Bitcoin Mining at the Slum

The Slum is mining quite nicely this winter. Free cooling!

I run a few mining machines. It's a lot of fun. Sometimes, I use the service Gyft (highly recommended) to buy gift cards with bitcoin. Gyft presents virtual cards stored on my mobile phone for scanning by the cashier. Some of the card balances update instantly after purchase. Super Fun!

Our spokesmodel George showing off our custom bitfury rigs. Those are the three fan-covered boxes on the floor.

That's BRISK baby!

It took a little work to migrate my wallet from Bitcoin-QT to MultiBit. Here's how to do it.  I recommend MultiBit vs Bitcoin QT. MultiBit is better-maintained, and it has not been hacked to steal your bitcoins. Yet.

Here's my cool wallet-watcher Mac OS X script:

Mmmmmmmmmm. Bitcoin beef stew!

Target gift cards are awesome. The Target near us has groceries, even wine. Here is a beef stew I made entirely with bitcoins --- wine, spices, vegetables, meat, everything. Cryptocurrency never tasted sooo good!

Ahhh. Much better. MUCH BETTER.

Due to recent hacking analysis, I can say that Bitcoin-QT can be corrupted to hide transactions and invisibly steal your money. I can also say that MultiBit updates across all platforms, far more frequently. Maybe hackers will attack MultiBit next. Maybe I'm the only person with this problem. Who knows? 

What I do know is that MultiBit reports more accurately, synchronizes more quickly, is updated more often than Bitcoin-QT is updated, and has fantastic extra features. For example, my MultiBit automatically backs up to my Dropbox periodically, so I worry less about loss due to Destruction. MultiBit has multiple currency conversions built in, and charts of wallet balance too.

MultiBit for the win!

Can I haz deh codez?

First of all, remember that you can't lose bitcoins by only providing a bitcoin address. This program only acccepts a bitcoin address, so it is "read-only." In other words, it's theoretically possible for this program to accidentally give you bitcoins, but not for it to take them from you. Without a wallet password or private key, your bitcoins are safe. You have the source code if you want to look at it.

I did not think to pretty up the code yet, nor did I post this to a repository. Feel free to change the phrases to something more PC if you like. That said, it has been tested in the US and EU by some friends, and it runs for days or weeks at a time very stably. This is a shell script (ksh) for Mac OS X. The best way to get the most current version is to type the following at the command line:

 curl -o minty-coin.sh https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/kqaiad1i9718chz/minty-coin.sh?dl=1 chmod +x minty-coin.sh 

Try running the script with -a address, where address is your bitcoin address. It should start printing the balance in BTC and USD. Next, try different values -b balance, with balance lower or higher than your current balance. This will simulate transfers in or out of your address/account.

The script integrates with the free If This Then That (IFTTT) service, via Dropbox, to send email alerts when your balance changes. To activate, create a subdirectory in your Dropbox/Public called Messages. For example, the script defaults to ~/Dropbox/Public/Messages to send IFTTT triggers. In IFTTT, add a custom recipe of the form: If <Dropbox> Then <gmail> . In the gmail action, just set the email body to {{FilenameNoExt}} and the subject to something you can filter later. I use a subject like "Bitcoin balance change --URGENT--".

What's minty-coin.sh good for?

I run several of these to watch over mining payouts (watch the deposit address) and spending wallets. These give me near-instant feedback. I don't even have to look at the screen to see what happened, unless it's really strange. I also keep a window open to see current exchange rates. I try to make purchases when the BTC to USD rate is relatively high.