Metal Bitcoin Seed Storage Stress Test

I’ve come across this interesting article by stress testing all the physical metal seed storages. Those storages basically are just a ‘paper-wallet’ that made with metal, engraving private keys or seed phrases onto the metal plate for more robust storing purpose. And the only one I know is the famous Cryptosteel out of the long list.

In the stress test, the Crypto Key Stack and Bitkee stands out exceptionally after the torture of heating, corrosion, and crushing.

Not using one yet for my seeds

The main tool for seed storing I’m using now will be the Keepass for now, it is a open-source password manager and makes a great tool for crypto private data management as well. It might not be as great as those metal physical storages but it excels in portability and accessibility. I often need to refer to those key from time to time for daily operation, one of the great example is the owner key of my Steem account.

Maybe I will use the metal storage one day when I have more than enough stakes on the digital money

Yes I admit that most of my wealth are crypto-related curently, but I’m comfortable with the security measurements I’ve been taken at the same time. Unless I won the next crypto jackpot equivalent to 100000 BTC, I should stay with the same setting.

How do you protect your crypto seed?

Crypto Key Stack 和 Bitkee 在这项残酷的测试中脱颖而出，成为最能抵抗外力破坏的金属钱包。目前为止我也只是用 Keepass 来管理种子和加密货币的敏感信息而已，虽然安全性逊色了点，在方便和好用的程度上是远远大过金属钱包。或许有天当我有了 100000 BTC, 会考虑入手一个 Bitkee?

你是怎么保管种子的呢？

Did you get your free Byteball yet?

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I’ve been paying close attention to the development of FPGA mining lately and the best source of such information of course still have to count on the old-school Bitcointalk forum.

Found a hot thread under the Altcoin mining subforum with the title Dwarf FPGA – the anti-ASIC. In the first postthe author claimed that all the 5000 units of Dwarf FPGA miner is all out of pre-order, at the price of 300 Euro. Hmm, that is a total of 1.5 million Euro.

I wasn’t sure if all the pre-order folks has paid the amount upfront but I hope they did not. Because the author/company just disappeared after the failing to meet the delivery promise on time. It turned out everything is a scam whereby no one has an idea who is really behind the whole thing. Someone must lost money as I saw some lawsuit comments flying here and there in the thread.

But what those scam victims is going to tell their lawyer, that they just handed over the cold real cash to someone anonymous and behind a Junior rank of forum account? Those FPGA miner are selling for least 3k thousands from legit miner makers, 300 Euro for one already sounds too damn good for a deal and I would call that a free lunch.

However, there’s no free lunch in this world.

FPGA 挖矿再圈中越来越火红，但是由于制作的技术要求很高，需求和提供量远远失衡，造成了很多诈骗的发生。就在古老的 Bitcointalk 里的这个帖子，可以看到一个完全匿名的新手用户如何通过兜售廉价的挖矿机而获利，总额应该有一百五十万欧元。实在是骗得不少。要知道这类矿机的价格可是在数千美金以上，骗子说他那款只卖 300 欧元就是为了让人人有矿挖，还那么多人上钩，实在是有点可笑。

Did you get your free Byteball yet?

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When we talk about mining there are two mainstream ways to do it, GPU-mining and ASIC-mining. Not long ago after I attempted the former method to get into the mining world, I learnt a great stuff about this new superstar – FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array).

While FGPA is not a new technology which in invented in the 1985, it was originally created for use in space, satellites and communication specialized equipment. A company called Zetheron started to customize the FPGA card for cryptocurrency mining purpose.

What is FPGA vs other mining hardware?

I had a great read of the company’s detailed article about the *FPGA Mining Overview and below are some summaries:

• In term of parallelism of every processing element, CPU < GPU < FPGA.


• Unlike CPU and GPU, FPGA can only be programmed at the lowest possible level which is the RTL(register transfer level) via language like Verilog and VHDL.


• Xilinx is the inventor of FPGA and still is the largest seller now.


• The amount of internal memory inside the FPGA is a very important metric for performance.


• Bitstream is the configuration file that specifically written for a FPGA with specific purpose.


• Non-volatile configuration is more robust against power outages which can be loaded every time miner is rebooted.


• The rapid reconfiguration function of FPGA has the ability to allow FPGA to completely reconfigure itself in a fraction of a second, making it unbeatable by competitor like the ASIC.


• FPGA can only mine one algorithm at a time generally.

Verdict

To me, the biggest advantage of FPGA is that it can use the equal or lesser power comsumption but produce 10~100 times the hashrate one GPU could generate, without the deady shortcoming of ASIC at all, which is the inability to mine different algorithm.

The disadvantage, however, is the price and its uncertainty of how this mining game would play out in the near future. A working FPGA card would easily cost 3k USD and I think that is quite steep for a casual miner like me to invest.

I’m certainly interested in this technology as it is a no-brainer winner comparing to the GPU in term of efficiency.

TLDR: FPGA is the new star in mining cryptocurrency. Low power consumption, much higher hashrate and flexibility in switching algorithm.

太长没读： FPGA 是目前的挖矿神器，低电力消耗（和 GPU 一样或少过），几倍甚至百倍的算力，还可以任意切换不同的币种（要是软件支持）。绝对是目前挖矿性价比最高的方式之一。

Did you get your free Byteball yet?

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Byteball airdrop to Steem frenzy

It is the craziest airdrop event I have ever witnessed on Steem in my 2 years time, simply due to the lucrative airdrop amount and referal reward. Byteball has established theri brand for a while in the crypto space and the coins can easily be cashed out, that is why it was so hot after the announcement. But I would like to talk more about the most lucrative reward for this event, the referal system!

How lucrative is it?

The referral gets exactly the same reward as the new user*’s reward. A new 70 rep Steemian gets $160 and so do you if they happend to be under your reference.

While is sounds like a totally great idea for promote Byteball as hars as possible, there is some tricks to game the referral system and exploit the reward.

First, you need to know how the system define the referrer.

Difficult questions
Question: What if a user clicked a referral link and paid with funds sent to him from another attested user?
Answer: The user providing the funds will be the referrer, not the one from the link.

Question: What if there were multiple inputs from several attested users being used to pay for an attestation?
Answer: The input that is closest but not less than the output required will be the referrer.

Question: What if the user didn’t spend my funds, but instead signed a message?
Answer: Then nobody will be the referrer of that attestation.

Taken from the post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@punqtured/network-issues-over-the-weekend-and-questions-about-steem-attestations

You should read it if you have more intesrest on what was the network issue lately and more information about the airdrop.

Highly exploitable referral game

Ultimately, the referral link is practically useless. The decisive factor is whose fund the new user used for the Steem attestation.

That’s why having the new users commenting their wallet address in the public area is a good way to lose the referral reward for post owner. Because all the reward hunters would just send the minimum fund(about $0.08) to new addresses.

Someone is even creating some bots tapping on Steem API to track Byteball wallet address over all the network and send funds. I heard people are making a few thousands dollar just over a few days. Crazy world.

TLDR: Byteball airdrop referral system is highly exploitable.

太长没读： Byteball 空降最让人垂涎的就是推荐系统。推荐者可以得到同样比例的奖励，但是缺点就是太容易被摆弄，有很多方式可以把原属于作者的奖励偷去了。

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Since the day I started a really minor mining rig, the mining strategy has always been aiming the Jackpot coins because I do not want waste all the electricity and time competing with those monstous hashrate out there.

It means I would spend big portion of my time digging through the mountains of new coins everyday hoping to discover some interesting projects. And I’ve become quite a new-coin-sensitive guys ever since. Rolling in the sea of shitcoins is no easy task.

Introduing a shitcoin which I hope is not a shitcoin soon.

Merit aims to be the world’s friendliest digital currency, making it effortless to pay friends, buy goods, and manage your wealth.

Yeah every currency-centric coins on the market obviously claims to achieve the same thing. Replace the Merit with other coin’s name and everyting would looks legit as usual. I can’t say how innovative this coin is but there somehow Merit has some shinny points though. Cut off all the BS selling points like allowing to securely send to an address, or mind-blowing mining mechanism, let’s take a look of what attracted me a little

• Send to Anyone even to those who are not yet in the network. Via Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, you name it.




• Make wallet address tied to alias name. Though many projects has already implemented this and the best one is the very Steem, this is not bad of a system to have in other projects nonetheles.




• Cancellable Transactions as long as the money is not yet accepted. Cool idea.




• No ICO, or premine is definitely a plus point for jackpot hunter like me.




• Really informative website: https://www.merit.me




• Active GitHub communities: https://github.com/meritlabs/merit




• Impressive light wallet that has everything you need in one place, including mining.




• Invite-only system, you do not simply join without an invite.




• Decentralized Account Recovery and Smart Contracts is in the progress.

How to join?

Enough of shilling and let’s get to the point, if you are new user(very likely) download the wallet using my link: https://wallet.merit.me/?invite=fr3eze

This way I would be notified immediately and send you your invite. Without the invite the wallet will be remained locked. And if you have a wallet but need the invite to unlock it, use my code as well: @fr3eze.

Did you get your free Byteball yet?

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Byteball network is up. Long way to go before running out of Airdrop reward pool.

Byteball network is finally up and normal again, I’ve just sent all the pending requests for the free Byteball in the last post: https://steemit.com/steempress/@vornix/bestcryptostorycontestwithatotal6sbdprize-a1wwiauon6
The network works smoothly as before and I did not encounter much issues now and I expect the same for the Steem Attestation Bot. If the bot is still stuck, leave your input there and give it some time, it shall return to you soon.

People are worried that the designated reward pool for this Airdrop will run dry soon but you can chill now. Yesterday the Byteball guy @punqtured just announced that there is 326,989 GByte left to be claimed from all the Steemians.

That means $43,803,446 worth of Gbytes are still waiting to be distributed. 43,803,446/160=273771, assuming all the unclaimed Steemians are all over 70 Reputation, it will take 27377 of them to fully deplete the Airdrop. So don’t you worry. Take your time and perhaps give a little pump to your rep before attesting to the airdrop.

What is the reward?

The best thing this attestation is not depending on the SP at all but Reputation. Which means everyone including minnows will have fairer chance to claim reward as follow:

Steem reputation above 30: you get a $10 reward
Steem reputation above 40: you get a $20 reward
Steem reputation above 50: you get a $40 reward
Steem reputation above 60: you get a $80 reward
Steem reputation above 70: you get a $160 reward

My free Bytes is strictly for NEW users only

I will continue to send free Byteball for the Steem Attestation as long as the users are proven to be truly new. With that said, I will check for the following:

• The Byteball address provided should not have any balance.


• User should not request Byteball from other Steemians before my send.

Violating any condition above I will take you as not a new Byteball user anymore, hence no fund from me to you. Also, this is to prevent Byteball-hunting as well.

How to get free Byteball?

• Download a Byteball wallet(referral link): https://steem-byteball.org/#RRY2EIQ72SZRYTXLYOXM6CVZ2W7WZJ4T


• Put your Byteball wallet address in the comment below


• Receive 0.0006 GByte from me


• Perform attestation via Steem Attestation Bot withint the wallet: https://steemit.com/steemit/@punqtured/official-byteball-airdrop-to-steemians


• Done. Enjoy the free Byteball from airdrops!

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