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June 2024

Welcome to our monthly guide to the world of cryptocurrency mining!

June 2024

1. Price of the most popular cryptocurrencies for June 2024

Bitcoin price in June ranged between $67,722 - $60,320 (-10.8%)

Ethereum was in the range of $3,760 - $3,441 (-8.5%)

Litecoin was in the range of $83.13 - $74, 30 (-10.67%)

Dogecoin was in the range of $0.159 - $0.123 (-22.5%)

Kaspa has traded in the range of $0.137 - $0.179 (+30.6%) in the past month

Kadena: $0.813 - $0.598 (-26.4%)

Nervos: $0.0162 - $0.0119 (-25.6%)

2.New technologies in ASIC Miners:

Bitmain has released a new Antminer DR7 for SC Prime mining. However, after initial enthusiasm, it corrected its decision to sell on the grounds that profitability would be reduced once all of the issued machines were plugged in to the point that the miner would essentially be unable to even cover the cost of the electricity consumed. It therefore decided to terminate the sale and to refund the payments received for the machines already sold. We apologize to all customers who ordered this machine from us for this unforeseen move.

The shipment of the new Antminer L9 for mining the Scrypt algorithm should start during the month of August. The L9, should have a performance of 16 Gh/s at a power consumption of 3360 W. Bitmain has made it possible to pre-sell these models in the longer term at quite attractive prices. Keep an eye on our e-shop for availability and pricing.

Bitmain is about to release two new versions of the S21. The first, the S21 XP hydro (water-cooled), will have a respectable 473 Th/s at 5676 W. The second, air-cooled model, called the S21 XP, will have 270 Th/s at 3645 W. It should be released in late October/November this year.

3.News:

The Kaspa phenomenon

Similar to Bitcoin, the Kaspa network is a Layer 1 (L1) protocol that enables transfers using its native token KAS. However, Kaspa implements an architecture derived from the direct acyclic graph - BlockDAG. Under this architecture, blocks are added to the network simultaneously, rather than linearly as in Bitcoin. The result is an increased block creation rate (approximately 1 block per second), which is significantly faster compared to Bitcoin, which takes approximately 10 minutes to create a block.The Kaspa token (KAS) saw growth of over 35% in the second quarter of this year. This cryptocurrency has gained the attention of investors mainly due to its advancement in solving the blockchain trilemma.Blockchain trilemma is a concept that claims that it is very challenging to simultaneously achieve a high level of decentralization, security and scalability in a blockchain system. GHOSDAG, a functionality of the Kaspa token, enables asynchronous transaction processing, which improves performance and security while preserving the proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism.The rise of Kaspa was also helped by the announcement of Marathon Digital, a bitcoin mining company, to start mining the token in order to diversify its income. Marathon Digital, a Bitcoin (BTC) mining company, announced that it has mined $16 million worth of the Kaspa token (KAS) since September in order to diversify its assets.Marathon Digital has already mined 93 million KAS since launching Kaspa mining in September 2023. Moreover, the price of Kaspa has risen 420% since then, while the price of Bitcoin has risen "only" 135% over the same period. Marathon has purchased KS3, KS5 and KS5 Pro ASICs to mine Kaspa. The total hashrate of the machines is approximately 60 PH/s.Marathon Digital is still focused on Bitcoin. Robert Samuels, VP of Investor Relations at Marathon Digital, emphasized that the company is not changing its primary focus on Bitcoin mining.Kaspa will represent a maximum of 1% of our energy capacity once all machines are fully deployed, Samuels said. As of September 2023, Marathon Digital has mined 9,761 BTC with a total value of $594.9 million. Thus, the mining company's Kaspa token operations accounted for only a small portion of its total mining revenue.Since the news of Marathon Digital's Kaspa mining, the price of Kaspa has risen another 11%.

CoinGecko data shows that Kaspa is the fifth largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $4.1 billion. There are currently 24 billion KAS tokens in circulation and the total supply is capped at 28.7 billion tokens.

Increasing interest in cryptocurrencies?The number of crypto ATMs in the world

The number of cryptocurrency ATMs grew by 17.8% over the year. In 2024, 2,564 new devices were installed to buy and sell digital assets. This indicates a positive trend compared to the decline of 2,861 ATMs during 2023. Coin ATM Radar data shows that globally, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs grew by 17.8% over the past 12 months to reach 38,279. This is an indication of positive cryptocurrency adoption. The leading cryptocurrency ATM operators are Bitcoin Depot, Coinflip and Athena Bitcoin. Together they operate over 15,000 such devices. By far the most popular cryptocurrency in cryptocurrency ATMs is Bitcoin (BTC). It is followed by Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC). More than 82% of cryptocurrency ATMs are located in the US. Canada is in second place with 7.7% of the global ATMs. Australia has also seen a fairly significant increase in installations. In the last two years, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs in Australia has increased almost 17-fold to 1,107. Other countries with significant numbers of cryptocurrency ATMs are Spain (313), Poland (279), El Salvador (215), Germany (177) and Hong Kong (169). Countries with more than 100 cryptocurrency ATMs installed include Romania, Georgia, Switzerland, Austria and New Zealand. There are currently 59 crypto ATMs installed in the Czech Republic, 25 of which are in Prague.

What is a cryptocurrency wallet and why is it important?

Cryptocurrency wallets are vital resources for navigating the world of digital assets. They serve as secure vaults that protect users' private keys, giving them access to and authority over their cryptocurrency holdings. These keys allow users to communicate, receive, and manage their digital assets in a manner similar to passwords. A user's cryptocurrency remains locked and unusable on the blockchain without a wallet. Wallets offer a secure entry point or gateway that allows users to protect their digital assets and participate in the decentralized economy. Cryptocurrency wallets have evolved over the years from the bitcoin core, to hardware wallets, and the integration of cryptocurrencies with decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-interchangeable tokens (NFTs).

Bitcoin core

The first cryptocurrency wallet, Bitcoin Core (also known as Bitcoin-Qt), was released shortly after the first bitcoin. It was released in early January 2009, as a place to store, manage and transact the new cryptocurrency. The wallet arrived out of necessity. After all, a crucial aspect of bitcoin mining is the block reward, which is recorded in the coinbase transaction (the first transaction within the new block) and should go to the miner's BTC wallet address. Interestingly, due to a bug in an early version of bitcoin, the first ever cryptocurrency sent to the wallet (50 BTC, the 2009 mining reward) became unspendable. Still, it marked the first ever blockchain transaction requiring the execution of a valid crypto wallet address. Since then, cryptocurrency wallets and the blockchain have been inseparable. After all, what is money without pockets? Bitcoin Core is unique because it does not resemble the mobile crypto wallets that are common today. It functions as both a cryptocurrency wallet and a kind of validation software. As a wallet, Bitcoin Core allows users to securely store their bitcoins by generating and managing private keys. These randomly generated strings of characters serve as a cryptographic secret that allows the holder to access the cryptocurrency associated with it.

It also stores public keys derived from private keys using a one-way cryptographic function. The public key is then hashed to create a wallet address, a publicly visible identifier where others can send cryptocurrency. In addition to storing these keys, the bitcoin core provides an interface for sending and receiving bitcoin transactions. In its function as validation software, Bitcoin Core acts as a complete node, downloading and storing the entire bitcoin blockchain to independently verify all transactions and blocks. It validates transactions according to consensus rules, checks the validity of new blocks through proof-of-work (PoW), and distributes the validated data to other nodes, thus supporting the decentralization of the network. This unified interface allows users to manage their bitcoin resources while contributing to the health and security of the network.

4. Network hashrate:

Bitcoin: 615.32 Eh/s → 611.52 Eh/s

Kaspa: 309.53 Ph/s → 361.06 Ph/s

Ethereum Classic: 173.2 Th/s → 168.3 Th/s

LTC+DOGE: 126.9 Th/s → 125.9 Th/s

Kadena: 1.13 Ph/s → 0.94 Ph/s

Nervos:. CKB 395.6 Ph/s → 365.2 Ph/s

5. Recommended machines:

Antminer KS5 Pro - pre-order for August. Currently the most powerful model for Kaspa mining at a unique price.

IceRiver KS5M - the most powerful model from this company for Kaspa mining. Best price/performance ratio

Antminer S21 Pro - due to the upcoming halving of the BTC, it is advisable to increase the performance, for which the S21 is fully prepared

Antminer L9 - the first units of these models are coming in August.

Antminer L7 - long time one of the best selling miners (mines LTC+DOGE)