Wellington-based Bitharp, a manufacturer of crypto-currency mining rigs, has introduced two new products that it claims allow casual enthusiasts and small-time miners to make their fortune out of crypto-currency mining.
It launched its Lyre Miner and Harp Miner products early in September and claims they have been used by many people without any technical background to earn healthy returns on their investment. Bitharp claims both can return the investment in purchasing and operating the products within one month.
According to Bitharp, crypto-currency mining has previously required a level of technical skill that puts it beyond the reach of most people, but its Lyre Miner and Harp Miner products “are pre-configured and just need to be plugged-in for an uncomplicated crypto mining experience.”
Lyre Miner consumes 600 Watts and Harp Miner 2400 Watts. According to Bitharp, both are suitable for use at home because they generate low amounts of heat and noise and unlike hundreds of other products in the market do not need a huge space.
Both products are capable of mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Dash, and Bitharp quotes the following hash rates for the products, in terrahashes and gigahashes per second.
Lyre Miner: 335 TH/s for Bitcoin, 55 GH/s for Litecoin, 14 GH/s for Ethereum, and 9 TH/s for Dash. Harp Miner: 2000 TH/s for Bitcoin 300 GH/s for Litecoin, 75 GH/s for Ethereum, and 50 TH/s for Dash.
In crypto-currencies transactions are combined into a block and then the block is ‘mined’ by creating a 256 bit hash. To be valid the hash has to have sufficient leading zeros, an enormously difficult task requiring significant compute power. Miners are rewarded with the crypto-currency when they create a valid hash.
However has more miners deploy increasing computing power to mining the difficulty increases. According to an article on Coindesk, the Bitcoin network is designed to adjust its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks (roughly 14 days) based on the participating mining power in each cycle, in order to ensure the block-producing time at the next period stays at about every 10 minutes.
Website btc.com has tracked the bitcoin hash rate for more than a decade. In 2009 it was 4.21 megahashes per second. On 27 September it stood at 91.27 exahashes per second, that’s 91.27 x 1018.