help? Newbie to wanting to Mine Ethereum.

[_Grid21]

I want to start mining and selling Ethereum on my RTX 3060 12GB, none LHR, card. I found this really good tutorial on YouTube, but the part I don't understand is, he mentioned Atomic Wallet, but I have also heard the name Coinbase thrown around? What is the difference, what is Coinbase? How do I cash out from Atomic Wallet vs Coinbase? Also, how do you report the money you make on Taxes to the IRS? I don't want to dive into this until I understand everything I need to know. Please help me learn and understand and thanks in advance!
 

 

[tikker]

48 minutes ago, _Grid21 said:

but the part I don't understand is, he mentioned Atomic Wallet, but I have also heard the name Coinbase thrown around? What is the difference, what is Coinbase?

A wallet is, well, a wallet. It's a way to interact with your funds are stored at a particular address. Coinbase is an exchange. A place where you exchange crypto for fiat money, vice versa, or other crypto.

48 minutes ago, _Grid21 said:

How do I cash out from Atomic Wallet vs Coinbase?

You don't cash out from a wallet. You transfer it to an exchange like Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Gemini etc. and convert it to fiat money there. Note that almost all exchanges will ask you for ID verification before allowing you to withdraw fiat funds (somtimes a limited cumulative amount is allowed without it).

48 minutes ago, _Grid21 said:

Also, how do you report the money you make on Taxes to the IRS?

Check your local tax laws. It's either income tax or capital gains. Also in the US every transaction, conversion or whatever is a taxable event from my memory, making crypto trading a bit PITA in the US. I don't live there though, so this may be different now. Again, check your local tax laws or perhaps ask the tax office.

 

Atomic wallet doesn't have the best reputation when I looked at it, so I stayed away from them. I also couldn't really get it to work, so yeah... Do your due diligence on any wallet you may want to use. Personally I have used Exodus, MetaMask and MEW.

[_Grid21]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

A wallet is, well, a wallet. It's a way to interact with your funds are stored at a particular address. Coinbase is an exchange. A place where you exchange crypto for fiat money, vice versa, or other crypto.

You don't cash out from a wallet. You transfer it to an exchange like Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Gemini etc. and convert it to fiat money there. Note that almost all exchanges will ask you for ID verification before allowing you to withdraw fiat funds (somtimes a limited cumulative amount is allowed without it).

Check your local tax laws. It's either income tax or capital gains. Also in the US every transaction, conversion or whatever is a taxable event from my memory, making crypto trading a bit PITA in the US. I don't live there though, so this may be different now. Again, check your local tax laws or perhaps ask the tax office.

 

Atomic wallet doesn't have the best reputation when I looked at it, so I stayed away from them. I also couldn't really get it to work, so yeah... Do your due diligence on any wallet you may want to use. Personally I have used Exodus, MetaMask and MEW.

What Miner Software should I even use? And how do I hook Coinbase in? Or some exchange program?

[tikker]

9 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

What Miner Software should I even use?

Up to you. There's a bunch of miners out there. I have used t-rex miner and PhoenixMiner. Make sure to get them from their official locations (which for phoenix is the bitcointalk forums).

9 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

And how do I hook Coinbase in? Or some exchange program?

You always mine to a wallet. This can be your exchange wallet or a personal wallet. In the latter case you'll have to manually transfer it to the exchange wallet first before you can sell, but is considered better practise as you are in control of your wallet.

[_Grid21]

9 hours ago, tikker said:

Up to you. There's a bunch of miners out there. I have used t-rex miner and PhoenixMiner. Make sure to get them from their official locations (which for phoenix is the bitcointalk forums).

You always mine to a wallet. This can be your exchange wallet or a personal wallet. In the latter case you'll have to manually transfer it to the exchange wallet first before you can sell, but is considered better practise as you are in control of your wallet.

So I make a Coinbase account? Then download and start mining and connect the mining software to sell through Coinbase? I am still trying to understand how this works.

[tikker]

2 minutes ago, _Grid21 said:

So I make a Coinbase account? Then download and start mining and connect the mining software to sell through Coinbase? I am still trying to understand how this works.

Yes the first step would be to set up a Coinbase and Coinbase Pro account. Regular Coinbase is mainly intended to load up on fiat. Coinbase Pro is where you'll do the actual trading. Then you get the Ethereum address of your ETH wallet on Coinbase and use that for the miner.

[_Grid21]

16 minutes ago, tikker said:

Yes the first step would be to set up a Coinbase and Coinbase Pro account. Regular Coinbase is mainly intended to load up on fiat. Coinbase Pro is where you'll do the actual trading. Then you get the Ethereum address of your ETH wallet on Coinbase and use that for the miner.

So I can't trade my  Ether into money without a pro account? Is that what you're saying? And are there other alternatives to Coinbase that will let me trade my Ether into USD?

[tikker]

1 hour ago, _Grid21 said:

So I can't trade my  Ether into money without a pro account? Is that what you're saying? And are there other alternatives to Coinbase that will let me trade my Ether into USD?

They both should offer that. Coinbase just has higher fees for the convenience factor. Yes there are other places like the ones I mentioned earlier (note that Binance has Binance US specifically for US people). They'll all require KYC verification sooner or later to get the money into your bank account.

[artuc]

Also depending on your choices and risk tolerance there are options for your crypto that may work out better than cashing out.

 

Ie. When it's barely profitable in a dip, you may do better accumulating, holding and cashing out at the next high cycle.

 

Thing is that is never guaranteed and you never know which way things are going to go, could be the next crpto winter or new all time highs around the corner.

 

Possibly cash out to break even and dabble with the rest...

 

I personally have been reasonably succesful accumulating and making some smart moves, also made dumb ones and dodged a bullet with SHIB and ICP.

 

It's the wild west and a modern gold rush.

 

DYOR, NFA etc.

[Ithanul]

For wallets, there many different ones.  Along with terms such as hot and cold wallet.

With places like Coinbase, Binance, Phemex, etc.  Those are exchanges and your wallet there is term as "hot".  Quick to do swaps, trades, etc. dependent on a coin's network.  Least secure as well; highly advise, invest into physical security keys like a Yuibkey, etc.  The more quality exchanges should give an option to hook this up to the account.  Or, at least some give the option to use authenticators instead of just solely relying on SMS 2FA.

 

Also, note, the stated exchanges above are refer to as centralized.

You also have the more decentralized ones like Uniswap, 1inch, etc.  Dependent on these, you can either hook a Metamask wallet or an actual hardware wallet, like Ledger, through the sites.  Thus, this is allows you to not have as much a middle man when you want to swap and trade.  Note:  most of these if not all don't deal with fiat currencies like the USD, etc.

 

Then there is the hardware wallets like Tezor and Ledger.  Can be term as cold wallets.  These give you full ownership of the crypto you have.  Plus, the most secure as the wallet is on an physical secure device.

 

You also can download a coin's application to setup a wallet.  In the case of ETH, you can download the actual ETH software and setup a wallet that way.

 

For miners, there is a wide array, best to do research on which will do the best for the coin you are trying to mine.  And, as stated in comments above, make extreme sure you download from a verified source for the miner software.  Most pools for crypto coins should have instructions on how to setup a miner for the pool.

 

Do note, I advise, don't just transfer all the coins out.  Dependent on where you want to stash spare coins, some exchanges allow staking or rewarding out APY for holding certain coins.  Percentages on the APY can vary a good bit among the exchanges and wallets.

[_Grid21]

 

On 9/5/2021 at 9:12 PM, Ithanul said:

For wallets, there many different ones.  Along with terms such as hot and cold wallet.

With places like Coinbase, Binance, Phemex, etc.  Those are exchanges and your wallet there is term as "hot".  Quick to do swaps, trades, etc. dependent on a coin's network.  Least secure as well; highly advise, invest into physical security keys like a Yuibkey, etc.  The more quality exchanges should give an option to hook this up to the account.  Or, at least some give the option to use authenticators instead of just solely relying on SMS 2FA.

 

Also, note, the stated exchanges above are refer to as centralized.

You also have the more decentralized ones like Uniswap, 1inch, etc.  Dependent on these, you can either hook a Metamask wallet or an actual hardware wallet, like Ledger, through the sites.  Thus, this is allows you to not have as much a middle man when you want to swap and trade.  Note:  most of these if not all don't deal with fiat currencies like the USD, etc.

 

Then there is the hardware wallets like Tezor and Ledger.  Can be term as cold wallets.  These give you full ownership of the crypto you have.  Plus, the most secure as the wallet is on an physical secure device.

 

You also can download a coin's application to setup a wallet.  In the case of ETH, you can download the actual ETH software and setup a wallet that way.

 

For miners, there is a wide array, best to do research on which will do the best for the coin you are trying to mine.  And, as stated in comments above, make extreme sure you download from a verified source for the miner software.  Most pools for crypto coins should have instructions on how to setup a miner for the pool.

 

Do note, I advise, don't just transfer all the coins out.  Dependent on where you want to stash spare coins, some exchanges allow staking or rewarding out APY for holding certain coins.  Percentages on the APY can vary a good bit among the exchanges and wallets.

Ok, so I feel like Metawallet feels like the best wallet to use and just use Google Authenticator to secure it with 2FA. But then what do I use for a mining software, to mine Ethereum to pair with MetaWallet?

 

EDIT: MetaWallet has some bad reviews on the Chrome Store. Are there any desktop Wallets I can use locally on my PC to pair with a mining software? 

Edited September 8, 2021 by _Grid21
Additional Question and information.

[_Grid21]

So I found this guide here. https://www.coolwallet.io/eth-mining/#how-to-mine. And they recommended things like Kraken to Sell or "HODL" whatever that means. Is there where I'd need a crypto Wallet? Is that what services like Kraken are? 

[tikker]

8 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

 

Ok, so I feel like Metawallet feels like the best wallet to use and just use Google Authenticator to secure it with 2FA. But then what do I use for a mining software, to mine Ethereum to pair with MetaWallet?

 

EDIT: MetaWallet has some bad reviews on the Chrome Store. Are there any desktop Wallets I can use locally on my PC to pair with a mining software? 

For a browser wallet I recommend MetaMask. It's widely supported and also has a mobile app. For desktop I personally use Exodus.

 

Either way realise that your funds are not "in" the wallet. A wallet is merely a way to interact with your funds, which are always on the blockchain. When you create an address you get a secret phrase consisting of 12 or 24 words which will generate your keys. Guard that with your life. The keys are, well, your key to interacting with the funds and those words are the key to recovering a wallet (e.g. if you switch to another wallet, just "recover" it with those words and you'll have access to your original funds).

 

8 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

EDIT: MetaWallet has some bad reviews on the Chrome Store. Are there any desktop Wallets I can use locally on my PC to pair with a mining software? 

Wallet and mining software are independent. You can mix whichever you like. To start mining ETH:

1. Set up a wallet. Either your own one, or on an exchange.
2. Find a pool you want to mine on. For example Ethermine or 2miners.
3. Get a miner capable of mining ETH. Examples are NBMiner, PhoenixMiner or T-rex miner. Pools often recommend one or a few.
4. Look at your pool's instructions how to set up the miner for their pool, update the wallet address to match yours and start mining.

7 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

So I found this guide here. https://www.coolwallet.io/eth-mining/#how-to-mine. And they recommended things like Kraken to Sell or "HODL" whatever that means. Is there where I'd need a crypto Wallet? Is that what services like Kraken are? 

Kraken is simply an exchange, a place to buy, sell and exchange crypto; one of many (Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Gemini, maybe some ones local to your country). HODL is just an joking acronym for "Hold On for Dear Life". It's based on the idea of using crypto as an investment, so the idea is not to sell immediately but to hold long term and hope for an increase in value.

[_Grid21]

On 9/8/2021 at 8:37 AM, tikker said:

For a browser wallet I recommend MetaMask. It's widely supported and also has a mobile app. For desktop I personally use Exodus.

 

Either way realise that your funds are not "in" the wallet. A wallet is merely a way to interact with your funds, which are always on the blockchain. When you create an address you get a secret phrase consisting of 12 or 24 words which will generate your keys. Guard that with your life. The keys are, well, your key to interacting with the funds and those words are the key to recovering a wallet (e.g. if you switch to another wallet, just "recover" it with those words and you'll have access to your original funds).

 

Wallet and mining software are independent. You can mix whichever you like. To start mining ETH:

1. Set up a wallet. Either your own one, or on an exchange.
2. Find a pool you want to mine on. For example Ethermine or 2miners.
3. Get a miner capable of mining ETH. Examples are NBMiner, PhoenixMiner or T-rex miner. Pools often recommend one or a few.
4. Look at your pool's instructions how to set up the miner for their pool, update the wallet address to match yours and start mining.

Kraken is simply an exchange, a place to buy, sell and exchange crypto; one of many (Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Gemini, maybe some ones local to your country). HODL is just an joking acronym for "Hold On for Dear Life". It's based on the idea of using crypto as an investment, so the idea is not to sell immediately but to hold long term and hope for an increase in value.

I went to download PhoenixMiner and Chrome thought it was dangerous. Should I not download files that Chrome freaks out over even if I got it from the official website? This was the site for it. 
https://phoenixminer.org/

 

Also, how do I find safe secure pools to mine in? 

[_Grid21]

Ok does anyone know how I am suppose to connect 2miners to my Exodus Wallet? Apparently Ethermine doesn't support Exodus Wallet.

 

EDIT, I say this because when I looked on the Ethermine under the payout option, I didn't see Exodus wallet, unless the wallet is configured under the .bat file? 

Edited September 10, 2021 by _Grid21
Additional question.

[tikker]

9 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

I went to download PhoenixMiner and Chrome thought it was dangerous. Should I not download files that Chrome freaks out over even if I got it from the official website?

Any miner will be flagged by antivirus measures, because crypto miners are seen (rightfully) as viruses.

9 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

This was the site for it. 
https://phoenixminer.org/

That is not the official site of Phoenix Miner. I haven't seen anything bad come out of that particular sitet when I accidentally used it, but as I mentioned above the official location of Phoenix Miner is over on the BitcoinTalk forums: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2647654.0 There they also have instructions for it.

9 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

Also, how do I find safe secure pools to mine in?

There is no such thing as an unsafe pool to my knowledge, simply because you only send information there and don't run anything. The only risk is in viruses from miners if you download the wrong one.

3 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

Ok does anyone know how I am suppose to connect 2miners to my Exodus Wallet? Apparently Ethermine doesn't support Exodus Wallet.

 

EDIT, I say this because when I looked on the Ethermine under the payout option, I didn't see Exodus wallet, unless the wallet is configured under the .bat file? 

You don't "connect" your wallet with the pool. You configure the miner to mine to your wallet. In the miner's configuration file you set the user / wallet address to the address of your wallet. In Exodus you can obtain that by going to your Ethereum wallet, clicking "Receive" and copying the address that you are shown.

[_Grid21]

6 hours ago, tikker said:

Any miner will be flagged by antivirus measures, because crypto miners are seen (rightfully) as viruses.

That is not the official site of Phoenix Miner. I haven't seen anything bad come out of that particular sitet when I accidentally used it, but as I mentioned above the official location of Phoenix Miner is over on the BitcoinTalk forums: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2647654.0 There they also have instructions for it.

There is no such thing as an unsafe pool to my knowledge, simply because you only send information there and don't run anything. The only risk is in viruses from miners if you download the wrong one.

You don't "connect" your wallet with the pool. You configure the miner to mine to your wallet. In the miner's configuration file you set the user / wallet address to the address of your wallet. In Exodus you can obtain that by going to your Ethereum wallet, clicking "Receive" and copying the address that you are shown.

Then why was it in Ethermine, using T-Rex, did the website say I had to connect a wallet and IIP address to their site on the Ethermine website? Do I just need to put the wallet address in the Ethermine, or 2miners, .bat Files and I'll still get the Etheruem I mined into Exodus?

[tikker]

1 hour ago, _Grid21 said:

Then why was it in Ethermine, using T-Rex, did the website say I had to connect a wallet and IIP address to their site on the Ethermine website? Do I just need to put the wallet address in the Ethermine, or 2miners, .bat Files and I'll still get the Etheruem I mined into Exodus?

You can, or they may require you to, register your IP address with them so you can change settings like payout threshold. Note that Ethermine no longer pays the fees for you since recently. Take this into account when calculating expected profits and choosing the payout threshold (0.05 ETH minimum).

 

Yes put your wallet address in the appropriate place in those files and it'll show up in your Exodus wallet once it gets paid out.

[_Grid21]

1 minute ago, tikker said:

You can, or they may require you to, register your IP address with them so you can change settings like payout threshold. Note that Ethermine no longer pays the fees for you since recently. Take this into account when calculating expected profits and choosing the payout threshold (0.05 ETH minimum).

 

Yes put your wallet address in the appropriate place in those files and it'll show up in your Exodus wallet once it gets paid out.

How secure is putting my public IP? Can I use a masked IP through the No-IP service I have? Because 2Miners seems to require it? 
Is that what this means? http://prntscr.com/1rqi9s8

[tikker]

8 minutes ago, _Grid21 said:

How secure is putting my public IP? Can I use a masked IP through the No-IP service I have? Because 2Miners seems to require it? 
Is that what this means? http://prntscr.com/1rqi9s8

2miners doesn't require an IP. I mine Ravencoin on their pool just fine without one. You just can't change payout settings. You'll just get the default payout amount. For 2miners that's 1 ETH though, so yeah you may want to change that and register your IP.

 

There's nothing dangerous about people knowing your public IP because it's, well, public. That's how the internet works. I wouldn't bother masking it. It needs to know the IP address of the miner to apply the settings and if that is constantly changing through some masking service it's just a PITA for you.

[_Grid21]

1 minute ago, tikker said:

2miners doesn't require an IP. I mine Ravencoin on their pool just fine without one. You just can't change payout settings. You'll just get the default payout amount. For 2miners that's 1 ETH though, so yeah you may want to change that and register your IP.

 

There's nothing dangerous about people knowing your public IP because it's, well, public. That's how the internet works. I wouldn't bother masking it. It needs to know the IP address of the miner to apply the settings and if that is constantly changing through some masking service it's just a PITA for you.

So even if my wallet address is in the batch config for 2miners, I won't get a payout? Or I will but at their set threshold? 

 

Does the same apply to ethermine? If I set my wallet address in the batch config file, will I still get the payout? Also, what is a "gas" price and how concerned do I need to be about it?

[tikker]

1 ETH = 1000000000000000000 wei = 1000000000 gwei

2 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

So even if my wallet address is in the batch config for 2miners, I won't get a payout? Or I will but at their set threshold? 

 

Does the same apply to ethermine? If I set my wallet address in the batch config file, will I still get the payout? Also, what is a "gas" price and how concerned do I need to be about it?

You will get a payout once you reach their threshold, yes, which is configurable if you register your IP address. You always have to set it to mine to your wallet address in the config file. I assume you are the one wanting to get paid your funds Both 2miners and Ethermine switched policy and no longer swallow the gas fees for you since recently. The gas price is what it costs to make a transaction, e.g. transferring funds to your wallet. Have a look at 2miner's page for example: https://2miners.com/blog/what-is-gas-in-ethereum-ethereum-transaction-fees/

 

On 2miners the minimum payout is 0.005 ETH and on Ethermine it's 0.01 ETH (or 0.005 ETH at manual request). Now on to the gas fees. It's a little bit obscure. A transaction costs a certain amount of gas; 21000 for a simple transfer of funds. The average gas price for Ethereum is currently 151 Gwei (gigawei, 1 ETH = 1000000000000000000 wei = 1000000000 Gwei or 1 ETH = 0.000000001 Gwei). That means transferring ETH from say the pool address to your wallet address will cost you:

 

21000 gas * 151 Gwei/gas * 0.000000001 ETH/Gwei = 0.003171 ETH

 

If you put the payout at 0.005 ETH, that means once you have mined 0.005 ETH you will get paid and (at this moment of writing) spend 0.003171 of that on gas and only 0.001829 will end up in your wallet. For reference, according to 2miners' calculator will make you around 0.00108 ETH per day.

[_Grid21]

21 minutes ago, tikker said:

1 ETH = 1000000000000000000 wei = 1000000000 gwei

You will get a payout once you reach their threshold, yes, which is configurable if you register your IP address. You always have to set it to mine to your wallet address in the config file. I assume you are the one wanting to get paid your funds Both 2miners and Ethermine switched policy and no longer swallow the gas fees for you since recently. The gas price is what it costs to make a transaction, e.g. transferring funds to your wallet. Have a look at 2miner's page for example: https://2miners.com/blog/what-is-gas-in-ethereum-ethereum-transaction-fees/

 

On 2miners the minimum payout is 0.005 ETH and on Ethermine it's 0.01 ETH (or 0.005 ETH at manual request). Now on to the gas fees. It's a little bit obscure. A transaction costs a certain amount of gas; 21000 for a simple transfer of funds. The average gas price for Ethereum is currently 151 Gwei (gigawei, 1 ETH = 1000000000000000000 wei = 1000000000 Gwei or 1 ETH = 0.000000001 Gwei). That means transferring ETH from say the pool address to your wallet address will cost you:

 

21000 gas * 151 Gwei/gas * 0.000000001 ETH/Gwei = 0.003171 ETH

 

If you put the payout at 0.005 ETH, that means once you have mined 0.005 ETH you will get paid and (at this moment of writing) spend 0.003171 of that on gas and only 0.001829 will end up in your wallet. For reference, according to 2miners' calculator will make you around 0.00108 ETH per day.

Ok. Interesting. Something I also found a little odd. I went to reconfigure my batch script, and now 2miners thinks my "worker" is offline even though it has 1/1 Shares. What gives? 

t-rex.exe -a etchash -o stratum+tcp://etc.2miners.com:1010 -u <my wallet Address, but redacted for security sake> -p x -w RTX3060YetiMiner --dag-build-mode 2 --coin eth --gpu-report-interval 15 --temperature-limit 68 --intensity 20

 

[tikker]

13 hours ago, _Grid21 said:

Ok. Interesting. Something I also found a little odd. I went to reconfigure my batch script, and now 2miners thinks my "worker" is offline even though it has 1/1 Shares. What gives? 

t-rex.exe -a etchash -o stratum+tcp://etc.2miners.com:1010 -u <my wallet Address, but redacted for security sake> -p x -w RTX3060YetiMiner --dag-build-mode 2 --coin eth --gpu-report-interval 15 --temperature-limit 68 --intensity 20

 

You want to be on eth.2miners.com:2020, not etc.2miners.com:1010, and ethash not etchash. eth is for Ethereum (the current main one) while etc is for Ethereum Classic (the previous old main one). Unless you actually want to mine Ethereum Classic though. Also give it a little time to show up, like 5-10 minutes or a few shares.

[_Grid21]

9 hours ago, tikker said:

You want to be on eth.2miners.com:2020, not etc.2miners.com:1010, and ethash not etchash. eth is for Ethereum (the current main one) while etc is for Ethereum Classic (the previous old main one). Unless you actually want to mine Ethereum Classic though. Also give it a little time to show up, like 5-10 minutes or a few shares.

No I want to mine the newer one, not the older one. What's the code line I need to put for that one? (I just realized I was mining the wrong thing! D: UGH! Welp, I'll take it as a test then and count my loss).

 

What does this "FAIL" section mean? Is my GPU not working or did something else happen?

Edited September 11, 2021 by _Grid21
Additional Question.