Ok, sorry for starting with a mysterious "click-bait" title. If I led with what this guide was actually about, I think I would have scared my intended audience away. This is a post about mining. If that sounds scary, please don't leave yet. Hear me out.
A few days ago I came across this guide from @cryptos. It was titled How to Easily Mine With Your Computer and Get More Steem, A Guide for People Not Into Crypto Currencies. I decided to try it out. It was very easy to setup! (Windows PCs only though.)
A few days ago, I setup the miner on my basement computer, and left it to run. I pretty much forgot about it. Then, a few hours ago, I saw a notification in my Steemit wallet. What could that possibly be, I thought. Why would I be receiving a notification about something in my wallet?
"Receive 17.880 STEEM POWER from blocktrades" it says.
At first I was trying to figure out why in the world @blocktrades would have randomly sent me 17.88 SP, but then I remembered - I had my miner running! It was configured to send the BTC it earned to my Steem Power wallet, which is run through BlockTrades. After just a couple days of letting the little guy run, I have already earned 17.88 SP!
I have to tell more people about this! - I thought. This could be really big!
Why is this such a big deal? Other than essentially earning free SP (which is nice), this is putting buy pressure on STEEM. The miner collects other coins (like Zcash), trades them in for BTC, then uses the BTC to buy Steem Power!
With the computer in my basement, I am currently earning about $3-4 worth of Steem Power per day. If 100 more people did this, it would be an additional $300-$400 worth of STEEM being purchased by the community each day! The more people in the community that are doing this, the more buy pressure we will put on STEEM!
Let's build a mining army!
I highly suggest that you check out the guide, and try setting it up! Even if you have never tried mining before, it is very easy to setup. Also, if you find @cryptos guide helpful, please remember to upvote his post as well!
I read that and almost went down to the used computer store to get a Windows computer, then I slapped myself about the head for a few minutes and started looking for a linux way to do it (even though I know very little about linux) because I certainly can't do it on my Chromebook. lol.
Unfortunately I will have to learn a lot more to do it that way. Might take me a while.
I haven't done it from linux, but I believe this page has instructions. I assume you don't have an ASIC miner, so you would want options 3 (GPU) and 4 (CPU). You would just need to use the steem power deposit address from your steemit wallet as your bitcoin address in order to get the rewards delivered here.
When I ran the program cryptos wrote about, it "chose" to mine zcash from a list of 4 or 5 miner programs it comes with, I think since zcash produces the most money per unit time right now. If you want to try to mine zcash on linux, you can go to their website and download the miner code. https://z.cash/ I did it on a Windows Azure account, on a 4 core 12 GB Debian Linux machine. I got about 4 Sols/second and it has been running 4 days 24/7 and my balance is still zero.
I think cryptos' miner program is part of a pool, so we do get a little bitcoin every minute or so. I think the z.cash miner is a stand alone miner, so if you find a block you get 1.25 zcash which would be about $600 or so right now. But it is starting with "slow mining" so I assume the chances of getting a payout will increase in a few weeks, but the price may be way down as well. I think it is predicted to stabilize around $60 and it is now at $480. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/
Good luck in whatever mining you choose to do!
Using my wifes laptop I was getting about 18 sol ran it for about 4 to 6 hours then she made me stop using it lol, I did make .0015 zcash on suprnova.cc to get an good amount of zcash you need amd rx 4xx last i saw.
If you have linux, you are probably 'techie' enough to use one of the more advanced miners out there. (There are quite a few guides floating around.) This is mainly for people who have a Windows PC and are not the type that would normally be a miner (non-techie).
I am kinda techy, but this is just something my son left here and I haven't really used Linux since it was only unix. I just use what he set up for web browsing. But I'll figure it out.
Congrats!
Is there a way to set up the miner to use regular ports? Ie 80 instead of 3335?
TNX!
I'm not sure. I pretty much just followed the instructions in the guide :)
The source code is up on the site, so even if it is not built in - you might be able to compile an updated version.
You could try asking @crptos too. He seems to be more of an expert :)
TNX for your reply. Maybe I'll just try again in an environent where I control the firewall settings :)
My first install was in an intranet with many ports being blocked.
I wish you successful mining.
Thanks, you too! :)
Pretty insane. I'm a Mac, and highly illiterate in this area. BUT, I still am looking into it! So thanks for the possibilities!
What are your PC specs, please?
Windows 10
Intel i5 @ 3.4 GHz
16 GB RAM
Thanks. You are lucky. That's Why the miner was pooping plenty of blessings.
Hehe. It looks like the ZCash rate has started to go down now too. Still earning a decent amount, but IDK if it will sustain $3-4 per day.
I saw it too. Will it work on a laptop?
I have an older one that isn't being used until hubby gets home from work.
It doesn't like my laptop. :(
It should.
What's it doing? Is there an error?
It's strange. It said something about only supporting x64 bits operating system, that mine was x86??? and then the warning disappeared to reveal the NiceHash Miner...but froze. So I had to reboot to close it and didn't revisit again.
Which version of windows do you have?
replying here because max thread:
I'm going to try and load it on the older laptop and see if I have better results. For now...sleep. Sleep is good. :) If it doesn't work, I'll ask @cryptos for help. Thanks!
Welcome. Hope you get it working! :)
Old laptop has Windows 7
Mine is Windows 10. BTW, I hate Windows 10.
Hehe. IDK what it could be though. Windows 7 seems like it should work. You might want to try replying to @cryptos thread and see if he knows what it is.
Requirements to run it are listed here - https://github.com/nicehash/NiceHashMiner#requirements
Windows 7 or later is supported, but the two things I see that might be tripping you up are that a 64 bit OS is required and it needs ".NET Framework 4.5 or higher and Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2013". Based on the error message, I'm guessing you probably have 32 bit?
Here's how to check:
Also, just FYI, you're going to see much slower results on a laptop. Mine is a couple years old,and it normally gets about $0.03 to $0.05 per day. With the zcash launch, it was up to $0.70, but it's now back down to about a dime.
I tried mining according to the guide by @cryptos too, and it worked for me.
I am only making 4 cents an hour, or a dollar a day. Also, the CPU is running at 100% and there is a faint smell of heated electrical items. I ran it for 6 hours so far. Looks like it will pay out after a week, but I don't know if that changes since I am not running it 24/7. I'm not sure what the electricity is costing me to run this. Probably less, but maybe not that much less, so my actual profit might be half. Not sure on the "wear and tear" factor on the computer.
Initally I got an error that openCL.dll was missing. I downloaded the bin zip file and unzipped that, same error. I copied openCL.dll to every folder and it worked fine then.
I am mining to my Bittrex bitcoin address. I may turn the bitcoin to steem or steem dollars though.
I think people should try this out! See how it works for you. These are my random thoughts on the matter; thanks for your article, and thanks to cryptos!
Yes, people should know that mining will max out the CPU on your computer. IDK about what you are describing as far as the electrical smell though. It doesn't happen with mine. It might be something to do with your computer.
I got the "missing openCL.dll" error when I installed it too, but I just ignored it. Seems to work just fine despite the error.
I'm very sensitive to smells. :) Probably just because it was running a bit hotter than usual.
I think there is a way to limit the CPU percentage a task uses. I'm going to fire up the miner again soon and see how it runs tonight.
Also, I am running it in a Virtual Machine. This miner program is an EXE file and we really don't know the coders behind it, and it is always good to be wary when running any EXE file on your computer just because you read about it on the internet. :) Not saying there is any problem with this, just saying everyone needs to know the risks and make up their own mind.
True. For those who are worried, they do have source code you can download and compile.