Hello and welcome back to our series on Dogecoin! This week I want to start out with a quick word on some of the options you can play with when setting up your mining system. If you think back to looking through the Mining Hardware Comparison List, you should remember there being “optimal” settings associated with each card. These are a good place to start when optimizing your cards, but you can and should tailor your settings to meet your situation. With that said, here’s a brief description of some of the modifiers you can attach to your command thread:

The -I command input is used to set your intensity. Intensity sets how hard your GPU is working, and can substantially increase your performance. It can also overwork your GPU, leading to hardware errors and decreasing the efficiency of your mining operation. Intensity should be set somewhere between 1 and 20 and should be lowered if you notice hardware errors showing up in your mining reports.

The -w command input sets the worksize for your GPU, determining the size of the job it takes on. People usually set this to 256 when working with mid-range cards, and tweaking doesn’t seem to have too great an effect.

Other command inputs include -g and –thread-concurrency. It’s typical to leave -g at 1 and your thread concurrency (which tells your GPU how many different tasks it should be working on at one time) will vary depending on what hardware you are using.

Now, the question that so many of us have been asking ourselves: What do I do with all this Doge?

Like any good currency, there are a number of things that Dogecoin can be used for, but it’s important to remember that Doge is a little more than just your average currency. Certainly you can spend it like money at some online retailers, and more and more it’s being seen out in the public, being used to buy burgers. But the fundamental difference between the Doge in your wallet and the USD in your bank account is that the value of Doge isn’t fixed. This makes Dogecoin behave in a similar way to a share of stock. The value rises and falls almost daily based on demand and supply, and is closely tied to the value of Bitcoin.

It’s important to keep this in mind when dealing with Dogecoin (or any cryptocurrency) to maximize your profit and minimize your risk. Currently there are a number of exchanges where you can trade your Dogecoin for other cryptocurrencies or buy and sell them directly for USD. There are also several places on the internet where you can trade your Dogecoin for goods or services, which has the added bonus of strengthening the Doge economy and helping to raise the value of Dogecoin. Whatever you decide to do with your Dogecoin, remember to keep it safe and treat it like real money – because it is!