Best Bitcoin Miners

                                     Antminer S9 15.5TH/s

This first appeared in Bitcoin Market Journal in 2018

By Michael Hooper

The best bitcoin miners may be hard to find because demand for them is so high.

Here is a look at two of the best bitcoin miners and a review of profitability and risks in running a bitcoin mining operation.

The Evolution of Bitcoin Mining

In the creation of bitcoin, founder Satoshi Nakamoto gave the responsibility for securing bitcoin’s ledger to miners or nodes. For this job, the miners get paid in bitcoin.

In the early days of bitcoin, when just a few people were interested in bitcoin mining, a simple computer could mine bitcoin profitably.

However, those days are long gone. There are many people mining bitcoin today all over the world. As more people begin mining, mining difficulty increases. Now, the only way to profitably mine bitcoin is with  ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits). These specialized computers run fast, hot, and loud with high-powered cooling fans. The fans create a high-pitched jet engine white noise that is disturbing if not maniacal. Yet, that noise is music to the ears of people mining bitcoin because it is the sound of making money in the mining business.

To successfully mine bitcoin for profit, miners now need to use Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). These are specialized computers that are built solely for a function. In this case, that function is bitcoin mining.

What Is The Best Bitcoin Miner?

The Antminer S9 13.5 TH/s is currently the best bitcoin miner available. The Antminer S9 has the highest hash rate of all bitcoin miners on the market. This makes it attractive because the more you hash, the more bitcoin you make.

Photo by Michael Hooper

Due to its popularity, the demand for the Antminer S9 is high. On Amazon and eBay, they sell for $5,000 to $6,900. You also need a power supply to run the Antminer S9, and they sell for $100 to $300.

As with all bitcoin miners, there are some complications with using the Antminer S9. It uses a lot of electricity and generates a lot of noise. As a result, the Antminer S9 is best located in a warehouse or climate-controlled room and not general living areas.

A More Budget-Friendly Alternative

Another popular miner is Canaan's AvalonMiner 741. This miner has a hash rate of about half the speed of the Antminer S9. However, it is a cheaper option, which makes it attractive to bitcoin miners starting out.

(Photo courtesy of Canaan.)

The AvalonMiner miner also comes with a cooling technology. Like the Antminer S9, the AvalonMiner miner is also in high demand. Amazon and eBay have listed it for $3,500 to $3999.99.

Bitcoin Mining Risks

Two of the main risks associated with bitcoin mining are price volatility and mining difficulty.

If bitcoin's price goes down 50 percent, then the profitability of mining will also come down. If the price of bitcoin drops further, it could result in profitability disappearing altogether.

Mining difficulty is determined by the time it takes a miner to create a new block. The more miners there are, the higher the difficulty level is. As more miners join in, the difficulty is raised to accommodate the increasing hash rate of miners.

Conclusion

When starting out in bitcoin mining, it might be best to start small and build up as your profits start to increase. Purchasing an affordable machine such as the AvalonMiner and breaking even for the first year is a good start. Keep in mind,  it is a lot more difficult to mine bitcoin than buy it.

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2018 Is The Year To Make Great Gains in Crypto & Cannabis

2018 Is The Year To Make Great Gains In Crypto And Cannabis

Jan. 15, 2018 6:56 PM ET

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26 comments

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 Includes: APHQF, BITCF, BRK.B, BTCS, COIN, D, DDM, DIA, DOG, DXD, EEH, EPS, EQL, ES, FEX, FWDD, GBTC, HSY, HUSV, IVV, IWL, IWM, JHML, JKD, LLSC, LLSP, OTPIX, PEP, PSQ, QID, QLD, QQEW, QQQ, QQQE, QQXT, RSP, RWL, RWM, RYARX, RYRSX, SBUS, SCAP, SCHX, SDOW, SDS, SFLA, SH, SMLL, SPDN, SPLX, SPUU, SPXE, SPXL, SPXN, SPXS, SPXT, SPXU, SPXV, SPY, SQQQ, SRTY, SSO, SYE, TNA, TQQQ, TWM, TZA, UDOW, UDPIX, UNP, UPRO, URTY, USSD, USWD, UWM, VFINX, VOO, VTWO, VV

Michael Hooper 

Long-term horizon, research analyst, dividend growth investing, large-cap

Thoughtful Investor

Summary

2018 is the year to make great gains.

Crypto and cannabis industries set to grow in North America.

Be aware of a new crypto analyst valuation technique giving value to a token's utility.

I'm excited about 2018 after coming off one of my best years in my 24 years of investing. I had a 15.93% return in my brokerage accounts and a 646% return in my crypto investments.

I'm excited about 2018 because gross domestic product is really going up over 3%, which is when the economy experiences job growth. I see lots of jobs developing in the crypto and cannabis markets. Canada’s economy will see a boost if it approves recreational marijuana by July as anticipated by advocates.

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Topeka Native Brad Garlinghouse Is Worth $9 Billion With Rise Of Ripple

                            Brad Garlinghouse Photo by Heather Hooper

Story By Michael Hooper

Brad Garlinghouse, 46, a graduate of Topeka High School, University of Kansas and Harvard Business School, is a newly minted billionaire, according to Forbes.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse owns a 6.3% stake in Ripple, a San Francisco-based company. He also owns additional XRP tokens. He has a net worth of at least $9.5 billion, Forbes said. XRP tokens exploded in value in 2017, up from $0.006 on Jan. 1, 2017, to $2.30 on Dec. 31, 2017, — a return of 38,000%. 

The chart from Coinmarketcap.com shows the rise of Ripple in the last quarter of 2017.

Garlinghouse is the son of Kent and Susan Garlinghouse in Topeka.

Brad Garlinghouse has spoken widely about Ripple on business news channels like Fox Business and CNBC. When asked about Ripple, he says the company sells a blockchain technology to banks and payment providers to do real time settlement between banks. He says the current banking system for settlement between U.S. and foreign banks is lengthy and time consuming, it is faster to get on a plane and fly the money to London from New York than to send it through the current banking system.

Over 100 banks have joined Ripple. Most banks pay other banks to make those settlements. Anytime you can do something without that central counter party and go direct peer to peer, this saves time and money.

Garlinghouse said MoneyGram has partnered with Ripple to use XRP in its payment flows.

Garlinghouse acknowledged on CNBC there has been a lot of hype in the crypto space. He said the value of a token over the long term will be its utility, what problem is it solving?

"At Ripple we use XRP to settle liquidity issues between banks," he said on CNBC. The settlement takes place in three seconds.

On Fox Business, Garlinghouse said Ripple was working with American Express and other big money transfer companies.

Ripple XRP fell from a high of $3.84 to $2.21. On Fox, he said, XRP is part of an early stage of volatility.

“There is a lot of volatility in the digital asset market broadly, and certainly that is true in the bitcoin market, it’s been true for XRP and I think that’s because these markets are very nascent. This is still the earliest innings of the creation of what I think is really going to be a new asset category,” he told Fox.

Garlinghouse was recently inducted into the Topeka High School Hall of Fame. Garlinghouse said he has lived in California for 20 years, but he always thinks of himself as a Kansan first. “Topeka High is an indelible part of who I am today,” he said. You may read his comments at the Oct. 1, 2017 ceremony here.

Blogger Michael Hooper owns several crypto currencies including XRP.