China’s BSN Onboards EY for Ethereum Compliance Tools

]

The Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), the blockchain infrastructure provider backed by the Chinese government, plans to offer blockchain analytics and financial auditing services for Ethereum developers in its network through a new partnership with Big Four auditor Ernst & Young (EY).

The London-based accounting firm will provide BSN’s Ethereum users in China with two compliance products – EY OpsChain and EY Blockchain Analyzer – according to a press statement shared with CoinDesk.

EY OpsChain will integrate procurement and traceability functions into BSN, where its users on Ethereum can run procurement activities using tokens and smart contracts. The EY Blockchain Analyzer will offer blockchain analytics and financial statement audits to the users.

Related: Bitcoin Back Above $40K as Institutions Lead the Way

The new compliance services could further boost China’s efforts in the blockchain race against the U.S. More BSN’s users will be able to build and run blockchain projects in the network without worrying about compliance issues.

“China is one of the largest markets for blockchain technology in the world, and, while EY teams have been operating there for several years, this is the EY organization’s first big step in deploying the EY blockchain platform in a scalable manner,” Paul Brody, global blockchain head at EY, said in the statement.

BSN was co-founded by state-owned telecom giant China Mobile, UnionPay and fintech startup Red Date in April 2020. The project aims to provide cloud services and a standardized development environment for blockchain developers.

BSN is split into two versions: a domestic version, where only permissioned blockchains are available, and a global version, which allows developers around the world to build or run decentralized applications (dapps) on public chains adapted to its development environment. BSN “localized” Ethereum in its domestic version by making it an open permissioned blockchain, which could be controlled by an enterprise.

Story continues

Related: A Bitcoiner Is Now on the Senate Banking Committee

“Initial availability will focus on the planned open permissioned version of Ethereum in China with a future extension to a controlled access version of the Ethereum network across the globe when it becomes available,” the statement said.

The move came after New York-based Ethereum hub ConsenSys teamed up with BSN in January. That partnership aims to bring ConsenSys’ enterprise ledger, Quorum, to China’s nationwide blockchain project.

EY has also joined the Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium (FISCO), a Chinese non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use of blockchain for financial applications. The accounting firm will use FISCO’s platform to make its compliance services available to more users in China and other Asia-Pacific regions, according to the statement.

“By offering both FISCO BCOS and Ethereum, EY professionals will serve clients within China and across the Asia-Pacific region and connect those users to the global blockchain,” Brody said. “I see this as a key step forward in connecting the world’s largest economies through blockchain technology.”

Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple’s XRP – Daily Tech Analysis – February 6th, 2021

]

Ethereum

Ethereum rallied by 7.75% on Friday. Reversing a 4.26% slide from Thursday, Ethereum ended the day at $1,721.06.

It was a mixed start to the day. Ethereum fell to an early morning intraday low $1,589.17 before making a move.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $1,536, Ethereum rallied to a late afternoon intraday high and a new swing hi $1,763.93.

Ethereum broke through the first major resistance level at $1,679 and the second major resistance level at $1,761.

A late pullback saw Ethereum fall back through the second major resistance level to $1,680 levels before wrapping up the day at $1,721 levels.

At the time of writing, Ethereum was up by 0.53% to $1,730.23. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum fall to an early morning low $1,720.01 before rising to a high $1,739.60.

Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

For the day ahead

Ethereum would need to avoid a fall through the pivot level at $1,691 to support a run at the first major resistance level at $1,794.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break out from Friday’s swing high $1,763.93.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and resistance at $1,800 would likely cap any upside.

In the event of an extended crypto rally, Ethereum could test resistance at $1,950 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $1,866.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $1,691 pivot would bring the first major support level at $1,619 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, however, Ethereum should steer clear of sub-$1,600 levels. The second major support level sits at $1,517.

Looking at the Technical Indicators

First Major Support Level: $1,619

Pivot Level: $1,691

First Major Resistance Level: $1,794

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $1,367

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $1,121

62% FIB Retracement Level: $724

Litecoin

Litecoin rallied by 6.82% on Friday. Partially reversing a 7.06% slide from Thursday, Litecoin ended the day at $155.15.

Story continues

It was also a mixed start to the day. Litecoin fell to an early morning intraday low $143.63 before making a move.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $137.96, Litecoin rallied to an early afternoon intraday high $156.99.

Litecoin broke through the 23.6% FIB of $148 and the first major resistance level at $155.79 before hitting reverse.

The reversal saw Litecoin fall back to sub-$150 levels before closing out the day at $155 levels.

While failing to break back through the first major resistance level, the 23.6% FIB limited the downside late on.

At the time of writing, Litecoin was up by 0.29% to $155.60. A mixed start to the day saw Litecoin fall to an early morning low $154.91 before striking a high $156.00.

Litecoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

For the day ahead

Litecoin would need to avoid a fall through the $151.92 pivot level to support a run at the first major resistance level at $160.22.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Litecoin to break out from Friday’s high $156.99.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely cap any upside.

In the event of an extended breakout, Litecoin could test resistance at $170 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $165.28.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $151.92 pivot level would bring the 23.6% FIB of $148 and the first major support level at $146.86 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$140 levels. The second major support level sits at $138.56.

Looking at the Technical Indicators

First Major Support Level: $146.86

Pivot Level: $151.92

First Major Resistance Level: $160.22

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $148

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $125

62% FIB Retracement Level: $87

Ripple’s XRP

Ripple’s XRP rose by 1.49% on Friday. Following a 12.12% jump on Thursday, Ripple’s XRP ended the day at $0.45276.

A bullish start to the day saw Ripple’s XRP rise to an early morning intraday high $0.47230 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.4917, Ripple’s XRP slid to a late morning intraday low $0.42657.

Steering well clear of the 38.2% FIB of $0.4070 and the first major support level at $0.3905, Ripple’s XRP revisited $0.46 levels before easing back.

At the time of writing, Ripple’s XRP was down by 0.01% to $0.45273. A mixed start to the day saw Ripple’s XRP rise to an early morning high $0.45688 before falling to a low $0.44863.

Ripple’s XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

For the day ahead

Ripple’s XRP will need to avoid a fall back through the $0.4505 pivot level to bring the first major resistance level at $0.4745 into play.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ripple’s XRP to break back through to $0.47 levels.

Barring another extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Friday’s high $0.4723 would likely cap any upside.

In the event of an extended rally, Ripple’s XRP could the second major resistance level at $0.4963 and resistance at $0.50.

Failure to avoid a fall back through the $0.4505 pivot would bring the first major resistance level at $0.4288 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, Ripple’s XRP should steer clear of sub-$0.40 levels. The 38.2% FIB of $0.4070 and the second major support level at $0.4048 should limit the downside.

Looking at the Technical Indicators

First Major Support Level: $0.4288

Pivot Level: $0.4505

First Major Resistance Level: $0.4745

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.6274

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $0.5285

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.3687

Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks, Bob

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

How to Optimize Your GPU for Ethereum Mining

]

Ethereum GPU mining is back and — currently, at least — highly profitable. But there’s more to it than just firing up the software and letting it run in the background, especially if you’ve managed to procure one of the best graphics cards . Most of the graphics cards in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy can theoretically earn money right now, depending on how much you pay for power. However, you’ll want to tune your graphics card with the optimal settings, and the brand and card model can have a big impact on overall performance and efficiency.

First, let’s note that we’re not trying to actively encourage anyone to start mining with their GPUs. In fact, based on past personal experience that some of us have running consumer graphics cards 24/7, it is absolutely possible to burn out the fans, VRMs, or other elements on your card. At the same time, we know there’s a lot of interest in the topic, and we wanted to shed some light on the actual power consumption — measured using our Powenetics equipment — that the various GPUs use, as well as the real-world hashing rates we achieved. If you’ve pulled up data using a mining profitability calculator, our figures indicate there’s a lot of variation between power and hash rates. Don’t be surprised if your particular card doesn’t reach the level of performance others are showing.

We’re starting with the latest generation of AMD and Nvidia GPUs, but we’ll flesh things out with additional tests over the coming days (as warranted). There are a few things you should know before getting started. First, Ethereum GPU mining requires more than 4GB of VRAM, so if you’re still hanging on to an RX 570 4GB, it won’t work. Second, there are a lot of different software packages for mining, but we’re taking the easy route and using NiceHash Miner 3.0.5.6 . It includes support for the most popular mining solutions, and it will even benchmark your card to determine which one works best. Except, it’s not always accurate, so we’ve standardized on NBMiner for the Nvidia GPUs and PhoenixMiner on the AMD GPUs. (Our test results are generally within a few percent of each other on either miner, but Phoenix did a bit better on AMD. YMMV.)

We’ve used our standard GPU testbed (listed to the right) for these tests, running a single GPU. This isn’t an optimal miner PC configuration, but it’s likely close to what most of our readers are using. You don’t need a high-end CPU, motherboard, or memory for mining purposes, and many larger installations will use Pentium CPUs and B360 chipset motherboards with more PCIe slots. The most important factors for a mining PC are power and cooling, as they both directly impact overall profitability. If you can keep your GPU and other components cool, they’ll last longer and not break down as often. Meanwhile, power can be very expensive for larger mining setups, and poor efficiency PSUs (power supply units) will generate more heat and use more electricity.

We’ve run these initial benchmarks using NiceHash Miner, including its built-in benchmark that’s required to get started. We tested each graphics card in stock mode, and then we also attempted to tune performance to improve overall efficiency — and ideally keep temperatures and fan speeds at reasonable levels. We let the mining run for several minutes before checking performance, power, etc., as often things will slow down once the graphics card starts to heat up.

It’s also important to note that we’re reporting raw graphics card power for the entire card, but we don’t account for the power consumption of the rest of the PC or power supply inefficiencies. Using an 80 Plus Platinum PSU, we should be running at around 92% efficiency, and wall outlet power consumption is typically about 50-80W higher than what we show in the charts. About 40W of power goes to the CPU, motherboard, and other components, while the remainder depends on how much power the GPU uses, including PSU inefficiencies.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

There’s a lot to discuss with these charts, specifically, what do we mean by “tuned” performance. The answer: it varies, often massively, by GPU.

Let’s talk about the big picture quickly before we get into the details. The fastest GPUs for Ethereum mining right now are the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, by quite a large margin. Our baseline RTX 3080 measurement got 85MH/s, and the baseline 3090 got 105MH/s. Additional tuning improved the 3080 performance to 93MH/s, while we had better luck overall with slightly lower 101MH/s on the 3090 FE.

Meanwhile, the RTX 3060 Ti and 3070 cards all started at close to 52MH/s — even though the 3070 is theoretically faster. That’s because Ethereum hashing depends quite heavily on memory bandwidth and perhaps somewhat on capacity. Overclocking the VRAM on those GPUs got performance up to nearly 60MH/s. AMD’s RX 6000 cards started at close to 60MH/s, and with tuning, we achieved 65MH/s — there wasn’t much difference between the three AMD GPUs, mostly because they’re all using the same 16GB of 16Gbps GDDR6 memory.

You can see the power chart (which is reversed because it would take extra effort to get my charting tool to do low to high), but the overall efficiency chart is more important than raw power use. Again, the RTX 3080 and 3090 place at the top, with the Colorful RTX 3080 Vulcan taking first place overall. But AMD’s RX 6800, 6800 XT, and 6900 XT are right in the mix after tuning.

Finally, we have temperatures. These are GPU core temperatures, but they’re actually not the critical factor on many of the cards. AMD’s cards ran hot at stock settings, but all of the cards benefit greatly from tuning. More importantly, while we couldn’t get GDDR6 temperatures on the 3060 Ti and 3070, we did get VRAM temps on the 3080 and 3090 as well as the AMD cards. At stock, the 3080 and 3090 Founders Edition cards both hit 108-110C on the GDDR6X, at which point the GPU fans would kick up to nearly 100%. The cards settled in at 106 degrees Celsius, with GPU clocks fluctuating a bit. AMD’s RX 6000 cards also peaked at around 96C on their GDDR6 at stock, but tuning dropped VRAM temps all the way down to around 68-70C. This brings us to the main item of interest.

How to Tune Your Graphics Card’s Ethereum Mining Performance

Let’s start by noting that every card model is different — and even cards of the same model may vary in performance characteristics. For the 3080 and 3090 cards with GDDR6X memory, keeping that cool is critical. We’ve seen examples of cards (specifically, the EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 ) that can run at up to 125MH/s, while the memory sits at around 85C. That’s because EVGA appears to have put a lot of effort into cooling the memory. Without altering the cards, the Nvidia 3080/3090 Founders Editions let the memory get very hot while mining, which can dramatically hinder performance and/or reduce the card’s lifespan. Let’s take each card in turn.

GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition: While technically the fastest card for mining that we tested, we really don’t like the idea of running this one 24/7 without hardware modifications or serious tuning. At stock, the fans end up running at 100% to try to keep the GDDR6X below 110C, and that’s not good. We dropped the GPU core to the maximum allowed -502MHz, set the memory clock to -252MHz, and put the power limit at 75%. That gave us a GDDR6X temperature of 102C, which is still higher than we’d like, and performance remained over 100MH/s. Power use also dropped to 258W, which was lower than the RTX 3080 FE, yielding the second-highest overall efficiency of the cards we’ve tested.

GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition: Tuning this card was very similar to the 3090 FE. It doesn’t like stock settings, as the GDDR6X gets very toasty. We again dropped the GPU core the maximum allowed (-502MHz), left the memory clock alone, and put the power limit at 90%. That resulted in the same GDDR6X temperature of 102C as the 3090 FE, and performance was only slightly slower at 93MH/s. It was actually less efficient due to the higher power limit, and further tuning might be possible (e.g., you may have better results at 70-80% power limit). We’d prefer using an RTX 3080 with better GDDR6X cooling, however.

Colorful RTX 3080 Vulcan: This card has better VRAM cooling than Nvidia’s reference card, so the memory didn’t get quite as hot. However, we still found we achieved the best result by dropping the power limit to 90% and then setting the GPU core clocks to the minimum possible value in MSI Afterburner (-502MHz). Then we overclocked the memory by 750MHz base clock, which gave a final speed of 20Gbps (the Ampere cards seem to run at 0.5Gbps below their rated memory speed when mining by default). That yielded average GPU clocks of just 1425MHz (down from 1920MHz), but overall performance increased to 93MH/s, while fan speed, GPU temperature, and power consumption all dropped. (We tried a similar approach on the 3080 FE, but it wasn’t quite as successful due to the memory temperatures. The takeaway being that card design matters more than raw specs.)

GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition: The RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti have the same 8GB of 14Gbps GDDR6, and as we’ll see with the AMD GPUs, that appears to be the limiting factor. We probably could have tuned the GPU clocks better, but these were the first cards we tested, and we’re learning as we go. (We’ll update after some additional testing to see if dropping GPU core clocks would reduce temperatures without lowering the hash rate.) The main thing for improving performance on the 3070 was to boost the GDDR6 clock. We were able to add 1000MHz, giving a 16Gbps effective speed in theory, but the memory actually ran at 15.6Gbps (vs. 13.6Gbps at stock settings). We also increased the power limit and overclocked the GPU by +125MHz, which caused power consumption to increase a bit, but again we might be able to tweak the clocks for better power use without reducing performance.

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition: As with the 3070, we bumped the memory speed up as the main change to improve performance. We went from stock to +750MHz (which we usually have to use for gaming overclocks), giving a maximum speed of 15.5Gbps. However, we noticed after the fact that for GPU compute, there appears to be a 400MHz negative offset, so we were only running the GDDR6 at 15.1Gbps, which might explain the slightly lower performance compared to the 3070. We’ll retest and update our results in the near future.

Asus RTX 3060 Ti TUF Gaming OC: This is mostly here to show that, unlike the 3080 and 3090, third party cards aren’t markedly different in hashing performance with the 3060 Ti GPU. Our tuned settings ended up with higher clocks and more power use than the 3060 Ti Founders Edition, giving slightly higher (by 2.5%) better hashing performance. That suggests perhaps GPU clocks do matter more on these Nvidia cards, though optimal efficiency might still be at lower GPU core speeds.

Radeon RX 6900 XT (Reference): Tuning all three of AMD’s reference RX 6000 cards ended up very similar. The GPU clocks can go very high at stock, but the memory bandwidth appears to be the main bottleneck. Running with GPU clocks of 2.2-2.5GHz just wastes power and generates heat without improving performance. We cranked the power limit to the maximum 115% just to ensure the VRAM wasn’t being held back, then set the memory at +150MHz (the maximum allowed in Radeon Settings), enabled fast RAM timings, and dropped the maximum GPU clock down to 70%. That gave us final clocks of 1747MHz compared to 2289MHz at stock and about 8% higher hash rates overall. More importantly, power consumption took a massive dive, and efficiency improved to one of the better results in our testing. But this actually isn’t AMD’s best overall showing.

Radeon RX 6800 XT (Reference): Same approach as above, but due to differences in the core configuration and … honestly, we’re not sure what the deal is, but we ended up with an optimal maximum GPU frequency setting of only 50% this time, which gave us clocks of 1206MHz instead of 2434MHz — and performance still went up, matching the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800. At the same time, power requirements dropped substantially, from 281W to 186W. Whatever is going on behind the scenes, it appears different AMD Navi 21 GPUs run optimally at different “maximum frequency” settings. Like Nvidia, AMD’s GPUs are largely limited in performance by their memory speed, and without tools to overclock beyond 17.2Gbps, there’s not much to be done.

Radeon RX 6800 (Reference): With only 60 CUs (compared to 72 on the 6800 XT and 80 on the 6900 XT), you might expect the 6800 vanilla card to end up slower. However, the memory proves the deciding factor once again. We set the GPU power limit at the same 115%, which does make a difference, oddly — average power dropped about 15W if we set it to 100%, even though the card was running well below the official 250W TGP. We also maxed out the memory slider at +150MHz (17.2Gbps effective), and this time achieved optimal performance with the GPU set to 75% on maximum clocks. That resulted in a 1747MHz clock compared to 2289MHz at stock, but fan speed was higher this time. That’s because we set the fan to run at 40% at 50C, 60% at 60C, 80% at 70C, and 100% at 80C — and it ended up at 50% speed, which is perhaps more than is required, but we feel it’s better safe than sorry if you’re looking at 24/7 mining.

Comparing Profitability and Performance

We’re just getting started, but after all of the testing we’ve completed so far, one thing we want to point out is that the NiceHash Profitability Calculator is … well, let’s just call it generous. It’s not like NiceHash has a vested interest — like a few percent of all commissions — to get people mining with its software, right? Actually, it’s not all bad, but our results definitely don’t match up on some GPUs. Here’s the quick summary of discrepancies, and again, this is without accounting for PSU inefficiency. We’re using the optimal tuned settings for our own results, and obviously some cards with the same GPU perform better than others. But we’re mostly looking at reference models, and our results don’t quite match up with NiceHash’s figures.

Mining Performance Comparison - Tom’s Hardware vs. NiceHash TH Hashrate NH Hashrate % Difference TH Power NH Power % Difference RTX 3090 FE 100.8 120 -16.00% 258 300 -14.00% RTX 3080 FE 93.2 98 -4.90% 276 240 15.00% RTX 3070 FE 58.8 60.6 -3.00% 204 160 27.50% RTX 3060 Ti FE 56.5 60.5 -6.60% 194 180 7.80% Colorful RTX 3080 93.4 98 -4.70% 221 240 -7.90% Asus RTX 3060 Ti 57.9 60.5 -4.30% 205 180 13.90% RX 6900 XT 64.6 64 0.90% 183.3 220 -16.70% RX 6800 XT 64.5 64.4 0.20% 186.3 190 -1.90% RX 6800 64.6 63.4 1.90% 166.3 175 -5.00%

There are definitely some interesting results. The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is definitely not the best sample of mining performance, and wherever NiceHash’s number comes from, it’s nearly 20% higher than what we got, but also used 16% more power — or if you prefer, our numbers were 16% slower while using 14% less power. On the 3080, the FE ended up just 5% slower while using 15% more power, but the Colorful card was 4% slower while using 8% less power. That’s one of the clear cases where the model of the card used makes a big difference. We were relatively close on the 3060 Ti performance but not so much on power, while our 3070 power use was much higher than NiceHash’s 160W figure. Maybe we can match up better on those two GPUs with additional tuning, but the 3090 and 3080 cards we tested definitely don’t match up with the supposed profitability figures.

Shifting over to AMD, things look a lot closer on performance — we’re within 2% across all three cards and actually came out slightly ahead. Even better, we achieved our results while using less power than what NiceHash shows. The current thinking for a lot of miners is that Nvidia’s RTX 30-series cards are superior to AMD, but that’s really only true if you look at pure hashrates. Factor in power efficiency, and things are much closer. Not like you can buy any of these GPUs right now — unless you’re willing to fork out a lot of money or have some good industry contacts for building your mining farm.

Should You Start Mining?

This brings us to the final point we want to make. Suppose you already have a graphics card and want to mine using your GPU’s spare cycles. In that case, it’s currently worth considering, particularly if you live in an area where power isn’t super expensive. You could theoretically net over $10 per day from the right 3080 or 3090 card, and $7.50 or so per day with one of the Big Navi or lower-tier Ampere GPUs. If you’re looking for the best option for mining, from the perspective of paying off the GPU as quickly as possible, the RTX 3060 Ti would be the card to get — or at least, it would be if you could find it anywhere for less than $900. No, that’s not a typo, and no, you shouldn’t pay $900 for a 3060 Ti!

At the same time, we strongly recommend against ‘redlining’ your card for maximum hash rate at all costs. The fans on consumer cards aren’t designed to spin at 100%, 24/7 without failing. They will burn out if you run them that way. We also have serious concerns with any component temperature that’s consistently at or above 100C (or really, even 90C). But if you do some tuning to get fan speeds down to the 40-50% range, with temperatures below 70C, you can probably run a card that way for quite a while without having it go belly up. Will it be long enough to recover the cost of the card? That’s the big unknown.

Here’s the thing to remember: Cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile. Right now, Ethereum’s price is up 67% just in the past month, and often swings by 5-10% in one day. It’s also up 300% during the past quarter, and 750% since one year ago. This means that, as fast as the price has shot up, it could plummet just as quickly. If you’re looking at $10 per day per GPU in mining profits and thinking it’s only three months to break even on some GPUs, you’re assuming the price and profitability will remain steady. It won’t. There’s a chance it could go up, but the opposite is more likely given the recent jump in pricing. Just ask the GameStop ‘investors’ how that worked out if you think the sky’s the limit.

Again, if you already have a GPU, putting it into service isn’t a terrible idea — it’s your hardware, do with it what you please. Paying extreme prices for mid-range hardware to try and build your own personal mining mecca, on the other hand, is a big risk. You might do fine, you might do great, or you might end up with a lot of extra PC hardware and debt. Plus, what about all the gamers that would love to buy a new GPU right now and they can’t? Somebody, please think of the gamers!

Anyway, there’s more to come. We’ll check out some previous-generation GPUs as well, and RX 5700 series, in particular, seems promising. If you’ve got one of the previous generation Turing or Navi cards already, you might not be able to make quite as much from mining, but even GTX 1070 and RX 570 8GB cards can currently do over $3 per day. Just remember to account for power costs and cash out enough coins to cover that, and then hopefully you won’t get caught holding the bag.

follow us