocols, programs, re-flashing equipment in order to get at least some profit. But there isn't enough market for everyone. if you don't have access to the latest ASICs at manufacturer's price.

Forecast

Does all this mean that mining is over? If we talk about mining, as about earnings for anyone who wants it, then apparently - yes. Now it is too late to invest in mining. The market has received enough links and pools to ensure the performance of any blockchain. However, this does not mean that the mining industry is going to collapse. Today, the reverse process is also observed. Entire pools are turned off from the networks. This may be due to the fact that mining has become unprofitable on the existing equipment. As a result, the complexity of the network drops a little and this gives hope for at least some profit. But alas, one cannot count on astronomical figures.

In cryptocurrency mining, as in any other major undertaking, those who "stand at the source" profited. Many of them did not even count on such incomes, but were rather engaged in business out of enthusiasm. Who could have known 3 years ago that Bitcoin will rise in price by 70 - 700 - 1000 times. But the growth of the course is one of the main components of profit when working with cryptocurrency. Now, when there are too many people who want to “earn money”, there is not enough profit for everyone. This is the law of the market.

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