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How to protect your bitcoin in a hard fork

I have had a few questions about protecting bitcoin in a hard fork from friends and colleagues recently. I have also read people asking this question in various bitcoin forums throughout the internet and while I have seen a lot of good advice out there, I have also seen some terrible advice. Protecting your bitcoin has come to a head recently with a new bitcoin fork about to happen at block…

Dissecting Bitcoin Block 420,000

A few years back after the last halving I wrote an article shortly after the first halving block 210,000 was mined dropping the subsidy from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. Since block 420,000 was just mined reducing the subsidy from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC I thought it would be an appropriate time to write a follow-up article with similar data for the most recent halving block comparing it to the previous one.

Bitcoin Halving, what, why and what happened last time.

CAmount GetBlockSubsidy ( int nHeight , const Consensus :: Params & consensusParams ) { int halvings = nHeight / consensusParams . nSubsidyHalvingInterval ; // Force block reward to zero when right shift is undefined. if ( halvings >= 64 ) return 0 ; CAmount nSubsidy = 50 * COIN ; // Subsidy is cut in half every 210,000 blocks which will occur approximately every 4 years. nSubsidy >>= halvings ;…

Physics and economics will [ensure] distributed mining... I'm not worried

Every now and then I read something that I think is inspired. In this instance I came across a reddit post by someone going by the handle of foolish_austrian . His expertise and unique look on where bitcoin mining may be in the long term really captured my imagination and I thought readers may enjoy his far off vision of where mining may lead is in the future. So, without any more from me, here is…

Bitcoin Difficulty Reversing

As the graph below from BitcoinWisdom shows for the first time since just before ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) started to work on the bitcoin network it is possible that we may see a decrease in the difficulty of the bitcoin network. (This just in, it is official, the difficulty decreased to 40,007,470,271 a change of just under a percent. It may take some time for your client…

BTCGuild may be closing

BTCGuild , one of the oldest mining pools that first opened on the 9th of May 2011 issued a statement on their website and reddit that the pool will be closing on the 30th of November 2014. The full statement from the website follows.

How I accidentally hacked the igot exchange

I agonized a bit about if should post this, igot responded and acknowledged the problem but unfortunately they don't see it as a major issue at the moment saying "Since this is a small amount, this is not going to be investigated on priority." My mind goes to MtGOX and Moolah though, both are recent examples of an exchange giving out more funds than the client had available (if we believe the…

Warning: Do not download bitcoin from SourceForge

In a continuation of today's earlier news that Satoshi's email account has been compromised it now seems that the perpetrator has used the email account to compromise other Satoshi accounts. First, Satoshi's P2P Foundation account posted a message warning Satoshi that some of his information was being sold on the …

Satoshi Nakamoto's email address satoshin@gmx.com appairs compromised

Satoshi Nakamoto, much revered and currently missing inventor of bitcoin seems to have had his email address compromised by an unknown agent. You may or not remember, Satoshi exclusively used one email address when he was active in the bitcoin community, satoshin@gmx.com. If you have a look at …

New Zealand Exchange Bitnz.com hacked, 39 bitcoin stolen.

New Zealand bitcoin exchange site bitnz.com has been taken by the administrator leaving the message "bitnz.com under maintenance. Apologies for the inconvenience (contact(at)bitnz.com).". It seems that last monday at 3am New Zealand time 39 bitcoins were transferred from the exchange by an unknown party. Bitnz …

13th Million Bitcoin Mined

It is in truth a minor milestone but for those who like "large whole numbers" block 310001 has just been mined by Ghash.IO pushing the total amount of bitcoin to 13,000,000. That means that there only another 8 million to be mined over the next 140 years …

Timothy C. Draper won all of the FBI SilkRoad Bitcoins

It was quite possible we may have never found out who won the US Marshal Service auction for the 30,000 Bitcoin (just under 20 Million USD at today's rate). It was quite possible that the next time we saw any movement from the address containing the bitcoin ( 1a8LDh3qtCdMFAgRXzMrdvB8w1EG4h1Xi ) it …

29,658.80112195 Confiscated FBI Coins on the move

We have been waiting and here it is, the 29,658.80112195 Confiscated FBI Coins held in 1Ez69SnzzmePmZX3WpEzMKTrcBF2gpNQ55 have started their move. It is not into the eventual 30,000 BTC blocks from the auction yet but I will keep an eye on them and update this post as it …

Silk Road 30,000 bitcoin auction causing stirs, what happens when it's 144,341 bitcoin

We did not expect the US Marshals Service to release information about the auction of Silk Road bitcoin last week but in the absence of information speculation both on the markets and on the internet is building. First Barry Silbert, Founder of SecondMarket and BitcoinTrust has tweeted that they were …

BrainWallet.org exploited and bitcoins stolen

It has long been known that JavaScipt's Math Functions are not up to a good enough standard to be used in Cryptography. In particular the random function has many documented flaws easily available with a quick google search . It appairs that someone has exploited the weaknesses and stolen bitcoins from …

Another Credit Card breach, please use Bitcoin!

It has only been six months since Target Customers had their credit card details sold on rescator[dot]so and today we have news of another Credit Card breach at P.F. Chang’s with users details once again up for sale on the nefarious website. While it cannot be …

Review: Spondoolies-Tech SP10 Dawson (Part Two)

In the previous part of this review I discussed how I ended up receiving my Spondoolies-Tech SP10 Dawson . This time around I am going to go a deeper into the Operating System that runs Spondoolies-Tech miners. The SP10 Dawson comes with a modified version of the MinePeon user interface that …

Review: Spondoolies-Tech SP10 Dawson (Part One)

About a month ago I received a pleasant email from a gentleman named Stas, he complimented me on MinePeon and asked me if I would have any issue if he included all or parts MinePeon on a new range of miners that he was intending to bring to market. I …

MinePeon for BeagleBone Black Alpha

MinePeon users have been asking for this for a while and I am finally glad to announce, MinePeon has been ported! For now it is just for the BeagleBone Black and while it is very Alpha but it appears very stable. Plans for he x86/64 version are still in …

ButterflyLabs, sweeten the pot for long outstanding orders.

You, and many others (including me) may be wondering where your ButterFly Lab's Monarch's are. If you anything like me you paid \$4,680.00 plus shipping six months ago and have yet to see a single hash! In these six months the price has dropped by more than half …

NewstalkZB Radio Interview about the MtGox trading halt

Much to my surprise on my way home yesterday I received a call from NewstalkZB . One of the producers (sorry, I forgot her name in my nervousness) wanted to ask if I would not mind going on air with Larry Williams on his Drive afternoon show. Apparently Andrew Taylor, the …

CoinTerra Announce the The GSX I™ – PCIe Bitcoin Mining Card

CoinTerra have been at it again and added a new product to their line up, the " GSX I™ – PCIe Bitcoin Mining Card ". I can already hear people asking, "Wait a sec, where is my TerraMiner that I ordered last August?", but lets not go there for now. That is a totally different story that appears to have no answer (I am still digging).

CoinTerra Hacked

It seems that all is not well at CoinTerra . After last weeks announcement that they were shipping things were looking up for CoinTerra, it seemed that they had managed to squeeze into their revised January 2014 release schedule for their ASIC bitcoin miners. However, if you go check their site …

CoinTerra start shipping!

Hot on the heels of an announcement from CoinTerra updating their Engineering and Production Status of their bitcoin mining devices it seems that not only are they shipping , but at least one lucky Reddit customer is up and hashing . All is not perfect with the miners though, while originally the …

Butterfly Labs Monarch;- Late January to early Febuary

After yesterdays news about CoinTerra getting ready to ship it only seems fair to mention, Butterfly Labs are also about to unleash their latest 28nm 600 GH/s Monarch bitcoin miner. Forum representative BFL_Josh has been keeping a tread open keeping us informed as to the progress of the Monarch …

CoinTerra TerraMiner IV prototype starts hashing at 1.62TH/s

While only achieving 80% of their performance target, CoinTerra have released photos and a short video of their new ASIC bitcoin miners in action. They not achieved its full 2 TH/s performance yet they seem confidant that the goal will be achieved saying “We hope you’ll appreciate that …

Cointerra GoldStrike™ASIC wafers schedualed for December 17th

With the difficulty continuing to climb at an unprecedented rate the next jump is only just around the corner. US company CoinTerra originally entered the Bitcoin ASIC miner market only 4 months ago in August. The plan at the time was to build 28nm ASIC processors running at an impressive …

Creativity. Is it an issue with Bitcoin & Crypto Currencies.

I don't often write about subjects that are not directly related to mining but this morning I will make an exception. During my morning reading of Slashdot an article caught my eye, it was entitled " Study: People Are Biased Against Creative Thinking " and it linked to an interesting article on …

KnCMiner on my doorstep

Some time ago (the 11th of August to be exact) I decided to take a bit of a gamble and order one of KnCMiners lesser offering the Mercury 100 GH/s bitcoin miner. Mercury's are no longer available but all up with shipping I spent \$2,148.00 USD (I …

The end of bitcoin is nigh! (Again)

It seems a week does not go by that the end of bitcoin is not predicted. Most recently Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer of Cornell University wrote a paper describing how " Selfish Miners " might be able to subvert the network to their own purpose. The regular news publishers quickly …

50BTC.com say's "50BTC is alive".

It has been a hard week and a bit for the 50BTC mining pool. After it was first noticed that incorrect balances were showing for users on the 20th of this month and revelations that "Our billing server have been hacked, some parameters currently shown incorrectly. At this moment we …

MinePeon 0.2.4 Release

It's that time again, and I have to say, this is a monster of a release. I would especially like to thank the crew on the MinePeon Forums for going through the Pre Releases with me and testing and of the various changes and improvements. No need to read all …

50BTC hacked, don't believe your account ballance

If you log in to you 50BTC.com account you're in for a pleasant surprise, unfortunately it is one that wont last. It seems that someone has gained access to 50BTC's servers and managed to increase all of our balances, the website recently put up a message saying;- Our billing …

First look: BlueFury USB Bitcoin Mining Device

Being the author of MinePeon the Linux mining appliance for the Raspberry Pi usually involves late nights debugging strange errors submitted by one of it's thousands of users, compiling software and upgrading packages. While it is far from a thankless job, every now and then the perks are even better …

Avalon Gen2 Launch, design your own device

Avalon today announced that they are back in the game and will start to release information on their generation 2 chips to open source developers. It seems that Avalon will be going ahead with their plans not to make bitcoin mining devices but to focus solely on building the ASIC …

KnCMiner video update

After yesterdays update that KnCMiner where about to start shipping the official KnCMiner thread on BitcoinTalk burst into life with over 500 post by people speculation about when, where or even if we will see a KnCMiner device. In a news update , posted at 9:04:00 PM September the …

Bitcoin pools under attack (DDOS)

Several bitcoin mining pools are reported to be under attack from an unknown source. The affected pools are under a heavey DDOS (Denial-of-service attack) causing unusually high loads on their pool servers and shares are being lost. It was first brought to my attention this morning when several of my …

73.9 TH/s of KnCMiner bitcoin miners about to start hashing?

KnCMiner fist announced that they will be entering the Bitcoin ASIC marked back on April the 9th of this year. Their first line up of miners was an impressive one at the time, ranging from the Mercury 100 GH/s bitcoin miner up to the Jupiter 400 GH/s miner …

TerraHash close and offer clients a 50% refund

It seems there has been another ASIC manufacturer has failed to deliver. TerraHash originally entered the market on May 8th of this year with the goal to manufacturer the Klondike Open Source Mining Board coupled with Avalon ASIC processors. TeraHash today announced on BitcoinTalk that "Some events happened last week …

KnCMiner drop their prices

In their latest news letter KnCMiner has responded to the increasing difficulty and new products being announced by their competitors by dropping the price on their core line of miners. They have discontinued the Mercury 100 GH/s line of miners all together leaving only the Jupiter 400 GH/s …

Butterfly Labs to allow you to upgrade your existing pre-order to the 28nm 600 GH/s Monarch

It seems that Butterfly Labs have come up with an interesting plan to move clients from one pre-order queue to another. In their most recent news letter they have announced that if you are still waiting for your Butterfly Labs device as they work through their back orders you now …

MinePeon gets its own Support Forums

Lately the amount of inquirers/requests/suggestions that MinePeon is generating via forums/emails/PMs/IMs has grown to such a level that I have absolutely no hope to keep up with them all (and that annoys me, I feel everyone deserves an answer). To that end, I have decided …

MinePeon 0.2.3 release

Update time again! There are so many changes underneath the hood that the change log is huge (see below for the full details). You don't need to re image, but if you don't your going to be missing out on quite a few improvements, some of which cannot be distributed …

MinePeon 0.2.2 release

Download it HERE . I was not planning a release today but a user has come across a serious bug. It seems when switching pools on BitcoinTalk user klotzenhotz's miner hang instead of completing the operation and ended up mining for the wrong account (the donation one, I am so embarrassed …

SatoshiMine USB Block Eruptor sales re-open

After my rather disastrous dealings with MtGox it has taken me a bit of time to re-organise things so something like that would never happen again, but I am glad to say that all of my duck's are in a line and I am ready to reopen satoshimine so that …

More info on the MtGox 'Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals'

I have a tale of woe. It involves MtGox and my personal dealings with them. First, I will tell you a bit of the back story so that you may understand my woe. When ASICMiner first introduced their buy policy last month for their new Block Eruptor USB 300 MH …

International Block Erupter USB closing - Last chance to get ASICMiner Block Eruptor ASICs

Update: A new group buy has opened here . Fantastic news, due to changes of the rules of ASICMiner Group Buy's we no longer need to reach 300 in order to buy the devices, we only need 50! That means we have reached the minimum order and I am preparing to …

MinePeon Beta 1 - code name "Butterfly Bob" Released

I am pleased to announce that after hundreds of hours of testing by hundreds of testers and goodness knows how many hours of my time MinePeon is out of Alpha and has been released as Beta 1, code named "Butterfly Bob". Feel free to skip my ramblings and ignore the …

New manufacturer enters the Bitcoin ASIC Arena with the Cryonic FrostBit™

A new contender in the Bitcoin ASIC mining world has announced their intentions to produce a with what I have to say is the best looking piece of bitcoin hardware I have seen yet. The Cryonic FrostBit™ ticks all of the boxes for people wanting to mine bitcoins in style …

Does Ted Nelson know who Satoshi Nakamoto is?

With the bitcoin conference going on there has been a renewed bout of interest as to the identity of Satoshi. While I personally have no idea who the inventor of bitcoin is the famed IT Sociolosopher and creator of such terms as "hypertext" and "hypermedia" Ted Nelson thinks he knows …