Mining for cryptocurrency may or may not be profitable for you, but the good news is that you can easily run the numbers. Mining profitability is will primarily depend on the hashrate (mining speed) of your mining hardware, and the amount of energy it takes to run the hardware. Mining software usually comes with system monitors that will tell you with a fair degree of accuracy what the numbers are, and several online calculators exist to help as well. The cost of energy is the main concern, many miners will seek to be near the cheapest sources of energy, such as a hydroelectric plant in Sweden or countries with energy subsidies such as China. Continue reading...
Setting up a bitcoin miner can be as simple as downloading a mining client program, or as complicated as building a custom rig. Bitcoin mining used to be cheaper and easier to do than it is today, but it can still be relatively simple to execute. In the past, a computer with a CPU could crunch through enough hashes to solve a few blocks and turn a profit. Now, a good GPU, that is, a Graphics Processing Unit card connected to the motherboard of a computer, or a series of GPUs, is par for the course because they can perform many times as many hashes per second than a CPU can alone. This is the case even if the CPU has several cores, and it just has to do with the way that GPUs handle their work. Continue reading...
It used to be that litecoin mining could only be done by GPU, but now ASIC machines are getting all the glory. For a time, new miners preferred to mine litecoin instead of bitcoin because ASIC miners had rendered old-fashioned GPU mining for Bitcoin unprofitable. During that time, when ASIC machines had not be designed for Litecoin Scrypt mining, anyone with a good enough GPU could profitably mine litecoin with the same computer they used at home, while they were off at work or asleep not using it. If you aren’t aware, GPUs (graphics cards) compute the kinds of functions necessary for mining at many times the speed that CPUs (core processors) alone would. Continue reading...
Anyone with a computer connected to the internet can potentially be a bitcoin miner. Bitcoin’s blockchain technology requires that a large network of computers, running the same client software, be used to randomly succeed at validating blocks of encrypted transactions every 10 minutes or so. That’s where bitcoin mining comes in. Mining is the act of letting one’s computer run what’s known as the “hash function” over and over and over in an attempt to crack the codes on the blocks that need validation. The codes that need cracking are all similar and are only difficult enough to require an average of 10 minutes for a random mining computer to get the right answer. The code and the answers are only significant in that they take time to complete, and that they allow the transactions to be validated and added to the ledger of all bitcoin transactions. Continue reading...
When mining on the Ethereum blockchain, you are rewarded in Ether, but you may need to do some calculations to find out it if will be profitable for you. Ethereum mining can still be done profitably, as of the time of this writing, by individuals on their home computers, as long as they have decent hardware. This is no longer the case for Bitcoin, Litecoin, and a few other coins, due to the development of ASIC (application-specific integrated circuits) mining rigs used by the nascent mining industry, which have rendered home computers obsolete and have begun to present a significant centralization threat on the decentralized blockchain. Continue reading...
Individuals who do not have the computing power to compete with large bitcoin mining operations can join a mining pool and split the rewards. Mining pools allow individuals with insufficient computing power to join a mining pool and split the rewards proportionally to the amount of computer power that they contributed. If a user contributes 3% of the computing power that it took for the pool to solve a block, that user will receive 3% of the reward. Continue reading...
Ethereum mining is the process of solving blocks of encrypted blockchain data using a proof-of-work algorithm and occasionally being rewarded with Ether. Blockchain data is validated and added to the distributed ledger by computers on the network performing the task of “mining,” which is continually attempting to solve puzzles, basically, which each unlock a block of encrypted data containing information about transactions, and, on the Ethereum platform, information about distributed application functions and smart contracts. Once a block is unlocked, the data within is shared with the network and added to the distributed ledger. Continue reading...
It is possible to participate in bitcoin mining indirectly, by partially funding a remote mining operation. Cloud mining is separate and distinct from pool mining, because instead of owning hardware and pooling resources with other miners to increase the likelihood of securing profits, cloud mining simply secures funding from investors, essentially, who have a contract to participate in profits of a mining pool in a remote locations based on the bandwidth of Gigahashes/s that they would like to fund (“buy”). Continue reading...
Agricultural and mining businesses are exposed to commodity price risk, which is the possibility that the price of the commodity will change unfavorably by the time the commodity is ready to be delivered. They avoid unnecessary risk by using futures contracts, forward contracts, and possibly other derivative instruments. Commodity price risk means that an agricultural or mining business might not be able to predict the revenue that they can generate from the production or extraction of commodities. Continue reading...
A support line represents an estimation of where a price is likely to stop moving downwards, based on recent data and analysis methods. It is arrived at with different formulas for different indicator methods, but it is generally a line derived from moving averages and standard deviation which represents a lower level at which traders would expect a price to rebound back upwards. Several methods of technical and fundamental analysis plot a support line or two as part of a graphical representation of trends. Theoretically, a price will only deviate so far from its moving average before bouncing back toward the middle. Continue reading...
A resistance line is the inverse of a support line and represents the glass ceiling through which a security price has difficulty breaking through. Resistance lines are calculated as part of analysis methods which use moving averages and standard deviation, or similar calculations, to put a range of probability on the expected movement of a security price, with the resistance line representing the top of that range. Continue reading...
The Triple Tops pattern appears when there are three distinct minor Highs (1, 3, 5) at about the same price level. The security is testing the upper resistance level (horizontal line formed by (1, 3, 5), but the price ultimately declines as buyers give up. This type of formation potentially happens when investors can not break the resistance price. There is a distinct possibility that market participants will sell out, and the price can move down with big volumes (leading up to the breakout). Continue reading...
The Security Market Line (SML) is a visualization of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and shows the theoretical relationship between risk and return between securities and the entire market. The SML is plotted on a graph bound by an x-axis, which represents Beta (volatility above or below the market average), and a y-axis, which represents the rate of return. Beta is a volatility indicator that measures how many changes in price, and by how much, a security experiences over an amount of time. It describes whether the risk associated with a particular security is above or below the average of the market (or a more specific index), where 1 is a correlation with the market, and numbers above or below describe increased or decreased volatility, respectively. Continue reading...
The Capital Market Line is a complex concept, but put simply, it is a calculation meant to give the investor/analyst a range of potential returns for a portfolio, based on the risk free rate and the standard deviation of the portfolio. The Capital Market Line is a part of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) that solves for expected return at various levels of risk. It takes into consideration a portfolio’s risk assets and the risk-free rate. Continue reading...
Ripple does not have a mining rewards system like Bitcoin for releasing new coins into the market, so they’ve enacted a plan to put 55 billion XRP into escrow accounts. Prior to 2017, Ripple did not offer any guarantees to coin-holders concerning the rate at which Ripple would release XRP coins into the wild, and this made investors nervous. At any moment, Ripple theoretically could have dumped the approximately 60 billion remaining XRP into the market and washed out any value that the investors... Continue reading...
Journey into the depths of the mining sector! From industry titans to the pulse of global demand, discover what shapes the world of mining stocks. Ready to unearth the treasures of this age-old industry and its modern-day dynamics? Continue reading...
While there aren’t that many ways to use institutional-level, regulated vehicles to get exposure to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there are some, and the market will likely expand. Money managers are finding ways to offer managed investments that offer exposure to cryptocurrencies, despite the hurdles presented by regulators and skepticism from large financial companies. On the over-the-counter market OTCQX, you can buy shares of the Bitcoin Investment Trust from Grayscale (Nasdaq: GBTC). This fund has seen massive gains recently but does come with a 2% fee. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has stated that it would like to start trading cryptocurrency futures, but it may be a little time before this becomes a reality, due to significant red tape and guidance needed regarding cryptocurrencies. Continue reading...
Blockchains are intended to maintain integrity in the system without anyone needing to monitor or control it. By instituting a system of checks and balances that functions on its own accord through rules programmed into the protocol, and which also makes decisions and keeps records based on consensus throughout a peer-to-peer network, a blockchain oversees its own activities without requiring any trust in a central authority or the other parties involved. Continue reading...
The possibility of a company or municipal government defaulting on their bond obligations, usually by going bankrupt, is a real one. For this reason, all bonds are rated according to the financial stability of the issuer. A look at the history of corporate and municipal debt will illuminate the fact that the possibility of the issuer being unable to pay its obligations to bondholders is a very real one. There is an established system of bond ratings that gives a rough estimate of the bond's reliability. Continue reading...
Companies with significant operations or sales abroad will be affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates. If the dollar strengthens relative to a foreign currency, the price paid for the goods in the country will not be worth as much domestically when the company converts their profits back to dollars. Some foreign currencies fluctuate much more than the US dollar does, but even the dollar can behave unpredictably. This can have a tremendous effect on the bottom line of companies engaged in significant amounts of business abroad. Continue reading...