How To Connect to SimpleMiningOS using Putty SSH Terminal And Few Simple Commands to Get You Started

1 February, 2018 | Servers | 67 seen

Putty is a nice and neat free SSH terminal for Windows OS, I've been using Putty for years, mostly to perform server-side tasks (Ngnix, Drupal and so on). About a month ago when I started gpu mining experiment and decided to build 12 GPU Ethereum mining rig, I didn't know much about many options available for mining and soon found SimpleMiningOS, which is brilliant (IMHO) - plug and play ready to go from an 8 GB USB stick.

I was pleasantly surprised learning that I could manage my rig using Putty SSH terminal, and for this article, I have decided to list some basic information on how to connect via Putty and some simple commands to get you started.

Locate your internal network IP address (You could run this over internet, but that would require port forwarding and so on, it's not recommended to administer your rig over internet)

In case you are not sure what your internal Ip is, just hover over your rig name in SimpleMiningOS

Detecting your rig's internal IP

Next:

• Open Putty
• Enter IP address
• Default username/password: miner:miner

Enter screen view:

SimpleMiningOS screen session using Putty SSH Terminal

A neat function from terminal view is to enable/disable graphics cards one by one, by pressing the corresponding number, for example, to disable GPU0 - press 0, to enable it back, press again 0

Enable / Disable GPU

From terminal view, you could press S - to list information about all GPU's

Useful info about power usage, fan speed for NVIDIA cards

Useful info for Overclocking NVIDIA cards on SimpleMiningOS

Bākūži Winter 2018

31 January, 2018 | | 7 seen

Made a couple of HDR's back at Bākūži, the country house where for the last couple of years we have done some home remodeling.

In today's Piece of Life series, simple winter mood from Latvian winter (January 2018)

Fishpond

A decent level of water, not to say more, see: Waiting For The Water Level To Rise In The Pond

Back view of the house

Apple orchard

For those of you interested how it all started, see: Home Remodelling - How It All Starts

Lost Siacoins after Depositing to Poloniex.com Exchange (Probably because of Wallet Maintenance)

30 January, 2018 | Crypto | 13 seen

Hmm, this is not nice, but that what happened to me, Siacoins I had mined using GPU mining rig,got lost somewhere in Poloniex.com

A brief background - since I started to experiment with gpu mining rig, I opted for Claymore's dual mining Ethereum and Siacoin, mining Siacoin didn't seem very profitable (see: Is It Profitable Mining Siacoin (SC) in 2018? ), but I decided to keep mining just in case Siacoin goes to the moon (like many other altcoins) and maybe someday my Siacoins would be worth millions of dollars? He he. For Siacoin Withdrawal address I entered the one I have on Poloniex.com exchange. 

In total, I had mined 131.61 SC. And everything seemed nice. It would take me a couple of months to reach minimum 500SC withdrawal limit, but it all happened suddenly. I had a flight and obviously, I was not checking what's happening with SC or ETH withdrawals - why would I? There are still plenty of time to reach that 500 SC minimum threshold. Before boarding my plane I last time checked my e-mail and read following comment regarding Siacoin mining:

SIAcoin is no longer profitable to mine on Graphics Cards.

As I was to board my plane already, soon I forgot about this comment, and next time reconnected to the internet (some 12 hours later) - I went to check my mining stats both for Ethereum and Siacoin, and was really surprised seeing that my Siacoins have been transferred to the Poloniex.

Recent Payouts on Siacoin

Cool, I thought, what could go wrong here? Indeed in recent days mining difficulty for Siacoin had increased, and now to reach my 500 minimum threshold, I should mine for about 4-5 months. 100 SC minimum? Cool.

New! To alleviate the effects of the increasing network difficulty, a new payout tier has been introduced, which pays out balances between 100 SC and 500 SC every 5 days.

The thing that made me kind of worried was the written bellow on Siamining:

Note: If you have not received one of the payout transactions listed above, please click on the transaction ID to look it up on the Explorer. If the transaction appears there, it is proof that it went through successfully, and that the problem is with the receiving end. If you are using an exchange address, you should contact the exchange.

Hmm, I thought - this is kind of alarming, but still waited for a couple of hours before checking Poloniex.com, once I did, indeed no funds received. Now, I returned to Siamining stats, checked transaction ID's, everything seemed fine. Double checked. Tripple checked. From the side of Siamining looks good, unfortunately, no funds on Poloniex. Next stop Google - and here you go, zillions of complains about lost Siacoins on Poloniex.com without a good reason. Hmm, what's left? Contact Poloniex.com support desk (and hope for an answer in a foreseen future).

Hi there!

I'm contacting you with a missing Siacoin deposit from SiaMining to Poloniex.com

In total there have been missing 131.61 SC deposited to the following address on Poloniex.com 5d619d701172559e9caa272214ebe3351941ca3be6ca42a29a086b0c8dd64fcebbfd186e75c2

Here is the id/hash for the transaction:

https://explorer.siahub.info/hash/78964f3068a6bfb0b6d0eafb083a8dde9cab78ea2739544884f752d11aab2f86

Any comments on this? Are the funds lost?

Thank you for looking into this

Now, with current exchange rates ($0.05), my 131.61 SC would be worth $6.88, and I'm not in depression because of the missing funds yet, in case SC price would reach $1,000 per coin that would be a disaster (luckily I've bought a couple of thousand SC already and I still would be safe in such scenario).

Surprisingly, but I didn't have to wait for an answer a week, day or even an hour, I got a reply after 15 minutes:

Dear Reinis,

We’re very sorry to inform you that we are currently experiencing a momentary problem with the wallet and had to disable it for maintenance. 

As soon as the wallet is re enabled your deposit will credit.

Thank you for your patience and we’re sorry for the inconvenience, don’t hesitate to reply to this message if you have any question.

Sincerely,

Poloniex Support Team

Everything looks great this time - once the momentary problem will be solved, the deposit should go through.

Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition Review

28 January, 2018 | Servers | 43 seen

Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition is the latest addition to my Ethereum mining rig, which currently consists of 4 GPU. 

Bought back in Tbilisi, and I believe that I just overpaid about $100 for this card, in total spending $296 for this card. Not very cost effective. A couple of weeks ago I bought Zotac Geforce GTX1050Ti card for about $220. And in fact, this time I visited a store I was looking to purchase another Zotac, but unfortunately some had reserved all cards already and I was left either to purchase SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 or search for another store.

I choose the second option, and that's how I acquired Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition for about $300. It seems this card is sold on Amazon for the same ~ $300, see: ASUS Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG STRIX HDMI 2.0 DP 1.4 Gaming Graphics Card (STRIX-GTX1050TI-4G-GAMING) Graphic Cards

Check out this article, if you are building your mining rig in Tbilisi (Georgia) - Buying Graphic Cards (GPU) and Computer Parts in Tbilisi, Georgia

Out of the box, Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition card gives ~12 MH/s in Dual mining mode on SimpleMining OS. I believe with solo mining and little overclocking this card has a potential of 15MH/s for Ethereum mining.

Simple GPU Overclocking Boosts Ethereum Mining Profitability by 20.65% - Now Making $2.66 Daily

Currently, this card is installed on a mining rig and I noticed following measurements for temperature and fan speed

• 78 Celsius
• 30% Fan speed

In general, I would love to get the temperature below 70 Celsius, as I believe lower temperatures and slower fan speeds extends the total lifetime for graphics cards. On the other hand, the ventilation in the room I'm storing this rig could be much better and in fact, the next big thing I'm planning to add to this rig - a rig frame, probably a DIY project. 

Learning Crypto Currency Mining The Hard Way

Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition

As you can see from the picture above, I've in total 4 graphics cards, what is interesting both AMD and NVIDIA cards. The total hash power for this mining rig is ~53 MH/s

• Mining with SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 Review

Mining Ethereum with Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition

ROI for this card with current Ethereum mining difficulty (and not counting in power cost) and the current price would be about 269 days or about 9 months  

Not very attractive investment - in case you can get this card under $200 - this might be an option. Right now (January 2018) with current Ethereum mining difficulty this card doesn't seem the best option. But a lot can change with Ethereum price going up (or down) 

Mintos.com Review After 12 Month of Investing in Peer to Peer Lending

27 January, 2018 | Peer to Peer Lending | 48 seen

I've been investing in Mintos.com peer to peer lending marketplace since the beginning of 2017, or it has been already 12 months or one year since I've been exposing my funds to this Latvian fintech platform. 

In the past 12 months I've made a nice revenue of EUR 311.42 (before tax) and in today's article, I decided to share a quick overview for the past 2017 and also make a quick glimpse for my plans for 2018.

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment, US citizens or taxpayers cannot register as investors at Mintos.

Affiliate link here: Sign up to Mintos.com here. By using this affiliate link for registration both you and I will receive — 1% of your average daily balance which should be paid in 3 installments for the first 90 days.

Remember - investments are risky, never invest more you can afford to lose.

Background - I first heard about this Latvian fintech at the start of 2016, one thing that made it attractive to me was an option to lend in Georgia (the country I've been living since 2011). As been familiar with overall Georgian economy and the fact that so-called fast credits are very popular among Georgian population, just oblivious I did it find appealing to monetize on it somehow. And Mintos seemed like a plan. See: Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com

Now, it took me some 8 months more, before I actually started to invest via Mintos.com platform, and just in the January of 20, 7 I deposited the first amount to Mintos. See: My Start at Investing on Mintos Peer to Peer Lending Platform: Depositing Funds

Make sure to check out my previous monthly and quarter reviews about Mintos.com

• Review of Mintos Peer to Peer Lending After One Month of Investing
• Mintos.com Review after 3 month investing in Peer to Peer loans
• Review of Mintos.com Peer To Peer Lending Platform After 6 Month of Investing
• Mintos.com Peer To Peer Lending Review After 9 Month of Investing

At the end of 2017, mintos.com took the third largest position (after stocks and cryptocurrencies) in my portfolio with 27.7% of my funds invested on Mintos.com marketplace.

Investment portfolio structure at the end of 2017

Learn more: 2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018

The overall impact on the total portfolio for Mintos has decreased from all time height at 100% in January 2017 to little less than 30% at the end of the year. And I'm glad. The reason is simple:

• My investment portfolio started just in 2017
• I have diversified it in Stocks, mutual fund, crypto, cash and peer to peer lending

A diversified portfolio helps. Never put all eggs in one basket, as they say. 

27.7% seems kind of save level to be exposed in peer to peer lending, but in fact, I would love to limit this number around 20% in 2018, meanwhile by increasing total amount lent via peer to peer lending.

Despite being just third in size Mintos, have been the top earner in terms of dividend income (loan repayment) in 2017, in a passive income earning me EUR 311.42 or EUR 0.85 daily. Dividend income from stocks earned me EUR 264.85 or EUR 0.72 daily. 

Learn more: Dividend Income

About interest earned on mintos.com

During the past 12 months, I've invested in total EUR 3,922.50 and have made a profit from interest payments  EUR 311.42. That would equal to 7.94% year to the date yield. This number is lower than average excepted around ~11-12% annual rate, because of I keep adding more funds month after month.

Monthly income from Mintos.com

Unfortunately, because of I keep investing both in EUR and GEL currencies and because of currency exchange rates, the total value for my investment if converted back to EUR currency at the end of 2017, equals just to EUR 3,688.22, which is a negative -5.97% value growth. In the second half of 2017, Georgian Lari currency lost its value against EUR. Be extra cautious when investing in international currencies.

Mintos.com contributes regularly to my dividend income with little over than EUR 40/mo, and I'm looking to increase interest earned here to about EUR 50, during 2018.

Withdrawing money and paying taxes

At the start of 2018 I decided to withdraw all interest earned on Mintos.com peer to peer marketplace and finance new purchases on Nasdaq Baltics Stock exchange  To make withdrawal happen I had to stop Auto Invest function, and in total it took me 21 days to reach EUR 311.42 level. After reaching what I just pressed magical Withdrawal button and got it transferred to my bank account in one working day. Great, now I know I can not only deposit money but also withdraw. 

Withdrawing funds from Mintos.com

Now, from money earned on Mintos.com platform I should pay taxes, luckily the platform offers simple tax guidance for the citizens of Latvia, Germany, and other countries.

We are currently able to provide tax statements prepared according to German and Latvian requirements. Please note that tax reports for German investors for the year 2017 will be available from the end of January, 2018. If you are not tax resident of Germany or Latvia, you may still select your prefered country - this data will be used to inform the next countries for which tax statements will be introduced.

I requested my Tax Report, which was shortly emailed, and for 2017 seems I need to pay a tax from EUR 49.99 and not EUR 311 (as I thought at the start). As I'm not a tax advisor, I cannot comment much on here, but I believe tax will be much greater for 2018, as tax seems is calculated only for fully repaid loans in the current year (interest earned + refund of base investment). As I have many long-term (48 months and more loans) these loans seems will be taxed in next years. Not Sure. Consult your tax advisor!

About Auto Invest

Auto Invest works like a charm, I've defined a few auto invest portfolio, all with buyback guarantee and longest remaining loan term 48 months (4 years)

Auto investing on Mintos.com platform

Auto Invest automatically implements your chosen investment strategy. After you have entered your investment criteria, Auto Invest will automatically invest in suitable loans. You can access Auto Invest at any time and follow your portfolio activity in real time to make sure it is working according to your investment goals. Auto Invest is a very effective tool for saving time spent on investing activities. It also allows you to access newly placed loans in the system before manually-made investments.

Mining Ethereum @ ~53 MH/s and Siacoin @ ~310 MH/s Earns me $5.53 Daily - And It's Time to take a Pause

26 January, 2018 | Crypto | 40 seen

Each time I add some new graphics card to my existing gpu mining rig or some other major happenings happens I make a quick update into the blog. 

There are two major updates since my latest post from cryptocurrency mining experiments - I have installed another gpu card (in total there are  already 4, giving a hash power of about 53 MH/s) and second, Ethereum price has dropped by about 40% in the last days (from $1,430 in January 13, 2018, to $1,007.41 in January 23). Both things heavily affect daily payouts when mining Ethereum (or any other altcoin)

The mining rig has been up and operating little more than 30 days, base core system has been extended to 4 GPU's and the current investment for this rig is $1,661. 

Make sure to check out previous updates:

• I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!
• I'm Making $2.44 Per Day By Dual Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I'm NOT HAPPY YET!
• Simple GPU Overclocking Boosts Ethereum Mining Profitability by 20.65% - Now Making $2.66 Daily
• With Rising Ethereum Price I'm making $5.22 daily by Mining Cryptos - And I Definitely Want MORE!

This month I've almost doubled hashing power after purchasing and installing two GTX 1050 Ti cards, though spending on these cards this month about $520. 

• Mining with SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition Review

In total, I've mined 0.1193376 ETH and 126.66 SC, with current exchange rates that would mean

• 0.1193376 ETH = $120.41
• 126.66 SC = $6.63

Total: $127.03

Current ROI is 7.65% or I still need to recover 92.35% from my initial investment to break even.

If ethereum would keep its All-Time High levels at $1,400 - daily payouts from such mining rig would be around  $7.45, also it would mean ROI at around 10%.

Though things are as things are, and for now, I have decided to stop adding new gpu cards to the mining rig before reaching 20% ROI. It could take me another month, maybe 2 months, or it could take some 2 weeks or even a week - it's hard to predict, as it depends only on current Ethereum exchange rates,

With current mining difficulty and altcoin exchange rates, such mining rig, in theory, could pay off after 300 days or 10 months. 

Cryptocompare Ethereum mining calculator

As I've been mining already for the last 30 days and generated hypothetical revenue of $127.03, my current ROI ($1661-$127.03)/5.53 would be after 277 days  (around October 2018)

I reality I could not break even like never - in case of ethereum dips under $500 and with increased mining difficulty, not to speak about planned Ethereum switch from PoW to PoS (probably in 2018). Sure there are some backup plans for such negative scenarios, like switching to other profitable minable coins, see: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

Now, recently a friend asked would I recommend to invest $2,000 in crypto mining - my answer still is - it depends, but in general you should be very careful with investments in crypto. See: Would I invest $2,000 in Cryptos (Buying / Trading / Mining) in 2018

Alternatively I've been experimenting with cloud contracts from Hashflare, and currently if combined together - both Hashflare and my existing GPU mining rig makes me about $6.50 - $7.00 daily or about $200/mo. 

HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that) - Estonia based cloud mining company

Please note - I'm not a financial advisor, services mentioned in this article use at your own risk and remember your capital is at risk, you could lose some or all of your money.

See: HashFlare.io Review After 1 month Bitcoin Cloud Mining Experiment

Mining Ethereum With ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition Review

25 January, 2018 | Servers | 19 seen

ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition is the third graphics card installed on my mining rig. 

Bought back in Tbilisi and paid about $220 for this card, see: Buying Graphic Cards (GPU) and Computer Parts in Tbilisi, Georgia. Currently sold on Amazon for about $260 - ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition 4GB GDDR5 Super Compact Gaming Graphics Card (ZT-P10510B-10L)

Out of the box, this card gives ~12 MH/s in Dual mining mode on SimpleMining OS. I believe with solo mining and little overclocking this card has a potential of 15MH/s for Ethereum mining.

Currently, this card is installed on a mining rig and I noticed following measurements for temperature and fan speed

• 76 Celsius
• 47% Fan speed

In general, I would love to get the temperature below 70 Celsius, as I believe lower temperatures and slower fan speeds extends the total lifetime for graphics cards. On the other hand, the ventilation in the room I'm storing this rig could be much better and in fact, the next big thing I'm planning to add to this rig - a rig frame, probably a DIY project.

Learning Crypto Currency Mining The Hard Way

Mining Ethereum with ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition

As you can see from the picture above, I've in total 4 graphics cards, what is interesting both AMD and NVIDIA cards. The total hash power for this mining rig is ~53 MH/s

• Mining with SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition Review

Mining Ethereum With ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC

ROI for this card with current Ethereum mining difficulty (and not counting in power cost) and the current price would be about 182 days or about 6 months. Which seems reasonable. 

Learning To Programm Ethereum Smart Contracts

24 January, 2018 | Servers | 11 seen

From simple crypto investments (buy & hold), speculative day trades, investments in cloud mining contracts, to building a custom 12 GPU ethereum mining rig. Sound enough? Not for me, it was yesterday I decided to get my hands dirty and understand this blockchain economy better and building a few test ethereum smart contracts.

There is one simple explanation I can find for my desire to explore more - just to understand how this blockchain economy works from the technical point of view. You see - setting up a mining rig is one thing  - giving a direct benefit to me as a miner in a form of block rewards. I fact I don't like the name mining or miner - I better prefer transaction verifier or something.

Now, back to the subject -

Learning to code Ethereum Smart Contracts

A great starting place to learn more and code your first ethereum smart contract in Ethereum's official guide ( Building a smart contract using the command line)

Smart contracts are account holding objects on the ethereum blockchain. They contain code functions and can interact with other contracts, make decisions, store data, and send ether to others. Contracts are defined by their creators, but their execution, and by extension the services they offer, is provided by the ethereum network itself. They will exist and be executable as long as the whole network exists, and will only disappear if they were programmed to self destruct.

What can you do with contracts? Well, you can do almost anything really, but for our getting started guide let's do some simple things: To start you will create a classic "Hello World" contract, then you can build your own crypto token to send to whomever you like. Once you've mastered that then you will raise funds through a crowdfunding that, if successful, will supply a radically transparent and democratic organization that will only obey its own citizens, will never swerve away from its constitution and cannot be censored or shut down. And all that in less than 300 lines of code.

Make sure to follow Ethereum's official guide (Building a smart contract using the command line) to learn more

HashFlare.io Review After 1 month Bitcoin Cloud Mining Experiment

23 January, 2018 | Crypto | 12 seen

A month ago (on December 21, 2017) I decided to explore bitcoin cloud mining contracts and decided to give it a try for HashFlare.io

HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that) - Estonia based cloud mining company

Please note - I'm not a financial advisor, services mentioned in this article use at your own risk and remember your capital is at risk, you could lose some or all of your money.

At the start it took me to spend a good amount of the afternoon, to collect both good and negative reviews about HashFlare.io before taking a final decision and developing plan - kind of dollar cost averaging by investing in additional hash power once in a month.

Here is what I told a month ago: I Just invested $50.60 in Hashflare.io Cloud Mining

Dude, this has been one crazy cryptocurrency investment year - at least for me. Starting simple buy and hold operations on Coinbase.com, extending to swing trades, crypto lending and now at the end of December 2017 ordering details for 12 GPU mining rig. I thought - that's it, there is no way more I could expose myself to cryptos. Turns out I was wrong, as there are still cloud mining contracts available.

Now, a month later Hashflare still is the latest addition to my investment portfolio and currently the smallest one, also I feel really surprised seeing its great performance after just first 30 days of operations. It is something I didn't expect.

HashFlare Review - I'm Making $0.50 Per day from Bitcoin cloud mining and I want more

HashFlare balance

I've started already upgrading my initial 0.23 Hashrate to 0.90 TH/s thanks to the so-called dollar cost averaging (buying additional hash power once in a month) and a few referral signups I got last week.

As of right now, the minimum upgrade for Bitcoin cloud mining on Hashflare is 0.1 TH/s for $2.20. Boosting initial hashrate from 0.23 to 0.9 TH/s is 30 days is a way more I was looking for, but hey - to make some serious money with HashFlare seems it's advisable to start at least with 1TH/s and not with 0.23 Th/s as I decided. Anyhow, hasharates are up, and so so daily payouts.

For the past 30 days, I've managed to increase daily payouts from about $0.48 to $1.15 today 

As each new upgrade (additional investment) makes a new contract (currently for a one year). Right, now I'm in the accumulation phase of hash power, looking to grow it by 9TH/s by the end of 2018. But let's see how does it go.

Also, I want to play safe and I only reinvest 50 % from monthly earnings

Depending on what will be the withdrawal limits at the end of 2018 (a time when my yearly contracts will start to expire) - directing about 50% of profits to withdrawals seems a good option.

As the matter of fact, if withdrawal limits are kept at 0.05 BTC at the end of 2018, it could be even impossible for me to withdraw at current rates and without reinvestment. 

It should be noted that earnings on Hashflare are made in BTC, so the total value of earnings in USD depends on BTC/USD exchange rates. If BTC goes up in value, so do earnings in USD, if it goes down, so do earnings in USD.

Homemade Lasagna (Filling from Minced Meat + Bechamel Sauce)

21 January, 2018 | Food blogger | 10 seen

Welcome to just another food blogger series - today I'll share one of my favorite recipes - homemade lasagna.

To make a lasagna you will need for filling: carrots, onions, minced meat (I prefer mixed lamb and pork), for bechamel sauce: butter, milk, flour, nutmeg, and cheese. To stick it all together we will need lasagna plates - there are two options - to use ready-made or make your owns. In today's recipe, I will use ready-made lasagna plates from the shop.

For making homemade lasagna plates you would need to have the so-called macaroni machine, see: How To Make Fresh Egg Pasta Noodles Using Macaroni machine

Let' s start by peeling an onion (s) and carrots.

Carrots and Onions

Next - chop onions and grate carrots.

Put on the cooking pan, let them brown.

Browning carrots and onions on a pan

Add minced meat.

Preparing filling for lasagna

Cook for a while and then take a kettle, pour in water and put goodies from the pan into the kettle, add spices (salt and pepper) and cook slowly for 40 minutes.

Bechamel sauce

For the sauce take another kettle, put 200 mg butter and let it melt - add 5-6 spoons flour, stir well, add about one-liter milk, now it's time to grate in nutmeg (not much)

Keep heat but don't boil, the bechamel sauce is ready once the structure is like for a sour cream.

Now it's time to stick it all together - take a lasagna pan, start by pouring in a little juice from the kettle with minced meat. Add the first layer of lasagna plates, put over minced meat filling, finish this layer with topping over bechamel sauce. Level it out.

Repeat once there is no more space left.

Put the pan in the preheated oven and cook for 40 minutes (180 Celsius)

topping lasagna with cheese

It's recommended to leave it in the oven for about an hour before serving.

Homemade lasagna

Lazy Day Trip to Tianeti in Winter (via Mtskheta)

20 January, 2018 | Travel guides | 36 seen

It was on Friday morning, which was a public holiday in Georgia, as it turned out, there is a good reason not to visit the office today, we started to figure it out, maybe go and visit Batumi by train for a couple of days.

On the other hand, we didn't want to spend 3 days absent from home and decided to limit our impromptu trip just as an easy day trip, and agreed to visit Tianeti.

Tianeti has been on my travel list since the end of 2016, the region is not yet very popular among tourists, and that's one of the reasons I love this region. On the other hand, day trips to Tianeti (region of Mtsketa-Mtianeti) are quite possible and really easy doable. See: Day Trip to Tianeti in Georgia

Said done! A quick call to the driver and after 40 minutes we are on the way to Tianeti. 

View towards Mtskheta town from Jvari monastery

First stop - Jvari monastery - a scenic place with great views towards Mtskheta town and Mtkvari / Aragvi delta. Next stop Mtskheta, with quick khachapuri and Turkish coffee at Kartuli Ezo, a short visit to Svetiskhoveli cathedral. If you would love to spend more time in lovely Mtsheta, take a look at this indie travel guide:  Independent Travel Guide to Mtskheta

Next stops Annanuri Castle and Zhinvali Water reservoir.

Zhinvali water reservoir in Winter

From here we head straight to the Tianeti town, take another quick coffee break at Cafe Vanessa - and head back to the Tbilisi via Gombori pass. 

Mining Ethereum With EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 Review

19 January, 2018 | Servers | 49 seen

This EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING, ACX 2.0 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 is the second graphics card I've put on test for mining Ethereum.

Bought from Amazon, together with the rest of mining rig equipment at the end of December, paid about $275 for this card.

At the start using default out of the box settings, I was able to get out just about 14MH/S, which felt wrong, as I was hoping to get at least 22 MH/s with this card.

Unboxing EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING, ACX 2.0 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5

As it was Christmas time when I added this card to the mining rig, I decided to leave it as it is for a couple of days. In combination with Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 560 4GB graphics card I was able to get about 25 MH/s hashing power, which back at the day combined produced about $2.44 from dual mining Ethereum and Siacon, see: I'm Making $2.44 Per Day By Dual Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I'm NOT HAPPY YET!

Shortly before the New Year's Eve I decided to experiment with overclocking settings and was able to get this card up to ~ 19MH/s if dual mining, and about mentioned 22MH/s if single Ethereum mining.

Simple GPU Overclocking Boosts Ethereum Mining Profitability by 20.65% - Now Making $2.66 Daily

Currently, this card is installed on a mining rig and I noticed following measurements for temperature and fan speed

• 72 Celsius
• 30% Fan speed

In general, I would love to get the temperature below 70 Celsius, as I believe lower temperatures and slower fan speeds extends the total lifetime for graphics cards.

Mining with EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING, ACX 2.0 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5

As you can see from the picture above, I've in total 3 graphics cards, what is interesting both AMD and NVIDIA cards. As of right now, this EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 card produces the most hashing power and for the money paid I would call this one of the most reasonable investments from my current graphics cards.

Mining Ethereum with EVGA GTX1060 6GB

ROI for this card with current Ethereum mining difficulty and the current price would be about 126 days or little more than 4 months. 

Depending on your miner configuration (single or dual mining) I believe you could get your initial investment back even in a shorter time.

Would I invest $2,000 in Cryptos (Buying / Trading / Mining) in 2018

18 January, 2018 | Crypto | 8 seen

I got a phone call from a friend, pretty strange phone call - friend was asking what would I do if I had spare $2,000, where would I invest them to make about $300/mo

After the $300/monthly figure for me, it was clear - a friend is most probably talking about cryptos, and more probably about crypto mining. As I've been covering many articles on cryptocurrency investment lately, the phone call didn't come as a surprise.

See:

• Should You Invest in Hashflare Ethereum Cloud Mining Contract or Build Your Own GPU Mining Rig
• With Rising Ethereum Price I'm making $5.22 daily by Mining Cryptos - And I Definitely Want MORE!
• HashFlare Review - I'm Making $0.50 Per day from Bitcoin cloud mining and I want more

I decided to see, what if we would put $2,200 into HashFlare.io cloud mining how much hash power we would get, right now as of writing this $2,200 would give 10TH/s.

HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that)

Please, be extra careful when investing in cloud contracts or cryptocurrency, these are super risky investments - never invest more you can afford to lose.

Next stop Bitcoin Mining Calculator, and for the surprise indeed a small $2,200 investment could give about $300/ monthly

Bitcoin mining calculator

Disclosure: Mining metrics are calculated based on a network hash rate of 15,947,797,924 GH/s and using a BTC - USD exchange rate of 1 BTC = $ 9,488.74. These figures vary based on the total network hash rate and on the BTC to USD conversion rate. Block reward is fixed at 12.5 BTC and future block reward reductions are not taken into account. The average block time used in the calculation is 600 seconds. The electricity price used in generating these metrics is $ 0 per kWh. Network hash rate varies over time, this is just an estimation based on current values.

Hypothetical ROI for such $2,200 investment would be ~ 205 days or little less than 7 months. Taking into account that cloud contracts from HashFlare last just one year, there would be 5 months left to generate profit. On the other hand in crypto space - 7 months is a lot. It's impossible to predict what would happen after 7 months (July 2018). Despite high ROI, you are still risking a lot if choosing cloud contract. 

Another option would be to purchase equipment your self and start your mining rig, for bitcoin mining you would need to look on AntMiners, the cheapest I was able to find listed on Amazon was for about $1.5K Antminer S7 ~4.73TH/s @ .25W/GH 28nm ASIC Bitcoin Miner.

Antminer S7 ~4.73TH/s @ .25W/GH 28nm ASIC Bitcoin Miner

With 4.73 TH/s hashing power you would make slightly less than $300 per month (about $151 as of writing this). More powerful (and more profitable) antminers will cost more. See Best Selling Products from Bitmain

As actually been involved in crypto mining, with current investment at about $1,365 I'm mining other altcoins (Ethereum and Siacoin). I'm not making anything close to $300 yet, but answering on this article's topic - Would I invest $2,000 in Cryptos in 2018 - I already do.

Small 3 GPU mining rig

In fact, I have a several crypto investment strategies - buy and hold once in the month (dollar cost averaging), day trading/swing trading (Altcoin Trading Review 5 Months Later), GPU mining rig and Cloud Contract from Hashflare.io.

It might seem that I'm very exposed to the cryptos, but in fact, cryptos are just the part of my broader investment portfolio.

Investment Portfolio at the end of 2017

At the end of 2017, crypto investments took more than 33% of the total portfolio, second largest position after stock investments. When I started to explore crypto investments I thought to limit them to around 5%, but soaring price gains at the end of 2017 pumped it up to 33.4%. Both scary and awesome.

2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018

About Setting Up Virtual Trade Zone in Georgia (And Free Industrial Zones)

17 January, 2018 | Living in Georgia | 48 seen

A couple of years ago (in 2012) I met an American entrepreneur John Keogh here in Georgia. Back in these days, office coworking spaces were kind of popular and just obliviously popped up also in Georgia.

John had a business in Tbilisi, and in his blog (www.upsoni.com) he published some cool stuff about his vision of possible coop both for local and expat entrepreneurs - I contacted him and we had a lovely dinner at one of the lovely Tbilisi Restaurants (Capadoccia, more precisely)

A lot has changed since then, long are the days with office coworking spaces, the World has gone mad because of the cryptos (including me and many here in Georgia), but the question I first heard from John - Setting up the Virtual Free Trade zones in Georgia have remained. 

It was in the middle of January, when a question from another blog reader, pointed to me via John Keogh, asked the magical question once more:

Hi Reinis,

I'm planning to relocate to Georgia in order to work there, I'm planning to set up a small company. I contacted John Keogh and he pointed me to your blog and advised me to get in touch with you.

First of all, nice blog!!! It's a really great source of information.

I have read your article about Residence Permit and Residence Card where you described the process, do EU citizens (I'm Polish) also need to apply for permit in order to set up a company, work and live in Georgia?

I was also wondering if you know anything about setting up a company in Georgia and registering under virtual trade zone?

I'm looking forward to hear back from you!
 

Now regarding the part of setting up a company in Georgia and registering it under virtual trade zone.

Frankly speaking, I haven't ever dealt with incorporating virtual trade zone in Georgia (or any other country), but as this topic is quite popular (thanks to the John, I have received a dozen of related questions in the past couple of years)  I decided to make a quick investigation (Google search).

Unfortunately, John has shut down his website, but using Google Cache, I was able to recover, what he was to say all about this back in 2012: Georgia Virtual Trade Zone for IT Companies

One significant difference between American and Georgian business and government culture is that Americans tend to include marketing as part of product development, Georgians less so. This may be a legacy of the Soviet era when marketing was largely irrelevant, since you got what the state gave you, wherever the state decided to deliver it. An example of this difference is that I didn't hear about the Georgian Virtual Trade Zone (VTZ) for IT companies until I was talking with someone in the Revenue office here in Tbilisi. The Virtual Trade Zone (VTZ) permits Georgian companies that sell software or other technology outside Georgia to exclude the external revenue from the company's taxable revenue. This is very attractive for software companies, since software companies will likely get most or all of their revenue from abroad, and can exclude it from their Georgian corporate taxable revenue.

Now in 2018, I found a company helping customers from abroad both setting up a company and registering under Virtual Trade Zone in Georgia - Kaukapital.com

IT Companies In Georgia

IT or Information Technology involves the study, support, research and development, design, and deployment of computers and related technologies to produce software products. Georgia offers a favourable climate for IT companies to develop and expand their businesses. If you are planning to set up an IT company in Georgia, you should apply for a “Virtual Zone” status to get tax benefits from the Georgian Government. Georgia has a lower corporate tax rate with respect to other economically developed countries and, the “Virtual Zone” status will help you make the most of it.

What Is Virtual Zone?

A Virtual Zone status is granted to a professional or a group of professionals that has the legal rights and is subjected to obligations for carrying out business activities on the Georgian soil. Virtual Zones for IT companies are also known as Information Technology Zones.

Tax Benefits With The Status Of The Virtual Zone

Taxation of virtual zone persons complies with the rules and standards meted out by the Tax Code of Georgia. Any company or individual with this status are exempted from:

• Taxes on the revenue earned by supplying their products beyond Georgian borders
• VAT or Value-Added Tax on the products delivered outside the borders of Georgia
• Export duties or taxes on products exported from the customs territory of Georgia

All the expenses with respect to the income earned by supplying information technology products outside or within the borders of the Georgian territory shall be deducted from the gross income according to the share of the earnings by supplying within its territory.

Furthermore, the Virtual Zone persons will also be exempted from any special regulation and they will not require licenses, permits or any other regulatory document to carry out business activities on the Georgian soil.

How To Apply For The Status Of The Virtual Zone?

If you are interested in setting up an IT company in Georgia, you can apply for a Virtual Zone Status to avail the aforementioned benefits.

Kaukapital has over a decade of experience in the field of business consultation. You can get in touch with our professional consultants in Georgia to apply for a Virtual Zone Status. We will make the process relatively easier for you by offering you maximum assistance, support and advice during the application process. Your application will be granted within 10 working days after submission and you will be able to carry out your IT business activities seamlessly. Talk to our company representatives if you wish to know more about Virtual Zone and the process of setting up an IT company in Georgia.

Learn more: Virtual Zone

Now, probably there are more companies in Georgia which might help to setup a virtual trade zone here in Georgia, but the offer from Kaukapital seems pretty good and well explained, that's why I'm ready to limit my investigation here.

In case you are willing to do all it by yourself, here are few useful links to get you started:

• Public Service Hall - Information about registering business in Georgia
• Granting the Status of Virtual Zone Person 
• KaukKapital - Virtual agent in Georgia
• CaucasusTranslations - legal translations

Free industrial zones in Georgia

From the written on BLC Law office of Georgia, I found following:

Free Industrial Zone is the type of a free zone envisaged by Customs Code of Georgia where the business-friendly regulations and favourable tax and customs system apply. FIZ is singled out during the limited time period for economical activity and the companies operating therein are subordinated to special regime, which is favourable from legal and commercial point of view. 

Perhaps the main privilege of FIZ which attracts business investments in Georgia and makes the place the most favorable to do business is the favorable tax and customs framework, which is as follows: 

• FIZ incorporated entities are exempt from Property Tax;
• No VAT applies to goods produced in other country imported in FIZ;
• No VAT applies to transactions carried out among FIZ incorporated entities;
• Supply of goods/services among enterprises of FIZ is VAT exempt; 
• No Customs duty applies to goods produced in other country, imported in FIZ; 
• Export of goods produced in FIZ within the territory of Georgia is free from Customs duty; 
• No foreign exchange controls, trade barriers of quotas;
• No restrictions on capital repatriation;
• Profit gained by an international enterprise from an activity carried out in FIZ is exempt from Profit Tax; 

Apart form flexible tax system another advantage of the FIZ is simplified licensing/permitting regime. Once carried out in FIZ some types of activities, which normally require license/permit are released from such restrictions. Hereby, some types of license/permit can be obtained by more simplified procedures. 

In case you are looking to incorporate your Virtual Trade zone at one of the Free Industrial Zones of Georgia, here are some useful links to learn more:

• Hualing Fiz (Kutaisi)
• Poti Free Industrial Zone
• Tbilisi Free Zone
• BLC Law Office in Georgia

Should You Invest in Hashflare Ethereum Cloud Mining Contract or Build Your Own GPU Mining Rig

16 January, 2018 | Crypto | 20 seen

The idea and inspiration for this article come out since after about a month ago I started to invest both in cloud mining and building my very own GPU mining rig. I decided to compare - what's more profitable - doing all by yourself or just throwing money into cloud mining contracts.

Make sure to read out my previous article on similar topic: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

For a prelude, back in December 2017, I decided to build up to 12 GPU mining rig, using kind of dollar cost averaging - installing a new graphics card once in a month. Now, about 30 days later I have a 3 graphics card mining rig, and I'm dual mining Ether and Siacoin, These 3 cards combined gives me about 41 MH/s hashing power - which translates into some $5-$6 per day (not counting in fee for electricity)

With Rising Ethereum Price I'm making $5.22 daily by Mining Cryptos - And I Definitely Want MORE!

Shortly before the Christmas time I decided to experiment with cloud mining contracts and opted for Bitcoin Cloud Mining contract from Hashflare.io - again the same approach - dollar cost averaging, and investing small once per month in additional hashing power.

HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that)

Now, for the ease of this experiment - let's compare Ethereum mining - DIY and Cloud contract from Hashflare.io. Also, I will assume you already have basic components - like motherboard, pc risers, processor and so on - and the one and only investment you are concerned is - adding a new graphics card.

A couple of days ago I bought ZOTAC GeForce 1050TI OC 4GB for about $220 at local Tbilisi electronics shop, see: Buying Graphic Cards (GPU) and Computer Parts in Tbilisi, Georgia

This card out of the box gives about 12MH/s, my current electricity price is about $0.10/KWh, I haven't tested it yet, but I believe this card consumes 75 Watts. Now let's make some calculations:

Mining ETH with Zotac 1050TI

As of writing this, with ETH priced at $1,316.79 - I would make a profit of $1.56 daily, $10.90 weekly, $46.72 monthly and $568.42 yearly. Let's stick with the yearly data, power cost per year would be $65.70. Also, I would mine about 0.4864 ETH after one year.

ROI for my $220 investment would be about 141 days or little less than 5 months.

Now, let's do the math for Hashflare ethereum cloud mining contract, with initial $220 investment we could buy exactly 10MH/s mining contract for one year. That's already 2MH/s less if we would opt to buy GPU card.

Buying ETHASH on Hashflare

Now, I don't have actual experience buying Ethereum cloud mining contracts on Hashflare, as I have just tried BTC cloud contracts, but reading FAQ I learned that Ethereum contracts are not subject to any fees, which is Awesome. You get what you paid for. 

Let's do the math:

Ethereum cloud mining contract on Hashflare

Frankly speaking, this sounds too good to be true - Ethereum Cloud mining contract from Hashflare would perform just slightly worse than your own existing mining rig. I wouldn't say this is a red alarm for me, but it still raises some questions - how comes? Is Hashflare legit and so on? 

Please, be extra careful when investing in cloud contracts or cryptocurrency, these are super risky investments - never invest more you can afford to lose.

Now, the total amount I've invested so far in my GPU mining rig is $1,365 - and currently, it gives me a hashing power of 41 MH/s. Again I haven't yet calculated precise electricity consumption, but for the sake of this experiment, let's assume it's 300 Watts.

Mining Ethereum with GPU mining rig

Currently, I'm  making a profit of $5.22 daily, $36.51 weekly, $156.47 monthly and $1,903.78 yearly. Let's stick with the yearly data, power cost per year would be $262.80. Also, I would mine about 1.66 ETH after one year or operations.

ROI for my $1,365 investment would be about 261 days or little less than 9 months.

Now, let's see what we could get if decided to invest $1,365 in HashFlare's Ethereum cloud mining contract:

We could get about 62 MH/s hashing power for one year.

Hashflare Ethereum cloud mining contract with 62MH/s

WOW, isn't that sweet? Theoretically, just by throwing money into Hashflare Ethereum cloud mining contract I would make way more than building my own mining rig.

The same money I've put into GPU mining rig, if invested in Hasfhlare, would make a profit of $8.98 daily, $62.83 weekly, $269.29 monthly and $3,276.29 yearly.  Also, I would mine about 2.51 ETH after one year or operations.

Now, let's try to find some positive/negative aspects of cloud mining vs own mining rig:

Maintenance

The beauty of cloud mining contracts is that you don't need to worry about equipment, heat, maintenance or electricity fees. Right now Ethereum cloud mining contracts on HashFlare are fee free:

Ethereum contracts are not subject to any fees. 

Longevity:

Ethereum cloud mining contract lasts for one year vs your own custom mining rig which should last as long the graphics cards are spinning. (in theory 2-3 years)

HashFlare (How long does the contract last?)

ETHASH, EQUIHASH and DASH contracts last for 1 year (365 days) and are not subject to any fees.

Minimum withdrawal fees

At Hashflare minimum Ethereum withdrawal fee is 0.1ETH, while at custom mining rig (from my experience you could withdraw starting with 0.05 ETH

HashFlare (How to make a withdrawal?)

minimal ETH withdrawal is 0.1006 ETH, where 0.0006 ETH (in GAS equivalent) is paid to blockchain.

Sounds good? Take a deep breath before hitting magical buy hash power button from HashFlare. There is a great chance of Ethereum mining network switching from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, which puts a lot of miners in very uncertain future. Including me. Being tied to cloud mining contract you would be dependent on the mercy of cloud contract issuer, instead of having your own mining rig where you are in a full control and can switch to other profitable minable coins after a possible Ethereum POS.

There is an interesting comment, a reader left on this topic couple of weeks ago: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

Hello Reinis and thanks for sharing your experience. 
I was asking my self how profitable can be ethereum for the next years specially with the coming changes (proof of stake)...

I just bought a 2 years contract with 162 MHs power of ethereum for around 4500 dollars (maintenance fee included) from a cloud mining Swiss company.

I'm expecting a ROI around 160% based on current price and future difficulty. But im not comfortable with this thing about the proof of stake coming next year.

Will this new algorithm implementation be a problem for miners? How can this be a problem?

What do you have to say? Bad decision?

I don't have lot to say, except following:

Thanks for sharing your experience buying a cloud contract.

Indeed planned POS makes a lot of uncertainty for 2018. I believe you should check with your cloud mining company what will they do in case of POS. A refund or more probably switch to another profitable coin to mine?

From what I have read on hashflare - in case of POS they will switch ethereum cloud contracts to other coin.

Now, let me remind you one more time - Please, be extra careful when investing in cloud contracts or cryptocurrency, these are super risky investments - never invest more you can afford to lose.