Litecoin mining has quietly undergone a sharp rise in popularity in recent days. The cryptocurrency is an alternative to Bitcoin, which recently saw a meteoric rise in value to about $1200 before dropping off and settling in at the mid-$800 range. Litecoin’s sudden breakout has resulted in a worldwide run on graphics cards used in […]
If you learn anything from the Internet, it’s that you shouldn’t take much of what’s on it serious. There are some people out there who enjoy watching the world burn, which is exactly what we saw when Internet pranksters released instructions to “unlock” the Xbox One’s backwards compatibility option or an option in iOS 7 that magically makes your iPhone waterproof. It looks like owners of Apple products have yet another bogus “tip” to stay on alert over, this time, it’s in regards to their Macs. (more…)
Hoax Attempts To Make Apple Users Reformat Their Macs For Bitcoin Mining Feature original content from Ubergizmo. 
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General piece of advice: don’t go around typing stuff into your computer’s terminal window based on some pictures you found randomly floating on the internet. You’re not very likely to unlock a hidden bitcoin miner in your Mac, and far more likely to brick the thing instead.
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Virtual currency Bitcoin got its biggest shot of serious investment and arguably most legitimate backing to-date this week, with a $25m round of funding by digital account firm Coinbase lending more respectability to the controversial tech. Coinbase, which holds the virtual Bitcoin accounts for around 600,000 investors, not only manages virtual wallets but also the […]
It’s not every day you get to see a machine designed to mint money. KnCMiner is a Stockholm-based hardware company that has single-handedly changed the face of Bitcoin mining. Their products sell out almost instantly – the $5,000 Jupiter is already gone – and, amazingly, the company actually ships. In a world of charlatans, broken promises, and outright lies, it’s refreshing to find a company like this one.
I spoke with Alexander Lawn, the public face of KnCMiner, on his way through New York. He brought one of his rigs for my perusal and I can report that it looks great, works, and is a real, shipping product. Alex joined the company after critiquing it online in Bitcoin forums, an interesting way to get noticed. He has worked with the team, including Andreas Kennemar and Marcus Erlandsson.
The hardware itself is highly specialized. Because each ASIC board needs a massive heatsink and fan, most of the metal case is open to allow the free flow of air. A small control board runs to IO and the rest of the cables are power – one power supply per board. It’s like looking at some sort of strange lifeform dedicated to breaking down a very specific amino acid. This rig can mine at 550 gigahashes per second. For comparison, the average graphics card miner tops out at about 100 MH/s.
When these machines boot up, the market notices. This is the second edition of the Jupiter miner and the hardware already moved markets… and is already discontinued. Owners will be able to easily upgrade their hardware over time and update the ASICs as necessary. Where is KnCMiner heading next? Neptune. Their latest miner is the fastest in the world to date and sold $8 million in orders in a single day. Pre-order pricing is $12,995 and the company plans on selling a mere 2,400 units.
The Jupiter is truly bespoke hardware. The chips are designed in Stockholm and the entire system was built in Sweden. They are as rare as Fabergé eggs at this point and the demand is only increasing. Lawn described one encounter with a Russian customer who called up asking if he could bring a bag full of cash to buy a miner. Alex calmly explained that there was a waiting list and that they were sold out. The Russian grunted and said: “I’ll bring more cash.”
As far as digital currency goes, Bitcoin is the word on all interested parties’ lips, but that could possibly (it pays to be optimistic) change in the coming months with the introduction of Dogecoin, a Bitcoin-esque digital offering that is based on, oddly enough, the Doge meme. There are some fundamental differences between Bitcoin and […]
The so-called “Google of China”, Baidu, has stopped accepting Bitcoin as payment on any of its online properties — as has China Telecom. This near-synchronous cessation of payment transactions for the two companies in the digital currency, many believe, exacerbated the recent sudden downturn of Bitcoin’s long and unprecedented rise in value. The USD Bitcoin […]
Both sides of the Bitcoin war appear to be making giant strides toward winning out – either dismissing the coin entirely, or making it more acceptable to use with big purchases. Today a Lamborghini dealership in Newport Beach has announced that a purchase has been made from them in the form of a brand new […]
A number of online services and firms currently accept the virtual currency known as Bitcoin as payment. Bitcoins have also been in headlines with thefts of thousands of the virtual coins by hackers in cases like the Inputs.io breach last month. That theft saw $1.23 million in Bitcoins stolen. There are a lot of Bitcoin […]
Bitcoin’s value continues to soar as the digital currency is embraced by some and banned by others, becoming a valid method of payment at more than a few locations and even inspiring a new field of study at one university. With all its upsides comes a downside, however, something that results from the current void […]
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