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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Gain insights into Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency and a powerful technology, to optimize your Bitcoin mining techniques
About This Book
- Learn how to use the advanced features of Bitcoin wallets
- Set up your Bitcoin mining operations to mine with efficiency
- Explore what the future holds for mining and blockchains in this pragmatic guide
Who This Book Is For
If you have never mined before, this book will ensure that you know what mining is all about. If you are familiar with Bitcoin mining, then it will help you to optimize your mining operations at a deeper level. A basic understanding of computers and operating systems is assumed, and some familiarity with cryptocurrency basics would be an added advantage.
What You Will Learn
- Get introduced to Bitcoin mining from the ground up
- Find out about mining software and the different types of mining hardware
- Master setup techniques to enable efficient mining
- Examine the pros and cons of the different types of mining hardware
- Deduce the differences between solo and pool mining
- Take a peek into professional mining farms
- Explore the future of mining and blockchain-based applications
In Detail
Blockchain is being billed as the technology of the future. Bitcoin is the first application of that technology. Mining is what makes it all possible. Exploring mining from a practical perspective will help you make informed decisions about your mining setup. Understanding what the future may hold for blockchains, and therefore for mining, will help you position yourself to take advantage of the impending changes.
This practical guide starts with an introduction to Bitcoin wallets, as well as mining hardware and software. You will move on to learn about different mining techniques using the CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ultimately the ASIC as an example. After this, you will gain an insight into solo mining and pool mining, and see the differences between the two. The book will then walk you through large-scale mining and the challenges faced during such operations. Finally, you will take a look into the future to see a world where blockchain-based applications are commonplace and mining is ubiquitous.
Style and approach
This is a practical guide that includes detailed step-by-step instructions and examples on each essential concept of Bitcoin mining.
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Seitenzahl: 134
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Bitcoin Essentials
Bitcoin Essentials
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: February 2016
Production reference: 1170216
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78528-197-6
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Albert Szmigielski
Reviewer
Kevin M. Fitzgerald
Commissioning Editor
Edward Bowkett
Acquisition Editor
Ruchita Bhansali
Content Development Editor
Sanjeet Rao
Technical Editor
Saurabh Malhotra
Copy Editor
Sneha Singh
Project Coordinator
Judie Jose
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Priya Sane
Production Coordinator
Shantanu N. Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu N. Zagade
About the Author
Albert Szmigielski is a thinker, a computing scientist, a software engineer, and a blockchain professional. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Digital Currency. He has been involved in a number of start-ups and software projects. He believes in a decentralized, distributed nature of storing information, and hence has an interest in Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
Albert is a researcher at CryptoIQ and a mentor at the Blockchain Institute. He frequently contributes to his blog at blog.cryptoIQ.ca.
I would like to thank Carla Miller for her support and general feedback. I would also like to thank my family; they give meaning to my life.
About the Reviewer
Kevin M. Fitzgerald is the platform architect for Okanjo.com. He has well over a decade of development experience in education, medical systems, and start-ups. He has been tinkering with the Web since dial-up modems went mainstream.
He is active in the Open Source community and has contributed to the Mono project and also to Umbraco communities. He continues to be active on GitHub, working with the latest technologies and projects. He has also contributed to the book WebGL Game Development by Sumeet Arora.
He and his wife, Luciana, are celebrating their seventh year of marriage and enjoy long walks on the beach with their daughter, Rosalia, talking about Node.js, C#, and Bitcoin.
www.PacktPub.com
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Preface
Surely, by now you have heard of the phenomenon called Bitcoin. Is it digital money, is it a payment system, is it a network, or is it something else? The answer is yes to all the previous questions. Bitcoin is all of those and more. In this book, we will concentrate on the mining aspect of Bitcoin. Mining is how new bitcoins are created and how transactions are accepted into the Bitcoin blockchain. We will show you how to mine for yourself, if you are interested. We explain step-by-step what is necessary and how to do it. CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ASIC mining is also discussed. We will examine solo mining and pool mining. We will spend a little bit of time taking a look at large mining operations. Finally, we will speculate what the future may look like in the mining world of Bitcoin.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Bitcoin Wallets and Mining Software, gives an overview of Bitcoin wallets: hardware, software, full and thin clients. The chapter also discusses mining software.
Chapter 2, CPU Mining, looks at Bitcoin mining using a CPU. It covers everything you need to get started.
Chapter 3, GPU Mining, concentrates on GPU mining. It covers GPU driver setup, mining software setup, and it touches upon practical mining issues. Examples are included.
Chapter 4, FPGA Mining, examines FPGA mining, including software, drivers, and a discussion of best practices.
Chapter 5, ASIC Mining, looks at ASIC mining in detail. We set up the software that is needed to mine and we show you practical examples of mining with ASICS.
Chapter 6, Solo Versus Pool Mining, explains solo and pool mining and weighs the pros and cons of both ways of mining.
Chapter 7, Large Scale Mining, looks at mining as a business. There are a handful companies that decided to mine for profit. They represent the bleeding edge in mining techniques.
Chapter 8, The Future of Bitcoin Mining, speculates how mining may evolve in the future. We look at the possibility of mining becoming more centralized and the possibility of mining becoming decentralized.
What you need for this book
You will need a computer, preferably running Linux, but Windows and OS X is fine as well. You will also need an internet connection. If you'd like to try mining with a GPU, FPGA, or ASIC, you would need to have one (or more) of those hardware pieces. All software is open source and can be downloaded from the internet. We provide links in the chapters to the required software.
Who this book is for
If you have never mined before, this book will ensure that you know what mining is all about. If you are familiar with Bitcoin mining, then it will help you to optimize your mining operations at a deeper level. A basic understanding of computers and operating systems is assumed and some familiarity with cryptocurrency basics would be an added advantage.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: " Execute the getmininginfo command in the console of the Bitcoin Core wallet."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Now click on the Help menu and select Debug Window."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
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Errata
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Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Bitcoin Wallets and Mining Software
In this chapter, we will take a look at the various Bitcoin wallets available, explore the mining software that is currently available, review the functions that Bitcoin wallets perform, and why we need them. We will take a brief look at both software and hardware wallets. The difference between full wallets and thin client wallets will also be explored. We will also touch upon hosted wallets and look into wallet security.
Next, we will take a brief look at mining software and examine why the software is needed and what it does. Finally, we will quickly review what mining software is available to us and which software we should use. Keep in mind that the material presented in this chapter will be brief and serve only as a review of the basics:
Bitcoin wallets
In this section, we will take a closer look at Bitcoin wallets. We will define what a wallet is and explain why we need a wallet. We will look at the types of wallets available. There are software and hardware wallets, full wallets, and the so-called thin wallets. There are also hosted wallets that are run by companies for the users' convenience. We will look at the most popular wallet called Bitcoin Core; finally, we will touch upon wallet security.
What is a Bitcoin wallet?
A Bitcoin wallet (sometimes called a client) is a software that facilitates performing bitcoin transactions. Wallets come in different flavors. The most capable of them are called full clients. They can perform bitcoin transactions and act as a gateway to the Bitcoin network. Full clients also store a copy of the Bitcoin block chain locally. An example of a full client is the Bitcoin Core software application.
Note
Definition
Block chain: The Bitcoin database that stores all the transaction data is called a block chain. The transactions are grouped together in batches for efficiency reasons. A batch is called a block and each block (except for the first, called genesis block) has a link to the previous block. This linking together of blocks is the chain part of the block chain.
