Kind soul, save me from bandits!

General
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LOL

I suspect I am semi-literate with computers compared to most people on this forum.

I have followed zcash for over a year and am interested in the technology.

I understood that at launch it was linux only and cpu mining only.

So I went and bought parts for a pc examples are i7 6700k and 64gb of memory, yeah 64gb of memory, what the hell was I thinking, but, I read with cpu mining the more memory the better, big mistake there.

I now know that was a waste of money and I should have gotten a celeron and 8gb of memory and spent the money on AMD GPU, but hey, at least I am trying.

I got my machine running after awhile then was solo-mining for a couple weeks before I learned that was an exercise in futility and was so embarrassed to realize my mining was not connected to any address.

I realized I needed to join a pool and set about learning to figure that out.

I got a “t” address from a well known exchange after signing up and figured out how to configure a miner so I could have my payouts sent to the exchange.

I was quite excited to see my first payout arrive in the “t” address I got from the exchange.

The time and money I spent on this project versus the payout I got from mining was laughable.

So never to be one who quits before the miracle, I switched to windows 7 and bought 2 rx 480 8gb and configured claymore v8 to payout to my exchange generated “t” address.

Now to my question!

Can I send my first mined zec, once I finally get a whole one in a couple of weeks to a “z” address?

Is the “z” address more secure?

Isn’t the “z” address the whole point of this currency?

The pool I am on says they can’t send to a “z” address because of a bug in zcash 1.03, what is up with that?

What the hell is a nano ledger?

Is it the same thing as “cold storage”?

Can’t I just print out the “z” address and lock it in a safe if I can figure out how to send from my “t” address to my “z” address?

I plan to hold onto my zec for the long term and would really like to know how to secure it so these crypto bandits I read about don’t get me.

What is the best way to go about it?

Can cold storage devices aka hardware fail and you lose your zec?

Thank you for anyone who has knowledge and willing to share with me compared to my zero knowledge about this subject, har har har

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Hi, I totally understand where you are coming from as far as hardware, the Equihash whitepaper made it seem like CPU/GPU were going to be much more on par with each other. But to be fair to the Equihash guys, a good CPU can still do about 30Sols/s vs 280 for a high end GPU (which is only a difference of about 9-10x) its alot more lopsided with other algos on different coins.

But I digress, to your questions.
A couple points, you said you got a t_address from an exchange, so I assume that means you are having your pool payouts go directly to the exchange? This is an OK strategy if you want to mine and then sell right away, but it’s not a good one for long term holding. You would be better off creating your own address on your PC and having the coins sent there, that way you have the private keys in your wallet. It’s alot “easier” to social engineer and get a password/login for anything online, such was the case for that investor who kept a large amout of coins on an exchange and got hacked.

As far as security goes, a t_address is not any less “secure” than a z_address but a z_address is anonymous and a t_address is not.
So for long term storage either will work, you just have to secure your local wallet.

Which brings me to your last question, there are many methods to secure your coins, the Ledger Nano S, and Trezor are hardware products (you can google for purchasing and reviews) that store your private keys off of your computer making it less vulnerable to hacking/phishing. There is also the Paper/printing a QRcode method. In all these methods, if you lose your device or your paper codes, you are out of luck your private keys and coins will not be recoverable.

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Hey brother thank you for taking the time to respond to me.

The whole crypto space is a mystery to me and I would consider myself a relatively quick study.

Help me wrap my head around this if you could.

The box I built is kicking out chump change.

So I bought a pair of ASRock H81 PRO BTC R2.0 boards that just showed up.

I have also picked out a open chassis for mining rigs on ebay.

My plan is to slap a celeron G1840 into the boards along with elcheapo 8gb memory.

Throw windows 7 on a extra still sealed laptop hard drive I have hanging around.

Then wholesale 12 rx480 from jet to up my hashrate.

What I am really unclear on is what power supply should I be looking at?

Do you know anything about this 2psu thingamajig and do you use them?

I understand the riser concept, but let me ask you, do you have a recommendation? Is there a 6 pack kit that is seamless for the AROCk board?

Like it has five 1x to 16x and one 16x to 16x?

Should I use powered risers only and not use the extra motherboard molex connector?

Another thing I am curious about is why do a lot of crypto miners run windows 10 instead of 7?

The reason why I am asking is as far as I know there is no way to turn off automatic updates in 10 like you can in 7 and I want these “rigs” as they are called pumping 24/7.

So after I get all this new hardware together, I think I am going to decommission my i7 6700k box and reinstall ubuntu and install zcash and get new addresses to mine to, independent of an exchange.

Then get a ledger blue or a ledger nano s and try and figure out how in the hell to get them to work? Do you plug them in your workstation then transfer from “t” to “z” after you mine a certain amount if zec and put the device back in the safe?

Jeez there sure is a whole lot of information to digest in this scene for lack of a better word.

Any insight would be gratefully appreciated.