Maybe 20 would be good? I have nothing to go by to tell how much that is.

I can certainly experiment with it when I get the laptop. And as I said, the computer will already be on so almost nothing would be better than nothing. Especially if there is a price surge in the future. And I do want to help the cause too. Besides, my roommates girlfriend pays the electric bill. I don't want to crank it full blast at her expense but if the increase is modest I'm not concerned with that. It's the price they have to pay for using up almost all of the free space in the freezer/fridge/pantry/bathroom.

If the goal is to make money, no you're going to end up spending more on electricity and ear and tear on the laptop than you'll ever get back mining. Sia coin mining is based around something called Proof of Work. To mine more coins, you need to throw more hardware at it. At this point the minimum that's worth using is a graphics card from a desktop PC costing several hundred dollars like a GTX 1060. This is different to forging in ardor which as far as I understand it, uses a different approach called Proof of Stake. To get more coins, you stake more of your coins. Having more coins here increases the number of coins you'll get back through forging.

It doesn't have intense and increasing hardware and energy requirements like proof of work systems so you don't need special graphics cards to do it. If the goal is to learn more about how all this works, go for it. If you really care about the Long term simply buy all the dips. Mining is not profitable. At least not short term so might as well buy and hold. You need 50000 SC to be able to mine. Factor in the price for your computer, How much electricity it is consuming.

And it makes absolutely no sense. Instead of sacrificing $430 to have to give away 500 per TB/M to them, you might as well save up what you will make per day which will be nothing less than a dollar and simply make monthly purchases at an exchange and hold it until it hits.35 then sell. You will have around $50k USD if you just stick to the strategy. Only big investment is the first $430. After that invest around $30/month and in a year or 2 see that investment turn into 50k. Good luck • • • •.

Would it be worth mining? You need 50000 SC to be able to mine. Factor in the price for your computer, How much electricity it is consuming. How to mine Siacoin on a desktop computer. You can mine Siacoin using your home computer. I mined SC for about a week until the difficulty spiked too much. Another tutorial on how to mine Siacoin (SC) on pool, with Nvidia GPU. Every link that you need is here: sia.tech/ - Official website bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic.

A Beginner’s Guide to Mining Siacoin May 20, 2017 16 minute read This guide is out of date. This post describes mining Sia with a desktop graphics card (GPU), but is now available for Sia. The custom hardware has made Sia GPU mining non-viable. This guide will still work, but you may never reach payout, even with a high-end GPU.

Overview is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network for buying and selling computer storage space. Users pay for transactions within Sia using a cryptocurrency called Siacoin.

Like Bitcoin, Sia relies on “miners” to supply computing power to the network. These miners are paid for their contributions in Siacoin. In this guide, I’ll show you how to generate money when you’re not using your Windows PC by setting it up to mine Siacoin. Time Required This guide looks long, but it’s just because there are lots of screenshots. I estimate that it only takes about 20 minutes to get started with mining. Task Time Installing software 5-10 minutes Creating a Siacoin wallet 5 minutes (fast method) / 3 days (slow method) Setting up automatic mining 5 minutes Total ~20 minutes Software versions This guide uses the latest version of each software component at the time of writing: • Sia-UI v.1.3.1 • CUDA v.8.0.61 • OpenCL 2.0 • Marlin v.1.0.0 • Windows 10 (will also work on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1) Find your graphics card type Siacoin mining uses your computer’s graphics card (which I’ll refer to as “GPU” for graphics processing unit). Different GPUs require different software, so follow the steps below to determine your GPU type: • Hit Win+R to open the run dialog.

• Type devmgmt.msc and hit Enter. • Expand the “Display adapters” entry You should see something like the following: Note whether your GPU begins with “NVIDIA” or “AMD.” • If you have an NVIDIA GPU, you will install CUDA. • If you have an AMD GPU, you will install OpenCL. If you see something else, you likely don’t have a compatible GPU. This means you won’t be able to mine Siacoin, but check the (below) to see what mining-ready GPUs are available for your next build. Install GPU library In order to run a Siacoin miner, you must install the correct library for the mining software to communicate with your computer’s GPU. Install CUDA (for NVIDIA GPUs) If you have an NVIDIA GPU, you’ll need to install CUDA. SmartCash SMART Mining Cal.

For AMD GPUs, skip to the. • Go to • Next to “Operating System,” click “Windows.” • Click the version that corresponds to your version of Windows. • For “Installer Type” click “exe (network).” • Click “Download.” • Open the downloaded file and proceed through the installation using the default options. Install OpenCL (for AMD GPUs) If you have an AMD GPU, you’ll need OpenCL.

It may be installed already, as it is included with many AMD drivers, but to ensure you have the latest version, follow the steps below. • Go to • Under “Automatically Detect and Install Your Driver” click “Download Now” • Open the downloaded file and proceed through the installation using the default options. Install a Siacoin miner There are a few different Siacoin miners to choose from, but they all offer similar features and performance. This guide uses the Marlin miner because it is compatible with both CUDA and OpenCL, but you might want to check out. To install Marlin, follow the steps below: • Go to the download page. • Click the link for “Windows (64-bit)” to download the Marlin package. • When the download completes, open it and unzip to C: marlin • Hit Win+R to open the Windows run dialog.

• Type cmd and hit Enter. • In the Command Prompt, type the following. 2017/11/08 11:59:15 Starting marlin 1.0.0 2017/11/08 11:59:15 CUDA (driver version 9.1) 2017/11/08 11:59:15 [0] GeForce GTX 970 (CC 5.2) 2017/11/08 11:59:15 OpenCL: NVIDIA CUDA 2017/11/08 11:59:15 [1] GPU: GeForce GTX 970 2017/11/08 11:59:15 Connecting to us-east.luxor.tech:3333. 2017/11/08 11:59:15 [0] Initializing GeForce GTX 970 2017/11/08 11:59:15 Difficulty set to 107G 2017/11/08 11:59:15 New block.72226449 detected, difficulty 147P 2017/11/08 11:59:15 Authentication successful 2017/11/08 11:59:16 [0] Initialized, work size 2/11/08 11:59:16 [0] Accepted 2b5b471d D: 42G/17G 965.8 MH/s 2017/11/08 11:59:18 [0] Accepted 0c1e4a1f D: 23G/17G 965.8 MH/s 2017/11/08 11:59:18 [0] Accepted 727c0e70 D: 50G/17G 967.5 MH/s 2017/11/08 11:59:21 [0] Accepted f1eede1e D: 46G/17G 966.2 MH/s Close the window to stop mining. If you configured your Siacoin wallet address correctly in Marlin’s settings, you will see your mining activity in the Luxor dashboard: • siacoin address I’ll go into more details about the Luxor mining pool. You’ll notice that your system responds sluggishly while you’re running the miner. This is because mining consumes all available graphics resources, which makes it difficult for you to use your computer normally.

We’ll address this in the next section. Configure miner to run automatically You’re all set up and generating Siacoin, but there’s a problem: mining monopolizes your graphics processor and makes it difficult for you to do anything else on your computer.

You could start the miner when you leave your computer and turn it off when you return, but that’s a pain. Instead, you can use a handy feature built in to Windows called Task Scheduler. It allows you to configure Siacoin mining like a screensaver - it runs when you’re away and automatically shuts off when you return. Configuring a scheduled task is a bit tedious.

To save you the trouble, I’ve created a task configuration file you can import into Task Scheduler through the steps below: • Download my Sia Mining Task configuration file: (right-click and hit “Save link as”). • Hit Win+R to open the Windows run dialog. • Type control schedtasks and hit Enter. • Task Scheduler will appear.

From the right hand menu, click “Import Task” • Specify the SiaMiningTask.xml file you downloaded in step 1. This will create a pre-populated task for you with the correct settings for your Siacoin miner. Click “OK” to finish creating the task. With this task created, your PC will mine Siacoin automatically any time you leave the mouse and keyboard untouched for ten minutes.

As soon as you touch the mouse or keyboard, mining stops so as not to interfere with your normal usage. Using the mining pool Mining is a game of chance. Your machine is doing repeated calculations with random numbers hoping to discover a solution to an equation that the Siacoin network needs at the given moment. The computer that finds a solution receives a miner’s reward.

The reward is currently ~200,000 Siacoin (~$1,300 USD). A solution is found roughly once every ten minutes, but due to the number of miners active, it is possible for your miner to go months without getting lucky and stumbling on a solution. This guide configures your miner to participate in the Luxor mining pool to give you a more regular and predictable mining income stream.

With a mining pool, all participants implicitly agree to share effort and share rewards proportionally. The Luxor mining pool takes a 0.3% fee for administering this system. This fee is unusually low for a mining pool and will likely increase to 2-3% by next 2018. The Luxor mining pool provides a dashboard that allows you to monitor your miner’s activity: • siacoin address When the unpaid balance for your wallet address reaches 500 Siacoin, the pool pays out your rewards. Within six hours, you will see a deposit in your wallet for a little over 500 Siacoin. My particular GPU reaches the payout threshold about once every two weeks (as of November 2017).

Your experience will vary depending on the performance of your GPU, the percentage of time your miner is running, and the number of other active Siacoin miners. Cashing out your Siacoin Now that you’ve accumulated some Siacoin, you probably want a way of spending them. There are cryptocurrency exchanges that allow you to sell Siacoin, but they don’t support converting Siacoin directly to fiat (e.g. Dollars, Euros). You need to convert your Siacoin in two stages: • Convert Siacoin to Bitcoin.

• Convert Bitcoin to fiat currency. Converting Siacoin to Bitcoin There are a few options for converting your Siacoin to Bitcoin: •: ( recommended) Bittrex has historically provided the most solid support for Siacoin. •: ShapeShift is simple and fast because there’s no signup required. Just give them your Bitcoin address, and they’ll give you a Siacoin deposit address. Unfortunately, their support for Siacoin is rather erratic and they only offer Siacoin exchanges intermittently.

•: ( for advanced users) Bisq (formerly BitSquare) is a decentralized, peer-to-peer exchange. Trading is slower and involves more steps, but can give you better rates than traditional exchanges. Bisq also supports converting Siacoin directly to fiat, but you’re relying on another person not to rip you off.

If you choose this option, take steps protect yourself from fraud. • Poloniex: Poloniex was once the leading exchange for Siacoin, but their support and platform has been awful for most of 2017, frequently freezing users’ funds for weeks without any communication. I recommend avoiding Poloniex if you have any other exchange option. Converting Bitcoin to fiat currency (regular money) Bitcoin has been around longer and the ecosystem is much more mature, so you have several options for cashing out your Bitcoins. Bitcoin exchanges are beyond the scope of this post, but here are a few places to start. •: Caters to US customers. •: Caters to European customers.

•: A private, peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange. A is available at bitcoin.org.

Siacoin mining hardware The tables below show estimated mining performance of different GPUs. These numbers are based on anonymous, self-reported data from a mix of systems, aggregated from Sia mining wikis. Don’t expect 100% accuracy, but they should give you a rough idea of how different systems perform. The performance metric is a function of how many million mining calculations the chip can do per second (measured in megahashes per second or MH/s). The rate that a GPU generates mining income is directly proportional to its MH/s. In other words, all things being equal, a 2,000 MH/s GPU will generate twice as much income as a 1,000 MH/s GPU. For each GPU chip, I’ve provided an example GPU product that contains that chip, but the same GPU chip is generally available from a variety of manufacturers.

NVIDIA GPUs GPU Performance (MH/s) Example GTX 660 300 GTX 670 400 GTX 970 895 GTX 980 1,290 GTX Titan X 1,300 GTX 980 Ti 1,540 GTX 980 Ti Hybrid 1,725 GTX 1080 FE 2,190 AMD GPUs GPU Performance (MH/s) Example R9 270X 635 R9 380 750 HD 7970 790 R9 290 1,050 R9 290X 1,200 R9 390x 1,200 R9 Nano 1,600 R9 Fury X 1,800 R9 295x2 2,250 I do not recommend buying a GPU for the express purpose of mining Siacoin. Your profits are determined by Siacoin’s market price and the number of other active miners on the network. These variables can change drastically at any time. If you’re buying a new GPU anyway, and you’re interested in Siacoin mining performance as a factor in your decision, the tables above can help you decide. Caveats Here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin Siacoin mining: • Heat: Siacoin mining adds considerable stress to your GPU and may reduce its lifetime.

Monitor your GPU’s heat to make sure mining is not heating it to the point of damaging to your system. • Taxes: Many jurisdictions consider cryptocurrency mining profits to be taxable income.

If you convert to fiat through an exchange such as Coinbase or Gemini, they are legally required to share your financial information with tax authorities if requested. • Electricity costs: Your GPU consumes more electricity when it is mining Siacoin than when it is doing less intensive tasks such as browsing Facebook.

Be sure to take the cost of electricity into account when considering your mining profit. Earning Siacoin by hosting Another way of earning Siacoin is by renting out your unused hard disk space.

The Siacoin hosting economy hasn’t reached critical mass yet, and hosting is suited for more advanced users, but if you’re interested, I wrote a. Troubleshooting Having trouble getting up and running?

Here are some common issues readers have run into and how to fix them. Miner crashes immediately Symptoms: When you run marlin.bat a command window pops up and immediately closes. This usually happens because the mining settings are too intense for your GPU.

To fix this, follow the steps below • Open Notepad • Go to File >Open and enter C: marlin marlin.bat • Change the intensity value to 1. • Go to File >Save and close Notepad. • Try running marlin.bat again. If it succeeds, repeat these steps with increasing intensity until you find the highest intensity that is still stable.

If it fails after you’ve lowered the intensity, try the following: • Hit Win+R to open the Windows run dialog. • Type cmd and hit Enter.

• In the Command Prompt, type the following.