Oct 19, 2017 - I would also recommend keeping your coins safe using the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet. This hardware wallet supports all the major cryptos including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Zcash, Dash, Stratis, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Ark, Expanse, ubiq, Pivx, Vertcoin and Viacoin. Did I miss any? Viacoin is a digital currency similar to Bitcoin that allows the creation of applications. Mining Contract SHA. What is a Bitcoin Hardware Wallet?

One of the central pillars of any cryptocurrency is the it is based upon, but what makes these algorithms important, and what are the differences between each algorithm? If you are looking to start mining a cryptocurrency, these are important questions to consider.

You may be asking yourself, who chooses the algorithm for a cryptocurrency? The chosen algorithm is up to the coins development team, not the miner; there are many reasons why the chosen algorithm was implemented, ranging from long term goals, to network security, and even protection from. It is important for miners to consider the algorithm of a coin they are willing to mine for several reasons, including the electricity required to mine, the effectiveness of their existing hardware on the network, and whether or not they wish to mine with GPU, CPU or ASIC based mining equipment.

Multicurrency mining pool with easy-to-use GUI miner. Ethereum, Zcash, Monero & other altcoins. Join our vibrant community of more than a million clients. History Lesson for new VIA Viacoin. Merged mining allows users to mine more than. In the future of this coin we’ll also see hardware wallets support.

SHA-256, Scrypt, or X11: Which Mining Algorithm is the Best? What is so important about the hashing algorithm you may ask, and why is it necessary to have choices? The most popular algorithm was the one which started it all, SHA-256, which originally debuted as Bitcoin’s hashing algorithm. With the introduction of Litecoin, Scrypt entered the scene and came with its own set of pro’s and con’s, but is by far one of the most popular algorithms in existence. Since then, many other algorithms have taken stage on the cryptocurrency scene, including the likes of X11, X12, X13, Scrypt-N, Scrypt-ChaCha, Groestl, Keccak, NIST5 and many others. What makes each hashing algorithm unique is often most important to the coin developer, for instance, SHA-256 based coins have a block time of around 8-10 minutes, whereas Scrypt coins can have block times as low as 30 seconds! Security also comes to mind when choosing an algorithm for a new coin; longer block times can make the network more secure especially with low network hash.

Introducing a new coin to an algorithm which has ASIC’s available on the market can wreak havoc if they can’t protect themselves against the dreaded. Even strategically choosing an algorithm to attract disenfranchised GPU miners from an ASIC ridden market or integrating developments from other coins with the same algorithm can also influence decision making. A cryptocurrency may even be based on the fact that it is ASIC resistant and may need to change algorithms in order keep that promise. All in large, choices are important when developing a coin and can mean a lot for the purpose and specific mission of that coin. You may be thinking to yourself, well, developers having choices in which algorithm they choose to implement in a coin is great and all, but how does that affect ME, the miner?

That is a valid question, and a very important one to consider as well. Mining a cryptocurrency with a specific algorithm can influence the hardware you use, to your electricity cost, the process it takes to setup your mining equipment and the philosophy you prefer as a part of the mining process. We will be covering the most popular and up and coming algorithms to date, what makes each one unique and what the pro’s and con’s are of mining each algorithm, thus you, the miner can make an informed decision on the algorithm which suits you.

Bitcoin ASCI Miners SHA-256 The dawn of cryptocurrency began with Bitcoin, and in its wake came integrated for Bitcoin mining. SHA stands for Secure Hashing Algorithm and is a part of the SHA-2 family of hashing algorithms. SHA-2 is the predecessor of SHA-1 which is now considered insecure and obsolete. Is considered to be one of the most secure cryptographic algorithms in existence and is the security standard in many intelligence agencies around the world. The algorithm family itself was created by the, and is released royalty free under U.S. Patent 6829355, it features several different variations including SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512.

The white paper was officially released to the public by the and was intended to be used as a, which means it was released as standard for all non-military government agencies as well government contractors. It is no wonder why chose SHA-256 as the algorithm he would implement into Bitcoin. When Bitcoin was first released, it was possible for Satoshi Nakamoto to mine over 2,000 BTC on his CPU alone, what has changed since then? At one point it was possible to mine Bitcoin on a simple set of hardware, a laptop CPU would be all you needed to mine, and miners were at a logical standstill. Do they continue mining Bitcoin at a loss due to electricity cost with the hopes of Bitcoin’s price increasing in the future, or do they buy off of the open market for roughly the same cost to mine? Looking back you may think your investment would be better off spent on a time machine to convince your past self that your computers spare processing power would be better off spent mining Bitcoin’s than playing solitaire, however, this is a perfect example of the economics and decisions that miner’s make while deciding to mine a coin and a segway into the arm’s race.

The Heat is On for Bitcoin Mining! At the time, miners were becoming less and less likely to sell their coins at a loss, as demand increased along with the difficulty level of mining, the market took an upwards trend in direction. As more and more miner’s entered the network, automatically increased to keep the block time consistent, this made mining harder. What happened next would change the algorithm forever – ASIC miners were developed. ASIC’s could mine Bitcoin hundreds of times faster than GPU’s and CPU’s, using only a fraction of the electricity at much less of the cost than a competing GPU or CPU rig, with the added benefit of less heat and noise output within a smaller physical footprint, ASIC’s completely took over the market.

As ASIC’s began to flood the market, hobbyists and tinkerers that reaped the benefit of being early adopters were completely pushed out of the market. As ASIC companies competed for the best kilowatt to hash ratio, with smaller footprints, less noise, less heat, and the lowest price, investors poured money into this new, very lucrative industry, and thus the Bitcoin arms race began. To mine a coin, GPU and CPU mining is not advised, the hash power of GPU and CPU rigs is too insignificant to make a profitable impact. Is also very power hungry, thus any returns would most likely be close to nothing or even in the red with no foreseeable return on investment. The most profitable, cost-efficient way to mine coins is with ASIC computers, bar none. Although ASIC’s succeeded in pushing smaller miner’s out of the algorithm, these miner’s do provide a number of advantages to the network of each coin. In one example, ASIC miners do protect the network from attackers by providing sufficient hash rates as to protect coins from GPU and CPU attackers, bot-nets, and even super computers and governments.

The sheer amount of decentralized hash power can immensely help a coin grow quickly, securely, and provides what is known as the “network effect”, which entrenches a coins position as an accepted currency even though it may come under competition by other more superior coins. The large amount of hash on the network even protects a coin from governments and institutions or even attackers that wished to take over the network in a, this is thanks to the immense amount of hash power being put on the network.

How Serious are you, about Crypto mining? Mining SHA-256 coins is a great option only if you are interested in investing in ASIC’s, which can range from tens of dollars, to several hundred, to several thousand depending on the profitability desired. SHA-256 ASIC miners come from a large and developed industry, thus finding a reputable manufacturer is very easy to do. With ASIC mining comes the added bonus of manufacturer support, which is not offered to GPU or CPU miners if they need help. Depending on the specific ASIC miner, hardware is constantly becoming more energy efficient with less noise and less heat output than GPU mining SHA-256, however don’t consider putting these miners in your bedroom just yet if you want your significant other to sleep in the same room with you, they are still loud and hot. ASIC’s are also notoriously easy to setup, with minimal technical knowledge required as less configuration and almost no system building is needed.

Just remember, if you are in the GPU or CPU game, use your miners elsewhere, SHA-256 is not the algorithm for you! ASIC Miner: Image courtesy of Antminer Scrypt Mining Scrypt was first introduced in cryptocurrency mining with the introduction of Litecoin.

Benefits of the included lower block times than Bitcoin, and ASIC resistance. Ironically, Scrypt was implemented as a solution to Bitcoins GPU mining, which was seen as too centralized for Litecoins developers, thus Scrypt was implemented to prevent Litecoin from being mined using GPU’s. For whatever reason, Scrypt never achieved that goal and GPU miners flooded the network in any case. Scrypt was originally invented by Colin Percival for the Tarsnap online backup service, the service touts that Scrypt makes it tremendously expensive for custom hardware attacks to be conducted and is thousands of times more secure than many popular cryptographic algorithms in use today. Scrypt requires attackers to either use more memory to conduct a brute force attack, or use less memory and conduct a slower attack, this trade off is intentional and makes Scrypt very secure. It is no wonder it was first implemented by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee as the coins algorithm. Litecoin GPU Rig For miners, is GPU friendly and the vast majority of Scrypt miners are GPU miners.

Scrypt takes up more memory than SHA-256, however this is offset by the fact that Scrypt mining uses up less electricity than SHA-256 mining. With less electricity comes lower heat output and less noise coming from your miners, however mining can still increase your AC bills during the Summer, and lower your gas bills in the Winter. It needs to be noted that ASIC’s for Scrypt mining are on the market, thus if you are a GPU miner mining Scrypt, you may be in for some competition. As more and more Scrypt ASIC’s are expected to hit the market, expect the difficulty to rise on Scrypt coins and your market shares to decrease, along with your profits.

Scrypt coins are currently still profitable and can be an excellent investment if you have the equipment, however if you are interested in mining Scrypt you may want to consider investing in an ASIC miner instead. Some ASIC’s can even mine SHA-256 and Scrypt simultaneously, so consider ASIC’s as an option if you are considering mining a Scrypt coin. ASIC Scrypt Miner, Photo Courtesy by Zeusminer.com For many miners, you may feel disenfranchised by the inevitable onslaught of ASIC’s, perhaps you have already invested a substantial amount in GPU’s and want to put them to use, perhaps you have ASIC’s but you have a few spare GPU rigs sitting around, or perhaps you don’t want to be involved in the ASIC arms race and would rather not have to upgrade your ASIC’s every few months in order to stay profitable.

For whatever the reason you have decided to stay away from ASIC’s, there are developers who have created algorithms which are ASIC resistant. These ASIC resistant algorithms ensure decentralization from ASIC computers, and many philosophize that ASIC resistant algorithms return mining to the “average Joe” that doesn’t have the money to mine using expensive specialized computers.

ASIC resistant coins are typically a safe haven from ASIC’s and allow GPU and CPU miners a place to use their hash power. One infamous example of an ASIC resistant coin is, which was built on the philosophy of decentralization and ASIC resistance, this coin was based on the Scrypt-N algorithm, a modification of Scrypt that made it difficult to program ASIC’s for. However, it was only a matter of time before ASIC’s caught up as Scrypt-N ASIC’s are already on their way to the market. However there are a few algorithms that have so far stood the test of time and have yet to be successfully touched by ASIC developers. X11 The “X” series of algorithms first debuted with Darkcoin and was invented by Darkcoins creator, Evan Duffield. X11 is a hashing algorithm that includes eleven different hashing algorithms bundled up in one package.

The was to protect the network from what its creators called, Single Point Failures, which is a scenario where a hacker could theoretically crack an algorithm, making it vulnerable to attacks. Unlike SHA-256 and Scrypt, which are based on a single hashing algorithm, X11 features eleven different algorithms, all of which would all have to be compromised for an attack to be successful. Critics claim that SHA-256 and Scrypt are still extremely secure algorithms, as no one has been able to crack them, especially with the money behind these algorithms; even with all of the added attention no obvious flaws have been found. The “X” series of algorithms extends beyond X11, and includes X12, X13, X14 all the way up to X17. The simple difference between these algorithms is the amount of hashing algorithms intertwined in the package. X11 is by far the most popular of the “X” series of hashing algorithms and has a number of attractive features to boot.

X11 is best mined using GPU’s, and has a 1:6 efficiency ratio between CPU and GPU’s, thanks to better mining software, the GPU/CPU gap has been widening since the introduction of the algorithm. At this time X11 remains ASIC resistant and there are no publicly announced ASIC’s in development for the algorithm, however its widespread popularity and profitability may make it a target for ASIC developers in the future.

X11 is also less power hungry then both SHA-256 and Scrypt, keeping your house cooler and quieter especially in the summertime, and keeping your significant other slightly happier about your mining operation. X11 happens to be the most dependent on the mining software you use compared to any other algorithm; specific mining software can give you huge advantages over others, potentially increasing hash power up to 40% with just the right software and settings. X11 is a great choice if you are a GPU miner who has some time to tinker with your software with the added bonus of saving money on electricity cost. X11 is also a great option if you have multiple GPU rigs and don’t want to overload your outlets, and can keep GPU farms cooler and quieter than SHA-256 and Scrypt.

Viacoin is an open source cryptocurrency project, based on the Bitcoin blockchain. Publicly introduced on the crypto market in mid 2014, Viacoin integrates decentralized asset transaction on the blockchain, reaching speeds that have never seen before on cryptocurrencies. This Scrypt based, Proof of Work coin was created to try contrast Bitcoin’s structural problems, mainly the congested blockchain delays that inhibit microtransaction as this currency transitions from digital money to a gold-like, mean of solid value storage.

Bitcoin Core developers Peter Todd and Btc have been working on this currency and ameliorated it until they was able to reach a lightning fast speed of 24 second per block. These incredible speeds are just one of the features that come with the implementation of Lightning Network, and and make Bitcoin slow transactions a thing of the past. To achieve such a dramatic improvement in performance, the developers modified Viacoin so that its OP_RETURN has been extended to 80 bytes, reducing tx and bloat sizes, overcoming multi signature hacks; the integration of ECDSA optimized C library allowed this coin to reach significant speedup for raw signature validation, making it perform up to 5 times better.

This will mean easy adoption by merchants and vendors, which won’t have to worry anymore with long times between the payment and its approval. Todd role as Chief Scientist and Advisor has been proven the right choice for this coin, thanks to his focus on Tree Chains, a ground breaking feature that will fix the main problems revolving around Bitcoin, such as scalability issues and the troubles for the Viacoin miners to keep a reputation on the blockchain in a decentralized mining environment. Thanks to Todd’s expertise in sidechains, the future of this crypto currency will see the implementation of an alternative blockchain that is not linear. According to the developer, the chains are too unregulated when it comes to trying to establish a strong connection between the operations happening on one chain and what happens elsewhere. Merged mining, scalability and safety are at risk and tackling these problems is mandatory in order to create a new, disruptive crypto technology. Tree Chains are going to be the basis for a broader use and a series of protocols that are going to allow users and developers to use Viacoin’s blockchain not just to mine and store coins, but just like other new crypto currencies to allow the creation of secure, decentralized consensus systems living on the blockchain The commander role on this BIP9 compatible coin’s development team has now been taken by a programmer from the Netherlands called Romano, which has a great fan base in the cryptocurrency community thanks to his progressive views on the future of the world of cryptos. He’s in strong favor of SegWit, and considers soft forks on the chain not to be a problem but an opportunity: according to him it will provide an easy method to enable scripting upgrades and the implementation of other features that the market has been looking for, such as peer to peer layers for compact block relay.

Segregation Witness allows increased capacity, ends transactions malleability, makes scripting upgradeable, and reduces UTXO set. Because of these reasons, Viacoin Core 0.13 is already SegWit ready and is awaiting for signaling. Together with implementation of SegWit, Romano has recently been working on finalizing the implementation of merged mining, something that has never been done with altcoins. Merged mining allows users to mine more than one block chain at the same time, this means that every hash the miner does contributes to the total hash rate of all currencies, and as a result they are all more secure. This release pre-announcement resulted in a market spike, showing how interested the market is in the inclusion of these features in the coin core and blockchain. The developer has been introducing several of these features, ranging from a Hierarchical Deterministic key (HD key) generation that allows all Viacoin users to backup their wallets, to a compact block relay, which decreases block propagation times on the peer to peer network; this creates a healthier network and a better baseline relay security margin.

Viacoin’s support for relative locktime allows users and miners to time-lock a transaction, this means that a new transaction will be prevented until a relative time change is achieved with a new OP code, OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERITY, which allows the execution of a script based on the age of the amount that is being spent. Most BitcoinDark BTCD Mined In A Day on this page. Support for Child-Pays-For-Parent procedures in Viacoin has been successfully enabled, CPFP will alleviate the problem of transactions that stuck for a long period in the unconfirmed limbo, either because of network bottlenecks or lack of funds to pay the fee.

Thanks to this method, an algorithm will selects transactions based on federate inclusive unconfirmed ancestor transaction; this means that a low fee transaction will be more likely to get picked up by miners if another transaction with an higher fee that speeds its output gets relayed. Several optimizations have been implemented in the blockchain to allow its scaling to proceed freely, ranging from pruning of the chain itsel to save disk space, to optimizing memory use thanks to mempool transaction filtering.

UTXO cache has also been optimization, further allowing for significant faster transaction times. Anonymity of transaction has been ameliorated, thanks to increased TOR support by the development team. This feature will help keep this crypto currency secure and the identity of who works on it safe; this has been proven essential, especially considering how Viacoin’s future is right now focused on segwit and lightning network. Onion technology used in TOR has also been included in the routing of transactions, rapid payments and instant transaction on bi directional payment channels in total anonymity. Payments Viacoin’s anonymity is one of the main items of this year’s roadmap, and by the end of 2017 we’ll be able to see Viacoin’s latest secure payment technology, called Styx, implemented on its blockchain. This unlinkable anonymous atomic payment hub combines off-the-blockchain cryptographic computations, thanks to Viacoin’s scriptin functionalities, and makes use of security RSA assumptions, ROM and Elliptic Curve digital signature Algorithm; this will allow participants to make fast, anonymous transfer funds with zero knowledge contingent payment proof. Wallets already offer strong privacy, thanks to transactions being broadcasted once only; this increases anonymity, since it can’t be used to link IPs and TXs.

In the future of this coin we’ll also see hardware wallets support reaching 100%, with Trezor and Nano ledger support. These small, key-chain devices connect to the user’s computer to store their private keys and sign transactions in a safe environment. Including Viacoin in these wallets is a smart move, because they are targeted towards people that are outside of hardcore cryptocurrency users circle and guarantees exposure to this currency. The more casual users hear of this coin, the faster they’re going to adopt it, being sure of it’s safety and reliability. In last October, Viacoin price has seen a strong decline, probably linked to one big online retailer building a decentralized crypto stock exchange based on the Counterparty protocol.

As usual with crypto currencties, it’s easy to misunderstand the market fluctuations and assume that a temporary underperforming coin is a sign of lack of strength. The change in the development team certainly helped with Viacoin losing value, but by watching the coin graphs it’s easy to see how this momentary change in price is turning out to be just one of those gentle chart dips that precede a sky rocketing surge in price. Romano is working hard on features and focusing on their implementation, keeping his head low rather than pushing on strong marketing like other alt coins are doing. All this investment on ground breaking properties, most of which are unique to this coin, means that Viacoin is one of those well kept secret in the market.

Minimal order books and lack of large investors offering liquidity also help keep this coin in a low-key position, something that is changing as support for larger books is growing. As soon as the market notices this coin and investments go up, we are going to see a rapid surge in the market price, around the 10000 mark by the beginning of January 2018 or late February. Instead of focusing on a public ICO like every altcoin, which means a sudden spike in price followed by inclusion on new exchanges that will dry up volume, this crypto coin is growing slowly under the radar while it’s being well tested and boxes on the roadmap get checked off, one after the other. Romano is constantly working on it and the community around this coin knows, such a strong pack of followers is a feature that no other alt currency has and it’s what will bring it back to the top of the coin market in the near future.

His attitude towards miners that are opposed to SegWit is another strong feature to add to Viacoin, especially because of what he thinks of F2Pool and Bitmain’s politics towards soft forks. The Chinese mining groups seem scared that once alternative crypto coins switch to it they’re going to lose leveraging power for what concerns Bitcoin’s future and won’t be able to speculate on the mining and trading market as much as they have been doing in the past, especially for what concerns the marketing market. It’s refreshing to see such dedication and releases being pushed at a constant manner, the only way to have structural changes in how crypto currencies work can only happen when the accent is put on development and not on just trying to convince the market. This strategy is less flashy and makes sure the road is ready for the inevitable increase in the userbase.

It’s always difficult to forecast the future, especially when it concerns alternative coins when Bitcoin is raising so fast. A long term strategy suggestion would be to get around 1BTC worth of this cryptocoin as soon as possible and just hold on it: thanks to the features that are being rolled in as within 6 months there is going to be an easy gain to be made in the order of 5 to 10 times the initial investment. Using the recent market dip will make sure that the returns are maximized. What makes Viacoin an excellent opportunity right now is that the price is low and designed to rise fast, as its Lightning Network features become more mainstream.

Lightning Network is secure, instant payment that aren’t going to be held back by confirmation bottlenecks, a blockchain capable to scale to the billions of transactions mark, extremely low fees that do not inhibit micropayments and cross-chain atomic swap that allow transaction across blockchain without the need of a third party custodians. These features mean that the future of this coin is going to be bright, and the the dip in price that started just a while ago is going to end soon as the market prepares for the first of August, when when the SegWit drama will affect all crypto markets. The overall trend of viacoin is bullish with a constant uptrend more media attention is expected, when news about the soft fork will spread beyond the inner circle of crypto aficionados and leak in the mainstream finance news networks. Solid coins like Viacoin, with a clear policy towards SegWit, will offer the guarantees that the market will be looking for in times of doubt.

INVESTMENT REVIEW Investment Rating:- A+ • • • • •. To find out on which exchanges you can buy VIA have a look. Bittrex and Poloniex both have a much higher VIA trading volume than the rest, so I would recommend picking the one you like more out of those two. I myself use Bittrex and am very satisfied with it. You can buy the appropriate amount of Bitcoin on your preferred exchange. For me, as European, that is usually because of low fees when purchasing with Euros. Then you send those BTC to your Bittrex/Poloniex wallet and trade them for VIA, which you will then send to your personal wallet for safe storage.

For my personal storage I prefer the Ledger Nano S () which is both easy to handle and secure. Or you can use the Viacoin Core Wallet (), but don't forget to encrypt it with a good password and back up the wallet and store the backup on a reliable device.

If you are not overly tech-savvy I would definitely recommend the Ledger Nano S. • • • • • • •.