For awhile, I’ve been interested and eventually invested in the communities of cryptocurrency. A different experience from how we normally use a payment system, cryptocurrency has risen up to try and change how we pay for things on the internet. Seeing a few threads on /g/ about cryptocoins in the past, it wasn’t until a similar time last year that I actually got interested in the world of cryptocurrency. I started out with Bitcoin but eventually went into Litecoin as it provided more opportunity for late adopters according to various miners. I played around with various other altcoins, however, something felt missing while hanging around forms and subreddits related to respective cryptocoins. The explosion of clone altcoins (basically Litecoin) and motivations behind were interesting to trade around.
Disclaimer: Some of the dogecoin/cryptocoin sites may be defunct since it has been awhile since I had created this post. Please take care in where you may visit!
But it wasn’t until Dogecoin that I really had fun playing around with cryptocoins. Despite the fact that 1 dogecoin had a value that was low in comparison to 1 bitcoin, many members were generous and kind-hearted. Eventually this led to huge campaigns like funding the Jamaican Bobsled team to Sochi Winter Olympics to helping a charity for water in Kenya, to sponsoring Josh Wise for a chance to race in NASCAR. With a community like this, I became a fellow Shibe after learning about the coin and its community in December!
Obtaining a bitcoin, litecoin, or dogecoin takes a bit of work whether through buying at an exchange or mining. The second alternative seemed cheaper and I started mining with my own graphics cards, a Gigabyte Radeon 7950, eventually selling that off, into two MSI Radeon 7970s. In order to prevent my computers resources from being hogged while doing anything, I looked into many ASICs (application-specific integrated circuit or “specialty chips”).
It wasn’t until I saw a post from /u/lletl on /r/Dogecoin asking fellow Shibes for help secure the network and promising to sell discounted but also-better-than-stock Gridseeds. Reading the post, I jumped in at the chance. Ordering from VAsic.io was relatively easy and gave me a chance to spend my dogecoins for something to help the community once again!
It took about 10 days for it to arrive all the way from Ireland and so I got to setting up my ASICS on a Friday after work. A Hub to prevent the ASICS from taking up all the USB ports on my computer and power supplies at the suggestion of VAsic because they only provided USB cables. As you can see below it’s relatively straight forward with a few items:
- The Gridseed USB Miner
- A Power Supply/Brick via Amazon
- Mini USB Cable (which was included with my order)
- [Optional] USB Hub via Amazon
For setting up, there were no instructions on VAsic.io’s site at the time so I had to do searching around various forms (mostly Reddit and BitcoinTalk) to set up my Gridseed Miners. [You can look here for more information about the setup.] With all my gear in hand, it went straightforward like this:
- Plug everything in first, power supplies were not yet required
- Drivers are next https://vasic.io/vAsic-drivers.zip
- Get the optimized Scrypt cgminer from https://cryptomining-blog.com/wp-content/files/cgminer-3-7-2-gridseed-windows.zip
- Choose a pool from https://www.doktorrf.com/dogecoin/pools.html or https://dogepool.com/
- Then set up the configuration in your batch file with information relevant to the pool and your miner
- Plug in the power supplies
- Turn on cgminer from the batch file
- Replug in your miners and you're set up!
Unfortunately for me, the fans are a bit loud when running, but are powerful enough to keep the ASIC cool. Looking at Cryptomining Blog’s post with a fanless Gridseed I thought of modding my Gridseeds too. However, with the risk of breaking my miners, I decided not to change anything and leave them as is. But all isn’t over for cryptocurrencies, as the industry is now growing more, and whole systems are developed for users to put their coins to use. If you’re curious about dogecoin or other cryptocurrencies, Google around and join many others on the trip to the mooOooOn! =D
Wow.