The number of Bitcoins at the moment - how much is left to mine? Mining in Russian: why Russia was overwhelmed by the boom in bitcoin mining

Price fluctuations during a downturn can be used to advantage by many market participants. Although the cost of BTC today is $ 10,765, and it has not yet been possible to gain a foothold above the threshold of $ 11,000, analysts expect that this promising cryptocurrency will surprise everyone again.

current trend

Traders are concerned about the formation of the head-and-shoulders pattern - a number of parameters indicate that it will not end as optimists think. Cryptocurrency fails to change the downtrend, there have been minor price fluctuations for several days in a row.

Trading volumes have fallen - most are cautious, waiting for development. Everything indicates that $11,000 has become a strong resistance level. Having reached $11,044, Bitcoin lost ground again.

Analyst Jaini Zidins notes:

Although it is possible to buy a promising cryptocurrency now, and then resell it for a quick profit, this is certainly not the best time to invest in Bitcoin for a long time. We're still in for a big downturn.

Without a serious decline, there is no hope for a long-term trend reversal. The bulls are waiting for a good opportunity to buy and hope for changes in the next few days.

Positive forecasts: the future belongs to promising technology

Wall Street financier Tom Lee is convinced that the situation will return to normal by the beginning of the third quarter. A month ago, he said that a grandiose rotation of cryptocurrencies is expected this year, and suggested paying attention to promising NEO and Stellar. This week, NEO overtook Cardano in terms of capitalization, taking 6th place in the ranking.

According to the investor, the rate will rise after the news about promising projects large companies. The first sign was the message about the launch of the Rakutencoin cryptocurrency by the Japanese trading corporation Rakuten:

This is another example of the positive development of crypto technologies in 2018, which demonstrates that the sale of bitcoin and altcoins in January was unjustified.

Lee believes that the realistic price of BTC will be $20,000 by mid-summer, and should reach $25,000 by the end of the year. The investor also pointed out another important pattern:

The minimum values ​​of the cost are usually fixed in the first two months of the calendar year. This has happened 6 times in the last 7 years.

Impact on other assets

Over the past day, the sale of altcoins continued. Cardano lost 4.49% and is now worth $0.32. Charles Hoskinson was attacked by Twitter users who bought the currency at $0.8, considering it promising. After a significant depreciation of investments, they accuse the creators of inaction.

The unsuccessful launch of LitePay slowed down the growth of Litecoin, today the cryptocurrency is worth $210, although many expected to sell it at a higher price. Expert Charles Hayter takes the fall calmly:

Nothing unexpected, just normal volatility. I think everyone is waiting for the regulators' position to be clarified. The problem with Uranium and the Venezuelan Petro should somehow be solved.

The futures market was also in the red zone. The bulls are gradually losing ground and prefer to watch from the sidelines.

Tom Lee says the recent drops in Zcash and Ripple indicate that investors should be extremely careful until April:

We believe that in 2018, at least three influential corporations will issue their tokens. Three large companies have already announced their plans, at this rate, businessmen will understand cryptocurrencies earlier than Wall Street.

In addition to Line and Starbucks, which do not hide their interest in a promising direction, Facebook must also decide on a strategy. Each positive news will positively affect prices.

Do you believe in rapid growth bitcoin? Write about it in the comments.

The appearance of Bitcoins in 2009 was the basis for the development of a direction that is unique in all respects, characterized as mining. Quite quickly after their appearance, hundreds of thousands of people decided to start mining cryptocurrency using the devices at their disposal and computer equipment. They are interested in how many Bitcoins have been mined to date. In this article, you can find out how much currency has been mined today, as well as how much is left to be mined if the maximum number of coins in the world is set.

On initial stage mining performed on a regular PC gave significant results, but over time, income indicators began to decline.

The reason for this phenomenon is that the total amount of cryptocurrency cannot be infinite, its quantity is limited.

Experts note that the number of generated Bitcoins will reach a maximum of 21 million coins. The closer modern users approach this indicator, the more difficult the Bitcoin mining process is, the more power is required to obtain it. Despite such difficulties, the number of miners is rapidly increasing. The multi-million army of those who want to earn money in this way is increasing almost daily with new volunteers.

Currency generation is a special area of ​​online earnings. They are engaged not only by private individuals, but also by fairly large enterprises that join forces in pools. It is this process that is called mining or mining of coins through the generation of new blocks. The basis in the process of obtaining cryptocurrency are complicated tasks and actions in mathematics.

Huge modern resources, innovative technical devices are involved.

Knowing about the limited number of Bitcoins, “miners” throw all their resources into mining, spend the money they earn, full program use the capabilities of mining organizations.

Daily at common network currency is added approximately 3600 coins. New arrivals cost users more and more. According to certain data, users have already received 13 million coins. Users will be able to reach the upper limit around 2140. This drop in speed is based on two main reasons:

1. The requirements for used devices that produce currency are constantly growing.
2. Significantly increases the time required to mine one Bitcoin.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that modern mining companies focused on mining new coins are investing large sums to acquire new coins. expensive equipment. Such organizations calculate as accurately as possible how many coins they need and how long it will take to return the invested funds.

The maximum number of Bitcoins in the world?

The number of cryptocurrency coins that can be mined all the time is 21 million units. IN currently users received approximately 60% of this amount. Each received coin is solvent. The currency, unlike conventional monetary units, is backed not by gold and debts, but solely by supply and demand.

Professionals note that the ever-increasing value of Bitcoin is based on the amount of resources expended that are required to obtain each individual coin.

In some cases, the currency is backed by the price of the good, which is set by the seller, as well as by the price offered by the buyer.

How many Bitcoins are left to mine in 2019?

The information that answers the question of how many Bitcoins are left to be mined this year and in general is not a secret. Failure in such forecasts can only occur if someone decides to purchase at once a large number of coins, which is incredible.

The impossibility is based on the fact that the seller, knowing perfectly well the situation with Bitcoins, will constantly increase the cost of the financial product, increasing it until the buyer has completely exhausted all the funds.

Also, not all Bitcoins can be sold, especially since approximately 40% of the coins have not yet been mined at all, that is, it is clear that the number of Bitcoins this moment and how many more are planned to be mined.

It can be concluded that one coin is a means of carrying out settlements with a market price that directly depends on the current supply and demand at a particular moment. The closer the end of mining becomes, the higher the deficit of the currency, the faster the cost of one Bitcoin increases.

The cost and the number of mined coins are affected not only by supply and demand, but by such moments as:

• Features of application in the leading countries of the world;
• Relations of the main financial regulators;
• General political situation;
• The use of coins by powerful players in the financial market.

It is for this reason that the question of how many Bitcoins are left and at what price the coins are sold is relevant only for traders and for people who use the currency to carry out basic calculations.

Despite some forecasts indicating the possibility of cryptocurrency mining until 2140, many experts doubt this. The time it takes to get an extreme Bitcoin directly depends on a large number of factors. This includes the degree of popularity of the currency, the level of power used and the development of the technical field. There is a good chance that in a year or two a machine will be developed that will generate all the remaining coins.

Why is the number of Bitcoins limited?

All miners know that the total number of bitcoins cannot exceed 21 million coins. Not everyone knows the reason for this limitation. The thing is that the development of new coins is spelled out as accurately as possible in a special btc protocol, it is “hardwired” in its main program code. Based on the new protocol, miners can be rewarded for each new block of transactions made connected to the blockchain. Initially, professional miners received about 50 coins for each block.

Summing up

The information in this article may be somewhat suggestive, but people who are mining at a professional level need not worry. Simultaneously with the increase in the total number of coins, the volumes, as well as the scale of ongoing financial transactions where bitcoin takes part. In a few years, when the currency will dominate the modern financial market, professional miners will completely change the way they operate.

After some time, individual computing nodes will begin to receive decent commissions for approving the ongoing money transfer.

The recent rise in the price of bitcoin has been accompanied by a boom in "sensational" journalistic stories about its high power consumption. Peter Van Valkenburgh, head of the research team at the non-profit organization Coin Center (Washington) debunks five myths about bitcoin energy consumption that readers may have encountered on the Internet or in the pages of newspapers.

Myth 1: Miners waste tons of electricity doing useless calculations.

People who do not understand the fundamental computer technology, underlying bitcoin, suggest that the only occupation of miners is to burn electricity in order to enrich themselves with new bitcoins. These critics are misguided, but understandable, as the very term "mining" is somewhat misleading. Open the bitcoin white paper from 2008. On its pages you will not find the term "miners" in relation to the people we call miners these days. The only way mining is mentioned in the document is that there is a parallel with the extraction (mining) of gold; in general, the author of the white paper calls the participants in the bitcoin network nodes (nodes). The term “miner” first surfaced in 2010 on the BitcoinTalk Internet forum, and for a while, the word “minting” was used along with mining. When technologies are not backed by unified corporations or investors improving and promoting them, the terms that describe them organically emerge from the bowels of the user community. Mining is a misleading term because it hides the facts. Miners, i.e. miners or gold miners, dig huge holes in the ground at serious cost to find and extract metals, minerals and precious / semi-precious stones of market value. By extracting these values, they burn resources. Undoubtedly, Bitcoin miners are doing something similar, but they are also using fundamental innovative technology to confirm the validity of the data in computer network operating the open consensus mechanism.

You can give an exhaustive explanation of the mining mechanism, but it's better to talk a little about open consensus. It is undeniably useful and could not be implemented in the past. Bitcoin is not only an asset, but also a network of Internet-connected computers that collectively keep track of all transactions. The user joins the network using a free software through a device with Internet access. The computer then allows it to send bitcoin payments to other computers and receive funds from other network members. In addition, the computer helps to store and update an ever-growing list of all transactions, called the blockchain. People trust bitcoin as a store of value and a means of settlement largely because they can see this blockchain and all transactions throughout its history (including their own).

Now back to the aforementioned open consensus mechanism. In this context, consensus means just an agreement; we're just trying to get a group of computers to agree. Multi-computer consensus mechanisms have been around since the 1980s. These old mechanisms allow, for example, six data centers owned by IBM to synchronously store and update backup data important to the company. The bitcoin network also stores data (transactions) in a cluster of machines, and these devices must maintain consensus. The innovation of the fundamental blockchain technology was the open consensus mechanism. In our example with a group IBM computers only a set number of computers (that is, six data centers) can participate in the process at the same time, and only computers authorized by IBM can join the work (this is a kind of intranet). Bitcoin's consensus mechanism allows countless computers to participate, and anyone can join (which in more like the internet). This is what is meant by the open consensus mechanism. This is why people say that bitcoin is “decentralized” and why it would be appropriate to call bitcoin a p2p digital currency, compared to centralized digital money created by companies like PayPal or Venmo, who decide who can add new payment details, and themselves add their. In the old closed consensus mechanisms, participants take turns adding new data, and all of them can be identified (and known in advance). If the number of participants is infinite, then how to make them rotate and how can you know that they are not cheating? This is where bitcoin mining comes into play. What are the characteristics of mining?

1. Miners are chosen randomly, according to the principle of a lottery.
2. The winner is selected every ten minutes through an algorithm.
3. To be selected, it is necessary to perform expensive and verifiable computational work (“lottery tickets” cost a lot of money).
4. Miners attempting to enter invalid transactions into the blockchain cannot be selected.

This mechanism makes the scam ineffective as miners pay a high price even to be eligible to participate in the lottery and lose their status if they try to submit invalid transactions. The lottery always remains fair, as the price of "tickets" increases as more people buy them. In other words, miners are forced to compete. Thus, if many people are willing to spend computing power to join the consensus, then the price of participation grows along with the growth of the complexity of the necessary computing work. More computing means a greater need for electricity. Accordingly, the energy consumption of bitcoin is growing.

Somewhere this system can be considered as a Rube Goldberg "machine" ( American cartoonist and sculptor, known for cartoons in which fictitious complex equipment performs primitive and useless operations - approx. ed.). If you see it this way, then you have begun to understand what bitcoin is! This is indeed a complex mechanism, but to date the only one that allows a large number of unidentified computers to agree on common data. Thus, this is the only way to electronic p2p money. Power consumption in this case anything but useless, since the energy is used to protect transaction data worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Unlike the energy used by the gold "miner", here electricity is used to provide "gold" to the general public: there is network infrastructure p2p payments, available to any inhabitant of the planet with a smartphone and Internet access.

Myth 2: Power consumption will increase as the number of transactions increases; if bitcoin ever scales to global levels, the oceans will boil

This is fundamentally wrong. We have already found out that mining energy costs increase in proportion to the intensity of the rivalry of miners, and not to the number of confirmed transactions. Confirmation via digital signature requires a small amount of computing power. Not the newest laptop is able to verify the signature in milliseconds, and it is hardly possible to find a reflection of this work in the electricity bill.

Why is there so much competition and the associated costs? The reasons are purely economic. Right now the price of bitcoin is high, and every 10 minutes one miner gets 12 and a half new radiant coins. This is a healthy competition, as it is understood that efforts to maintain the network scale automatically as the value of transactional data on the blockchain increases. Thus, the more value that moves in the network (its growth is caused by individuals valuing the value higher than the price reflects), the more resources are invested in storing data.

It is remarkable how different this scheme is from the data protection of, say, the American credit bureau Equifax and any other company that works with a huge amount of data. There, the effort spent on preserving information is scaled in accordance with management's assessment of risks and threats.

A final note about competition between miners. It may weaken over time. Every four years, the reward in the form of new coins is halved, and this will continue until the supply of bitcoins runs out. The miners will continue to operate as they can also collect transaction fees, but the total amount of payments received by the winning miner is likely to be less than today, even if the price of bitcoin continues to rise. Smaller rewards will mean that the amount of computing power invested in achieving success will decrease, and the level of energy costs will decrease.

Myth 3: Credit card transactions are much cheaper and less energy intensive than bitcoin transactions.

This is a comparison of apples and oranges. Transaction by credit card is not a complete, complete translation. This is just permission to pay, the beginning of an intricate "dance" involving at least five parties (cardholder, card-issuing bank, card network, acquiring bank and payee). Eventually (after days or even weeks), the authorized payment will pass through this entire network of players. The process ends when the user pays for credit card transactions, and it certainly does not happen instantly, with one click.

In contrast, a bitcoin transaction can be considered complete the moment it enters the blockchain. And it does not pass on its way bulky institutions similar to those mentioned above. It is true that the miner who placed the transaction in the block spends a certain amount of electricity. But it is far less than the amount of electricity needed to run at least three large financial companies, which have to work for several days to process your credit card transactions.

Myth 4: Bitcoin miners pollute the environment and will continue to do so

There is nothing wrong with using energy in and of itself. Greenhouse gases are bad, but it is not certain that Bitcoin will lead to an increase in their emission in the foreseeable future. By the way, if mining suddenly becomes the main driver of energy consumption on the planet, then it will be a boon for the environment! Just as the revolution consumer electronics has set in motion great computing power (a phenomenon described by Moore's law), the bitcoin revolution has the potential to catalyze a similar boom in innovative clean energy technologies.

Aluminum production accounts for roughly 3% of the global energy supply, yet we don't see the media sounding the alarm about laptop cases the way they do about bitcoin. Aluminum production is not often seen as a problem, as heavy industry contributes effective work sectors of the electricity sector. Why? Because heavy industry is a big consumer that is always looking for the cheapest source of electricity. Heavy industry can in theory be based anywhere, and electricity bills typically represent a significant percentage of its total costs. Electricity costs represent 40-45% of the costs of the chemical industry (eg chlorine) and 30-50% of the costs of the steel and aluminum industries. Accordingly, heavy industry (again in theory) will be based where electricity prices are lower.

Demand usually drives supply and rewards those who develop more cheap options electricity production. IN Lately this is the so-called renewable (“green”) energy: the cheapest energy is solar and wind energy, geothermal and hydropower are not far behind it.

However, for the typical heavy industry owner, electricity prices will not always be a primary concern. He may well turn to expensive "dirty" energy when it comes to profit. In addition, enterprises prefer to be based in countries where their customers are located, where other costs are lower, and governments subsidize them, seeking to stimulate production growth.

Electricity prices are more important to miners than to the typical heavy industry. Electricity bills can account for 30-70% of the costs of cryptocurrency miners. But miners do not have to think about the location of their clients and solve logistical problems. Digital in nature, bitcoins have only two factors of production - electricity and hardware, and it is much easier to "deliver" them around the world than, for example, steel. One miner moved his farm across the States, to the northwest of the country, since cheap hydroelectric power is available there. According to him, "it was worth it." For the same reason, miners choose Iceland or other countries with excess electric power. In a land of volcanoes and waterfalls, one can not only find beautiful views, but also an abundance of geothermal and hydraulic energy. If mining really starts consuming large amounts of electricity on a global scale, it will spark a green energy revolution. Moore's Law primarily referred to the incredible progress in materials science, but it also took into account the unprecedented demand for computing power that stimulated this progress and allowed the study and development of semiconductors to be profitable. If we want to see a similar revolution in energy, we should root for bitcoin. The facts are that the bitcoin network now provides a reward of $200,000 every 10 minutes to the person who can find the cheapest energy on the planet, which may also be the most environmentally friendly. The time spent searching is worth it.

Myth 5. Mining efficiency will decrease over time

We already know that energy consumption will not increase in parallel with the increase in the number of bitcoin transactions. Energy consumption may remain stable or even decrease, despite the rapid growth in their number. Now the bitcoin community is trying to create second layer networks or new open consensus mechanisms that will allow thousands and even millions of transactions per second.

There are different approaches to solving the scaling problem. The Lightning Network and similar payment channel infrastructures aim to make multi-transaction multi-transaction payments with only two transactions recorded on the blockchain itself, and provide automated controls that eliminate the need to rely on the honesty of the person making the multi-transaction. Other developers are experimenting with new open consensus mechanisms that have the potential to scale significantly while reducing energy costs. Don't forget that Bitcoin's consensus mechanism contains a built-in lottery where miners compete for a prize. It is also worth remembering that the price of each "lottery ticket" is determined by means of verifiable calculations. These calculations are called proof of work (Proof-of-Work), which is why the Bitcoin consensus mechanism is often called PoW. Ethereum developers, in turn, are now experimenting with a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism called Casper. With this scheme of work, miners (or validators) are still competing for a prize in the lottery, but this time they prove that they own a certain amount of cryptocurrency (or its share) in the blockchain. It might be more appropriate to call them shareholders rather than miners, but who knows what name will catch on and whether proof of stake will be as reliable and effective as proof of work.

The only thing to be sure of is that there is no shortage of innovative thinking in the field of digital currencies, which means that the cryptocurrency revolution may turn out to be much greener than we think.

Over the past few months in the media and in in social networks Increasingly, the topic of cryptocurrencies and everything connected with them began to rise. If earlier blockchain technology and mining (the extraction of cryptocurrencies using conventional computers or mining farms with a set of video cards running special software) were mostly interested in and earned on them only programmers, people with special technical education, now this situation has changed radically. Mining and buying up video cards for him were taken up by the most ordinary people, which, on the one hand, led to the growth of major cryptocurrencies, and on the other hand, dramatically increased the risk of losing invested funds among those who know little about this. The journalists of the website of the Zvezda TV channel found out from the experts what mining is and what risk the hobby for cryptocurrencies carries for ordinary people.

Mikhail Chobanyan, founder of the bitcoin agency KUNA, spoke about the prospects for mining and when the bitcoin code will end.

“Now it is mining (from the English verb mine - to mine), probably even a grandmother is at home, at a certain rate. This is already a problem. Second ... how to answer correctly, so that it is politically correct. The demand for mining is so great that even non-core people, without having fully studied the topic, invest money in video cards and equipment, and then they will figure it out along the way. At the factories that produce chips for video cards, pre-orders are insane. There is a month and a half or two left, when all these chips and video cards will hit the market, and, accordingly, everyone will start mining very abruptly. Even if now you want to start mining, no one will sell you the equipment, because it is not physically there. You have to wait at least two months. When all this happens, it will be a very interesting time. The difficulty of mining will increase very quickly, and, accordingly, whoever has expensive electricity or equipment is incorrectly configured, or he has chosen the wrong currency there, he will not be very competitive. And it will be very interesting to see how the price will reflect on this crazy surge. Therefore, it will be a fun time, the end of summer will be interesting to watch.

Such a surge of interest, of course, plays into the hands of video card manufacturers. Previously, there was nowhere to sell video cards, but now they just ship tens of thousands, and pre-orders have already been paid. But this is definitely not a conspiracy of video card manufacturers. Insane demand begins, insane earnings, and scammers, dishonest people, of course, emerge. The golden rule is that if someone promises you something that is guaranteed to be connected in one way or another with cryptocurrency, then look the person in the eye and think about whether you need it. Because no one should guarantee anything to you, no one gives guarantees here. It's the same with mining, no one knows what will happen at the end of the summer. Definitely, the complexity will skyrocket, but no one knows how this will affect the price. It's just that if the price does not change, then the lion's share of those who entered will not earn anything, because the complexity will be so great that everything will return to payback, which it was six months ago. When, relatively speaking, it paid off in a year, and not in three or four months, as it is now.

The expert also shared his thoughts on when the bitcoin code will end.

“It cannot end, we will not live to see the end of the bitcoin emission. It will be 2139-2140. I don't think we'll live. But mining will continue. Now mines a certain number of video cards in the world. And in two months there will be three times more of them. Accordingly, everyone will have such a logic - they need to be attached somewhere so that they begin to pay for themselves. They will flood everything, and there will be an alignment in all markets.”

Pavel Salas, CEO eToro Russia&CIS, shared with the website of the Zvezda TV channel the details of how mining takes place.

Now it has become popular due to the popularity of cryptocurrencies. How more computers appears, the more power is needed in order to be able to seal this block ... now there are mining farms, that is, a large amount of equipment, and computers, and video cards that are used for this. Some of the largest such farms are located in China, and next to hydroelectric power plants, that is, they have very cheap electricity. This is a whole hangar that is equipped with all this equipment, a special temperature is maintained there, and 24 hours a day, computers are trying to figure out the code faster than other computers on the network in order to decrypt the block and make a profit from it. Accordingly, it is already quite difficult for an ordinary person to try to mine such popular cryptocurrencies as bitcoin or ethereum. But taking into account the fact that now there are already about three hundred different cryptocurrencies, if not more, there are those that are still possible to mine, while still profitable. People are trying to get in.

Of course, now mining takes place at the expense of video cards, because it counts faster than the main computer processor. Therefore, the shares of NVidia and AMD companies jumped very strongly. The same NVidia plans to introduce special equipment for mining at the end of this year, these are eight video cards with a special process, and this can already independently mine cryptocurrencies.

People who see that money is practically slipping out of their hands are trying to somehow get in and also get a piece of the pie. There are other, more cunning people who see that there is a lot of demand, will gladly make some offer that can make life easier, and along the way they will receive money without risking anything. Because mining involves what are the main risks? With the fact that the cost of the equipment simply will not pay off. The minimum cost of cryptocurrencies, even if it goes down, will by and large cost the cost of hardware plus electricity.”

However, Pavel Salas warns that doing cryptocurrencies and mining at the amateur level, you can easily become a victim of scammers:

“When there is demand, there will be supply for those people who want to get a piece of money even faster for nothing. These consultants...here controversial issue. I can’t say for everyone, but if you specifically choose, you can understand whether he is fooling his head or not. You have to understand what he teaches. He will teach you how to buy a computer, certain video cards, download certain program to start mining? If he teaches this, then, in principle, he is not fooling around here, he is simply selling knowledge so that a person can earn money himself. If other consultants, for example, lease or lease part of their computer so that other people can mine it, but at the same time they themselves pay compensation in cryptocurrency, and these people do not see anything that really happens on the computer, then here this is closer to the fact that they are fooling their heads and trying to create a pyramid. Because one of the main points in the blockchain is transparency. If there is no transparency in the process, you don’t see what is happening, what you pay money for, what you get it back for, then here the biggest risks arise.”

The same opinion is shared by Sergey Lonshakov, Airlab visionary, blockchain developer. He also told the website of the Zvezda TV channel about what will happen to mining in the near future.

“Mining has been profitable all the years - blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. It has always been profitable, and now when even Vladimir Putin and Vitalik Buterin (the founder of the second-largest Etherium currency network in terms of capitalization) talked about blockchain technology, this began to arouse serious interest among people. This unprecedented surge has been going on for exactly the last six months. There have already been waves, a surge in mining profitability, the first surge in profitability was when the first ICs (ASICs - specialized equipment to solve the problems necessary for mining) began to be produced for bitcoin mining and then the profitability on this equipment exceeded all possible bold expectations of people on investments. Mining efficiency reached 1000%. But these waves are quickly extinguished big amount people who are immediately involved.

This is exactly what is happening now, and bitcoin has multiplied over the past year from the bottom dice from $700 to $2700, and Etherium from $15 to $300. Now people just go to the site and, by calculating profitability, they see that a video card bought for $15 thousand rubles, it will bring them 60 thousand rubles of income per year. But here it must be taken into account that such people who have logged in now and have seen that the profitability of a video card right at this moment is 4 times, they must understand that about a million people around the world have logged in now and when a lot of new capacities are connected to the network, it will still increase its complexity and profitability will not be what they expect. What I'm worried about is that people are now completely feverishly rushing into mining, having absolutely no competence, and then they will be disappointed, because they treat mining as an additional form of income. This is not so, mining is only for those who are ready to do it professionally.”

MOSCOW, June 22 - RIA Novosti, Natalia Dembinskaya. There was a shortage of video cards in Russia: cryptocurrency miners rushed to buy them, impressed by the recent rise in the bitcoin rate. Ordinary buyers are dissatisfied: because of the farmers (as the organizers of bitcoin farms are called, where virtual money is “forged” by mathematical calculations), it became not so easy to upgrade the computer - component dealers almost doubled the prices of video cards.

"Indeed, there are no video cards available, and there are already queues at the Chinese factories where their production is concentrated," Vadim Valeev, CEO of the CryptoInvest cryptocurrency investment platform, confirmed. Another consequence of the rush demand was the rapid growth of the shares of the largest producer graphics chips AMD: They have skyrocketed 400% since the winter.

What's happening

“Over the past few months, Etherium has made a somersault similar to the growth of the bitcoin rate, increasing in price from $10-15 immediately to $350,” notes cryptocurrency researcher Denis Smirnov.

Such dynamics promises super-profits for miners.

At the same time, if for the extraction of bitcoins (one bitcoin now costs about $ 2,600), special data centers have long been used and the most powerful computers(after all, in fact, “numbers” are mined, which are bitcoins), then with alternative cryptocurrencies everything is easier. They do not yet require such complex computing power, and by purchasing the necessary stuffing, the whole process can be organized at home.

How much does a home bitcoin farm cost

Graphics chips that are used in video cards are well tuned to solve algorithms similar to those that underlie alternative cryptocurrencies. By running mining on a regular PC with a pumped video card, you can get a few dollars a day.

You can go a little further and assemble a small mining farm, in which there will be not one such video card, but, for example, six, and all of them will work exclusively for cryptocurrency mining. The starting cost of such a farm will be about 200-300 thousand rubles. Plus monthly costs for electricity and, if necessary, for rent.

Before the shortage began (and electronics manufacturers in the United States complained about the shortage of video cards back in early June), such a mini-farm paid off in full in three to six months, after which it made it possible to make a profit.

"Now the return on investment is much faster - in less than a month, after which the farm begins to bring a very tangible income," says Smirnov.

Miner pools

Miners don’t work alone — they join in pools, sharing computing power, which allows them to mine new coins faster. The remuneration received is divided among all its participants, depending on the capacities spent by each.

At certain intervals, the miner receives a small share of the mined cryptocurrency - this is not 25 coins every few months, but, for example, one hundredth of one coin, but once every ten minutes.

Everything that the pool member “mined” remains with him, he can dispose of the cryptocurrency as he wants: leave it in the wallet or send it directly to the cryptocurrency exchange by joining the auction.

The mining process is quite long in time, and it does not become shorter. Cryptocurrency responds to an increase in the number of miners by increasing the complexity of the algorithm. In addition, it is very volatile. However, receiving a certain amount of currency at regular intervals allows the miner to hedge the risks.

For advanced

One purchase of equipment is not enough here, mining is not entertainment for ordinary people. Cryptocurrency mining requires both technical training and certain skills to maintain work.

“It’s better not to get involved in mining without being a technical specialist, and also without involving professionals,” recommends Vadim Valeev.

He points out that, in addition to the initial 200 thousand rubles of investment, maintaining a small bitcoin farm will require monthly costs for electricity (about three to five thousand rubles a month) and, if the area is not your own, for rent.

Should we expect a collapse

If Bitcoin suddenly collapses, will other cryptocurrencies follow? Experts assure that there is no direct dependence here, since they are all separate projects. “If bitcoin falls against the dollar, it happens that the ether (Ethereum. — Approx. ed.) grows, and sometimes it falls on the news. This market reacts very strongly to the news and the technical component of the project,” explains Valeev. Thus, Bitcoin can rise by ten thousand dollars - and fall by the same amount.

According to experts, there is no need to talk about a bubble in this market yet - now blockchain startups are just starting to make themselves known, attracting the attention of investors. In addition, many cryptocurrencies are not at all "dummy", as it seems at first glance: they are tied to specific developments and existing technologies.

For example, the Mijin payment network of NEM cryptocurrency developers uses the largest trust bank in Japan, SBI Sumishin Net Bank, and the technology underlying the Ripple cryptocurrency has already been tested by about 50 financial institutions in Asia and Europe.