This morning when I looked at my mining rig at 5:15 AM before an early business call, I noticed that ZERO hashing was going on. My first troubleshooting steps were of course to restart my rig and test connectivity. I quickly realized there were no orders coming to the rig by going to the NiceHash website after a quick reboot. Some comments on their Facebook site spread rumors of a hack, but just a little while ago they admitted the issue.
I have a few thoughts about the issues involved and some "why" surrounding the accounts, coin handling and transmission methods. I believe they were being too direct and were complacent with payout wallets. That bit is pure conjecture -- only time will tell the true reasoning.
Couple of other thoughts bubbling to the surface:
- All currencies gain momentum through trust. Businesses operate with that same energetic model. Without trust, user acceptance falls aside
- Trading networks exist, and some have limited cross-currency trading. None of them gather efficacy of hardware statistics, but focus on volume and bids. This is a clear weakness to the currency modelling.
- Proper balancing of energy efficiency and security will lead this market segment
- Diversity of coin mining within leasing arrangement platforms will strengthen the entire cryptocurrency sector of finance via two main vectors: robust re-allocation of computing and currency competition in efficiency.
- Mining needs a more user friendly GUI for the average person.
I see all the above items as profitable problem statements, but unfortunately am not a programmer. Would love to hear some thoughts on implementation or platforms that may already exist. So far as I've seen, NiceHash & MinerGate are the only two mainstream GUI based mining systems.