If anyone has been following the financial news as of late, I'm sure that they have seen reports of the wild market fluctuations in the Bitcoin (BTC) world. The party responsible for this is/was one of the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges. This exchange "lost" upwards of $400million USD over the past few years and has all but collapsed over the course of February. If you go to their website, all that you will find is pretty much a placeholder message saying that they are working to, "to find a solution to our recent issues." Earlier in the month they froze all Bitcoin trading, blaming a security breach in the BTC code, preventing anyone from withdrawing their Bitcoin. It all quickly spiraled down from there.

It is not outside the realm of possibilities that this could perhaps be an inside job with the Mt. Gox higher-ups playing the market and their customers - a real criminal act. Also, whether legit or not (many people feel it is), a leaked Crisis Strategy Draft has been posted on Scribd. Lets just say that if it is real, its not going to make any new fans. Because of this debacle, the price of BTC has taken a pretty hard nose dive from in the $800 USD range when I stepped into things to the $500 USD range over the last week. It even dipped into the $400's a few days ago.

While many people would see the headlines, the plummet in value, the Wild West atmosphere, the lack of regulation/safety net, the overall volatility of the cryptocurrency markets and respond likewise, I am not bothered by it for a few reasons.

The biggest and most obvious reason is that I simply never accrued that much BTC to begin with. Before I exchanged my coin out, for what I will explain later, I had only piled up about 6-7% of a Bitcoin (based on the market value at the time). The change in the market only meant a loss or gain of cents, maybe a dollar or two at the most, to me.

Before I go any further I just want to link to my previous post Internal Warfare & Feed Your Accounts: Cryptocurrency for anyone with questions on what Bitcoin is, how the system works and how people mine for it.

A very simple rule when playing a market is the old buy low, sell high rule. Now while BTC is basically seen as the gold standard of cryptocurrency and its drop in value does affect the other coins, since the other coins are usually only worth cents or a dollar or two, the effect isn't felt as hard. Straight up mining Bitcoin became unprofitable for the home user long before I ventured into this world, so I've been obtaining it through the trading of lesser coins for BTC. With this being the case, the lower the price of Bitcoin dropped, the more BTC I was getting for my trades in the long run.

Since I'm merely a low level hobbyist and only mining with one graphics card in my computer and my CPU, my expectations were never to be raking in the cash at an accelerated rate. Many people do build multiple GPU rigs just for mining, but as the cards are closer to the high end of things, this results in an investment of a few hundred dollars per card escalating your start-up cost very quickly. Whenever you are investing in something you must look at the risk reward side of things. Risk: high initial cost in a volatile market. Reward: more coins over a shorter period of time. Right now, I bet some people are kicking themselves for not looking at the risk more carefully.

As I mentioned previously, I had exchanged out my BTC before the price dipped down into the low $500's/high $400's. I did this when I heard that Mt. Gox was going to release another statement - the price was in the $600's at this point. With the little Bitcoin that I had, I purchased some silver from Amagi Metals, an online precious metals exchange that accepts BTC as payment. This has always been my plan in the long run - earn just enough Bitcoin and then purchase some precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, palladium) with it. In the long run, the precious metal should prove to be a much more stable investment than the quickly fluctuating cryptocurrency. Also, while the future does look bright, who knows what will happen in the next five years.

"OK.....so how are you actually mining these coins???" I'm glad you asked! Since I have a nVidia card, I've been using cudaMiner. This simple program runs off of a *.bat file (scrypt) which contains the "directions" for the miner. Trying to mine most coins by yourself is futile - it will take forever to solve the algorithms. This is why it is best to join up with a mining pool. Basically you are "pooling" your processing power with other individuals in order to solve the algorithms faster, find the blocks faster and earn coin faster. The pool that I belong to is TradeMyBit. Whenever you join up with a pool their website will have directions on how to start mining with everyone. This is where they will tell you the address to put in your *.bat file to properly connect and get credit for your work.

With new coins coming out at what seems to be every week, it can be a hassle to figure out which one to mine for the best profit. This is where TradeMyBit differs from other pools. They run a multi-pool setup - they automatically switch between coins, trying to ensure that the contributors are always getting the best kickback for their processing power. Since I already have a full-time job and this can easily become another one, I wanted things to be as automated as possible. Another benefit of this pool is the fact that they will exchange all of the different coins you mine into BTC for a small fee (what I do). You can choose not to do the auto-exchange and join up with an exchange like Cryptsy and sell them there. I used to do this to try and "play the market" but it wound up just eating too much of my time.

Before you start any sort of mining, you will need to setup an account or "wallet" to store your BTC. I experimented with a few local (offline) wallets but always had issues with them. I've only been using the Blockchain Wallet for a little while now but so far its been a positive experience. I've come to appreciate the extra layers of security as well as the fact that they have a mobile app that enables you to make a quick payment or receive Bitcoin by simply scanning a QR code. I used this feature to make my Amagi Metals purchase (scanned it right off of my monitor) and the recognition was instant.

In the end, this all comes down to wanting to make a profit. The way to find out if you are doing so is by figuring out how much you are paying in electricity vs. how much coin in USD you are making. While figuring out the average coin production can take a week or two, finding out your electricity overhead is pretty easy. Since there can be many factors that your power company uses to figure out your bill, I found it best to just head over to the U.S. Energy Information Administration 's website where they list the average "Cents per Kilowatthour" for each state. After I got that info I simply plugged my computer into my Kill A Watt electricity meter, started mining and read how many watts I was using. The equation is then (Watts x hours you will be mining)/1,000 = KWH. Take your KWH and multiply it by your state's electricity cost and you will figure out how much you are spending to mine.

And there you have it folks! Please post any questions in the comments section and good luck!
*Note: mining can be very strenuous on your computer. Attempt at your own risk.

Greetings readers! If you couldn't guess by the title, February has thrown me for a loop this year. Between getting sick, snow storms, personnel shuffling at work resulting in me being responsible for more busy work oriented items, random lingering injuries and trying to prepare for a jiu jitsu tournament taking place this Saturday...yeah, its been a tough one. On top of all of that, I still don't feel like I've gotten all of my energy back - I've been getting gassed waaaay too early during my training sessions.

I was planning on writing a followup to last week's post about cryptocurrencies, but I just didn't have the time to write a proper article and not just half-ass it. With my tournament this weekend, I've been trying to get as much rest as possible between training sessions, incorporate extra stretching and perform physical therapy on my injuries/limitations. I apologize for the delay in normally scheduled programming and hope to get back on track next week.

In the mean time, if anyone doesn't know/hasn't looked into BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), I highly recommend it. It is a martial art that emphasizes technique over brute force and is a great way to get in shape and build confidence. There are no strikes (punches, kicks etc) in BJJ - the ultimate goal is the submission (chokes and joint locks) of your opponent. It is akin to wrestling and judo with take-downs, throws and positioning. While, like those two, a match starts on the feet, it quickly goes to the ground. Below is a video to give you a taste of what some of the top competitors in the world can do. It is truly a human chess match.

Hey Everyone! Sorry for not posting last week. I had the flu and/or a very bad cold. I must have slept for around 16hrs on Tuesday and Wednesday (wake up, drink lots of fluids, go to couch fall back to sleep). That was accompanied by a temperature and a general sense of disorientation (took a minute once standing to feel balanced enough to actually take a step). Once all that was over, on Thursday I came down with a bad chest cough, sneezing and runny nose. Its been about a week now and I'm finally feeling in the 90% range. I only get sick about once a year, but when I do, it usually something strong like this that knocks me out.

Now on to the real stuff...
A few weeks ago, I jumped into the world of cryptocurrencies. I've been using my gaming rig to mine said currencies and things have been going pretty good so far. As with everything, there is experimentation and a learning curve. My goal was to get the system as automated as possible and just let everything run while I was at work....and that is something I've been able to accomplish, more or less.

Thursday's post will go further in-depth about my experiences with links a and a general guide on how to venture into the world of cryptocurreny on your own. I'm sure that most of you have a basic understanding of the topic or have at least heard of Bitcoin (Mt. Gox making major unfortunate headlines in the news right now). If not, or if you would like a fresher, the video's below are pretty good at explaining things. The first two videos are pretty short and simple, while the third is much more detailed in its explanation. Enjoy and I will see you later in the week!