Incognoto Profile Blog Joined May 2010 France 10199 Posts Last Edited: 2014-02-24 14:09:12 #1

This guide is far from being exhaustive. There are other ways to mine cryptocoins, I'm going over one of the most simple methods.



This is not a get-rich-quick guide.The goal is to further your understanding on how mining itself works. It should be seen more as a fun experience than a way to make actual income.



Things like CUDA-mining (for Nvidia GPUs) or mining with CPUs, I won't explain. Nor will I explain PTS mining. This is a guide on how to use an AMD graphics card to mine cryptocurrencies.



There are some risks of losing the coins you've mined on trading sites (there could be other ways though to be honest I'm not very aware of the different possible threats).



You won't get advice on technical things in this thread. If experienced miners are around they will answer those questions.



I won't be explaining the principles of how cryptocurrencies work. This is simply a guide so that you can start acquiring coins.



It's best to have an AMD card, really. The better it is, the more hash you'll get, the more coins you'll mine in a given time.



Yes, cryptocurrencies are scum for jacking the prices of AMD cards and GPUs in general.



This is for fun. Experiment mining different coins or laugh at yourself for mining silly things such as Gabencoins.



Even with a poorly optimized miner, you could probably mine the amount of bitcoin needed for 1 month of TL+ in about a week. Useful if you like TL as a site but are too stingy to give them money.





*For reference, a 7970, which is a mid-high end AMD card, might mine a few € worth of Cryptocoins every 24 hours if set up properly. You can make some money; and you can make good money if you get lucky.



OK now that we've gotten that over with, on to the actual guide. When I wrote this at first it seemed that Dogecoin was the most profitable coin to mine. I don't think this is the case today, however it isn't a bad coin to mine either. As of now I'm not sure which coins are good to mine, I'm still looking for something profitable. We'll be mining Dogecoin in this example however; also note that the principle remains the same for every coin.



Don't mine Bitcoin directly, it's a waste of time. Litecoin is more or less the same story. It's better to mine altcoins and then trade them for Litecoins or Bitcoins.



Now to the interesting part.



Step 0: + Show Spoiler +

Here is a link to the the miner that I use:



The other program is the wallet. The wallet is associated to a Cryptocoin, so each currency has its own wallet. If you want to mine Dogecoin and trade them for Bitcoin, you're going to need a Dogecoin wallet and a Bitcoin wallet. As far as I know, only Bitcoin and Litecoin can be traded for fiat money (e.g. real cash).

Here is where you can get yourself a Dogecoin wallet:

Bitcoin wallet:



I also download MSI afterburner to monitor temperatures, adjust clock speeds and adjust voltage. This isn't mandatory for mining, but it's highly recommended to use it. Afterburner is also a great program to have generally speaking. More on that later, in the mean time you can download MSI afterburner here:



You'll also need a pool to mine in, which can be found online. Many different pools can be found for a given coin and everything works the same way regardless of what coin you're mining.

In this guide, I'll use this one, to mine Dogecoin:

You'll be needing 2 programs. One is a miner, which will use your GPU to generate hash. The miner is universal; you can mine any coin with it.Here is a link to the the miner that I use: https://mega.co.nz/#!Vg9i0DKK!FIduoitTjVyQ7w-jw7RJfSFaIS5so1XAuJOcw4DPJjE The other program is the wallet. The wallet is associated to a Cryptocoin, so each currency has its own wallet. If you want to mine Dogecoin and trade them for Bitcoin, you're going to need a Dogecoin wallet and a Bitcoin wallet. As far as I know, only Bitcoin and Litecoin can be traded for fiat money (e.g. real cash).Here is where you can get yourself a Dogecoin wallet: http://dogecoin.com/ Bitcoin wallet: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet I also download MSI afterburner to monitor temperatures, adjust clock speeds and adjust voltage. This isn't mandatory for mining, but it's highly recommended to use it. Afterburner is also a great program to have generally speaking. More on that later, in the mean time you can download MSI afterburner here: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm You'll also need a pool to mine in, which can be found online. Many different pools can be found for a given coin and everything works the same way regardless of what coin you're mining.In this guide, I'll use this one, to mine Dogecoin: https://doge.netcodepool.org/

Step 1: + Show Spoiler +



Fill in the form and register. This is straightforward. REMEMBER YOUR PIN. Next, go to "my workers" tab:







Put in whatever here. For the "worker name" I put in "1" and the password was 123. So my worker name would be "frincog.1" and the password for it 123. I can post this here without problem, if you put in that login in guiminer, you'll basically mining for my account, so more money for me. You should have a worker under the "worker configuration" area.



Go to the "getting started" tab. Here is some relevant information:

STRATUM: stratum+tcp://stratum.netcodepool.org

PORT: 4093





Now alt tab to windows.

Sign up for a pool: https://doge.netcodepool.org/ Fill in the form and register. This is straightforward. REMEMBER YOUR PIN. Next, go to "my workers" tab:Put in whatever here. For the "worker name" I put in "1" and the password was 123. So my worker name would be "frincog.1" and the password for it 123. I can post this here without problem, if you put in that login in guiminer, you'll basically mining for my account, so more money for me. You should have a worker under the "worker configuration" area.Go to the "getting started" tab. Here is some relevant information:Now alt tab to windows.

Step 2: + Show Spoiler +



Now that you've downloaded every program there, extract the .rar file somewhere and run guiminer.exe. This is the window that should show up:







"Host" and "port" are the fields you're going to fill in with pool information that you got in step 1. "Username" and "password" correspond to the information that you got in the "My workers" tab (in step 1). Fill everything out accordingly. Look at "GPU defaults" and try to find your GPU (or one of similar performance). I have a 7970 though I use my own custom settings. More on that later. You should get something that looks like this (I don't know what stratum is so don't ask, however it's recommended to use it):







Once everything is set up, you can hit "Start". You should get a hashrate show up on both the miner and the pool:











You have started mining Dogecoin. Wow.



Note:If you have an Nvidia card, you can go to File->New miner->New CUDA miner and work from there. This is what an Nvidia card would use, though I have no experience using CUA mining myself.

Let's set up our miner.Now that you've downloaded every program there, extract the .rar file somewhere and run guiminer.exe. This is the window that should show up:"Host" and "port" are the fields you're going to fill in with pool information that you got in step 1. "Username" and "password" correspond to the information that you got in the "My workers" tab (in step 1). Fill everything out accordingly. Look at "GPU defaults" and try to find your GPU (or one of similar performance). I have a 7970 though I use my own custom settings. More on that later. You should get something that looks like this (I don't know what stratum is so don't ask, however it's recommended to use it):Once everything is set up, you can hit "Start". You should get a hashrate show up on both the miner and the pool:You have started mining Dogecoin. Wow.If you have an Nvidia card, you can go to File->New miner->New CUDA miner and work from there. This is what an Nvidia card would use, though I have no experience using CUA mining myself.

Step 3: + Show Spoiler +







Now, go back the pool and go to the "Edit Account" tab. Unlock stuff with your PIN, go to your email, etc, and do everything needed so that your payment address is the one the one you found in your wallet.



There is a wallet.dat file which is basically your wallet. Don't delete this. Keep it safe. You can save the wallet.dat file by going to "File > Back up Wallet". This creates a .dat file which is where your address is. Don't delete it or you'll lose the address and you'll also lose every dogecoin associated to that address. The wallet is a program used by everyone, the .dat file is your own, personal, file where all the coins are kept.



You'll notice at the bottom of your wallet "Synchronizing with network.." at first. This is your wallet downloading the blockchain. Very simply put, the blockchain is a huge file made up of blocks. A block represents a transaction. When people trade coins, their trades become blocks. These blocks are given to everyone via the blockchain. The blockchain tells everyone who has what amount of a cryptocoin. Only when you are synchronized with the network will you know how much coins you have.

You'll have to set up your wallet. You should have downloaded this from dogecoin.com. Run the wallet. Hit "Much receive". This is where you'll get your address. Right click and hit "copy address".Now, go back the pool and go to the "Edit Account" tab. Unlock stuff with your PIN, go to your email, etc, and do everything needed so that your payment address is the one the one you found in your wallet.There is a wallet.dat file which is basically your wallet. Don't delete this. Keep it safe. You can save the wallet.dat file by going to "File > Back up Wallet". This creates a .dat file which is where your address is. Don't delete it or you'll lose the address and you'll also lose every dogecoin associated to that address. The wallet is a program used by everyone, the .dat file is your own, personal, file where all the coins are kept.You'll notice at the bottom of your wallet "Synchronizing with network.." at first. This is your wallet downloading the blockchain. Very simply put, the blockchain is a huge file made up of blocks. A block represents a transaction. When people trade coins, their trades become blocks. These blocks are given to everyone via the blockchain. The blockchain tells everyone who has what amount of a cryptocoin. Only when you are synchronized with the network will you know how much coins you have.

Step 4: + Show Spoiler +



Besides good case ventaliation, having a good heatsink on the card itself and undervolting the card, what will really keep temps down is by lowering the values of "Worksize" and "Intensity" in guiminer. Your hashrate will be lowered by quite a lot though, so it's up to you to find the right balance between temperatures and hashrates.







You can fiddle with both core clock and memory clock to maximize your hashrate. Core clock isn't as important as memory clock, you want to have a good ratio between the two. I'm using the settings someone on overclock.net recommended me to use. You can either ask there in the thread ( oc.net ) or experiment yourself.

I like to monitor temperatures so that my GPU doesn't get too hot. I use this using MSI afterburner. How hot is too hot? I'm not sure. Many will say that 75°C is all right. They may be right. I prefer to keep my card under 70°C if I can. I also undervolt the card using MSI afterburner. There are two things that will wreck a card, those are voltage and temperatures. I try to keep both as low as possible and to be perfectly honest I probably keep them both way under what would actually be a problem for the card.Besides good case ventaliation, having a good heatsink on the card itself and undervolting the card, what will really keep temps down is by lowering the values of "Worksize" and "Intensity" in guiminer. Your hashrate will be lowered by quite a lot though, so it's up to you to find the right balance between temperatures and hashrates.You can fiddle with both core clock and memory clock to maximize your hashrate. Core clock isn't as important as memory clock, you want to have a good ratio between the two. I'm using the settings someone on overclock.net recommended me to use. You can either ask there in the thread ( oc.net ) or experiment yourself.

Step 5: + Show Spoiler +







A few keywords appear. These are Difficulty, Block, Network and Pool. Understanding these keywords requires knowing a little bit on how cryptocurrencies work.



When you are putting your GPU to mine in a pool, you're telling it to work together with other GPUs to work on a block. As I said earlier, a block represents a transaction between two users. When person A gives X amount of Dogecoin to person B, they have to tell everyone in the world that this trade took place. To do this, their block must be added to the blockchain.



Every block found yields a reward. This reward is split up amongst the GPUs that worked to find this block. The more you work on a block, the more % of the reward you get. However, the more GPUs working together on a block, the faster the block is found. Average time per round (Network) represents the amount of blocks that are being found by everyone in the world. Average time per round (Pool) represents the amount of blocks being found by the pool you're working at.



Difficulty is an indication on how hard a block is to mine. The lower the difficulty, the faster a coin will be mined. Note that the more people mining a coin, the higher the difficulty. Being a hipster pays off when mining cryptocurrencies, though you have to be lucky enough to mine a LOAD of coins before their value explodes. When their value explodes, more people will hop on board hoping to ride the wave and make some quick cash. The difficulty will then rise and you won't care at all because you've already made your money. What makes a coin go to the moon? The hell if I know..







As shown here, the relation between the difficulty of a block and the reward can be somewhat random. An especially difficult block may or may not yield more rewards. In this example we are looking at Mintcoin. Also note that you will only be paid for the work of your GPU when others have validated your block (ie checked that the solution found by the pool for a given block is correct). Once the block is indeed legitimate, the coins in "unconfirmed" will go to "confirmed". It's at this point where the cryptocoins are truly yours to cash out.



In this step I will briefly go over a few basic topics about what can be found in the tabs "Block" and "Pool" at the pool you're working at. I've been mining for some time (not long, mind you) and this useful information was alien to me. Since then, I've figured out some stuff, so it's best for a new player to know this stuff from the get-go.A few keywords appear. These areand. Understanding these keywords requires knowing a little bit on how cryptocurrencies work.When you are putting your GPU to mine in a, you're telling it to work together with other GPUs to work on a. As I said earlier, a block represents a transaction between two users. When person A gives X amount of Dogecoin to person B, they have to tell everyone in the world that this trade took place. To do this, their block must be added to the blockchain.Every block found yields a reward. This reward is split up amongst the GPUs that worked to find this block. The more you work on a block, the more % of the reward you get. However, the more GPUs working together on a block, the faster the block is found. Average time per round (Network) represents the amount of blocks that are being found by everyone in the world. Average time per round (Pool) represents the amount of blocks being found by the pool you're working at.is an indication on how hard a block is to mine. The lower the difficulty, the faster a coin will be mined. Note that the more people mining a coin, the higher the difficulty. Being a hipster pays off when mining cryptocurrencies, though you have to be lucky enough to mine a LOAD of coins before their value explodes. When their value explodes, more people will hop on board hoping to ride the wave and make some quick cash. The difficulty will then rise and you won't care at all because you've already made your money. What makes a coin go to the moon? The hell if I know..As shown here, the relation between the difficulty of a block and the reward can be somewhat random. An especially difficult block may or may not yield more rewards. In this example we are looking at Mintcoin. Also note that you will only be paid for the work of your GPU when others have validated your block (ie checked that the solution found by the pool for a given block is correct). Once the block is indeed legitimate, the coins in "unconfirmed" will go to "confirmed". It's at this point where the cryptocoins are truly yours to cash out.



You are now mining Dogecoin. Much amaze. You can trade these coins for LTC or BTC on different trading sites. Be careful as to which sites you use though, not all are trustworthy and even the trustworthy ones have their issues now and then. I've heard of people losing as many as 10 LTC on some sites. That said, it's been a while since I've heard of someone losing a lot of money on trading sites, these issues aren't rare but they're also uncommon. It has never happened to me. However I have used at least one trading site before that got shut down for some reason. I'm not sure of the reason but I am glad that I had no coins at that site when they shut down.



Good links:



Here are two trading sites that seem to be reasonably trustworth and reliable, I've never had any problems with either of them, though apparently cryptsy used to be unreliable (I haven't heard of any complaints as of late):

https://www.mintpal.com/

https://www.cryptsy.com/



Coinwarz is a site that apparently tells you which coin is the most profitable to mine. I'm only recommending this because I've seen other more experienced miners do so. It is my understanding that there is a certain latency in the rankings, so it would probably be best to mine of the coins that is close to the top consistently.

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency



This blog is an excellent read if you're interested in the theory of bitcoins and cryptocurrencies. I've read it only once, and not entirely at that, but I somehow still enjoyed the read. I got this from the bitcoin discussion thread on TL, which I'll also link:

http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/



TL bitcoin discussion thread:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=408398





/End guide. For now. I'll doubtlessly edit/streamline this guide in the future, but for now this should be enough. If you're an experienced miner and you feel I've left something out, shoot me a PM, I'll fix things up. I've noticed there was a Bitcoin discussion thread on TL, but no information on how to actually mine it. So I've decided to open this thread to explain very briefly how it works. A couple points first.*For reference, a 7970, which is a mid-high end AMD card, might mine a few € worth of Cryptocoins every 24 hours if set up properly. Youmake some money; and you can make good money if you get lucky.OK now that we've gotten that over with, on to the actual guide. When I wrote this at first it seemed that Dogecoin was the most profitable coin to mine. I don't think this is the case today, however it isn't a bad coin to mine either. As of now I'm not sure which coins are good to mine, I'm still looking for something profitable. We'll be mining Dogecoin in this example however; also note that the principle remains the same for every coin.Don't mine Bitcoin directly, it's a waste of time. Litecoin is more or less the same story. It's better to mine altcoins and then trade them for Litecoins or Bitcoins.Now to the interesting part.You are now mining Dogecoin. Much amaze. You can trade these coins for LTC or BTC on different trading sites. Be careful as to which sites you use though, not all are trustworthy and even the trustworthy ones have their issues now and then. I've heard of people losing as many as 10 LTC on some sites. That said, it's been a while since I've heard of someone losing a lot of money on trading sites, these issues aren't rare but they're also uncommon. It has never happened to me. However I have used at least one trading site before that got shut down for some reason. I'm not sure of the reason but I am glad that I had no coins at that site when they shut down.Here are two trading sites that seem to be reasonably trustworth and reliable, I've never had any problems with either of them, though apparently cryptsy used to be unreliable (I haven't heard of any complaints as of late):Coinwarz is a site that apparently tells you which coin is the most profitable to mine. I'm only recommending this because I've seen other more experienced miners do so. It is my understanding that there is a certain latency in the rankings, so it would probably be best to mine of the coins that is close to the top consistently.This blog is an excellent read if you're interested in the theory of bitcoins and cryptocurrencies. I've read it only once, and not entirely at that, but I somehow still enjoyed the read. I got this from the bitcoin discussion thread on TL, which I'll also link:TL bitcoin discussion thread:/End guide. For now. I'll doubtlessly edit/streamline this guide in the future, but for now this should be enough. If you're an experienced miner and you feel I've left something out, shoot me a PM, I'll fix things up. eso-community.net | Age of Empires 3 Community Forum ! | maru lover forever | I LIVE IN USA NOW http://i.imgur.com/EZPrgbW.png