everyone and their dog has tried to get into crypto or blockchain technology
somehow and I think it's now safe to say we have finally jumped the shark Norton
the infamous antivirus company is no longer content to waste just a little
bit of your computer's resources several months ago they said you know what
screw it and injected their own cryptocurrency mining software into
Norton 360. we gasped we shouted we
cried and then because it's our job to try these things so that you don't have
to we resigned ourselves to installing
it leaving only one question is it as
good as my segue to today's sponsor thanks to kiwico for sponsoring this
video kiwico ships out crates that contain Hands-On projects for kids to
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the end of this video or at the link down below
right out of the gate we're starting out strong here because unlike basically
every other mining software you've got to pay to play Norton crypto yes that's
what they're actually calling it is only available with a Norton 360 subscription
so I begrudgingly handed over my credit
card to do something that we basically tell everyone not to do install Norton
with that bitter pill swallowed we looked for the opt-in prompt the one
asking if you want to make some money while your PC is idling and we thought
hey seems like a great idea everybody loves free money and clicked it but how
does it work once it's enabled after about a minute
of your GPU idling the Norton crypto Miner will turn on adding your graphics
card's power to an ethereum mining pool where it and every other Norton Miner
goes to work digging for ether when a payout happens it gets split equally
amongst those in the pool depending on how much hash rate they've contributed
now this isn't anything new the first mining pool slush pool came out in 2010
and Consolidated machines to mine Bitcoin in order to give the little guy
an edge over larger operations by banding together over the years more and
more mining pool operations have sprung up the end as long as you have the
computational power you're basically free to join but Norton had some
Innovative new ideas While most pools and exchanges take a small one or two
percent cut of your mining profits to share with the pool operator and many
mining clients also have small Associated fees Norton figured hey we're
already charging you for Norton 360. so let's disrupt the status quo by charging
wait Dean percent
paid of their software compared to basically
any other solution 15 is outrageous and
the worst part is we had to go digging for this information at no point during
the setup process were we informed of this fee and we even tried clicking the
how does this work button but found only a brief FAQ with basic explanations for
things like what is a blockchain and how
does mining work the fee was actually hidden away in a support page for Norton
crypto behind a drop down there's just
no respect for the customer here just a hidden middle finger waiting to gouge
your wallet I feel like you should spend your money on lttstore.com instead look at these
sexy Wan sweatpants it's time to put my feelings aside though not every product
is targeted at enthusiasts like me and you so let's play a little game and say
we're already paying for Norton 360 or it came free with the purchase of our PC
and we would rather trust a big name we
recognize like Norton versus spending a bunch of time doing research I mean it's
a couple of clicks and who cares about 15 if it's all profit anyway right why
not let your GPU mine while you're at work or sleeping
okay so the app itself is actually kind
of okay it shows you the current US dollar to ethereum conversion the card
that you'll be mining on its average hash rate and both your daily and
monthly expected return this all seems great for the most part but it ignores
some Basics like telling you how much wattage your GPU is pulling or more
importantly factoring those power costs into its calculations it also doesn't
bring up a client window showing you what exactly is going on when you join a
pool on your own or usually through a third party there's typically a client
app involved that shows you important stats like among other things hash rate
power consumption job acceptance or network info like latency or dropped
packets and it'll kind of scroll by as your machine does its thing maybe that's
too scary for the target audience or Norton felt it was unnecessary but
whatever the case it's just not here
another missing feature is any sort of Optimizer often when you're first
setting up a new Miner you can run through an optimization feature that
will try a number of power core clock and memory clock settings to get the
best results for your specific Hardware it then saves a config file somewhere
that the miner can read whenever it's booted up and if Norton is doing this in
the background somewhere it isn't very good you know what else probably won't
be very good water cooling gear from wish.com get subscribed so you don't
miss that video now I know that a lot of you consider
nice hash to be controversial so we don't work with them in a sponsored
capacity anymore and we're not promoting their use here but we needed a control
that we know is easy to use so we fired it up on our test bench which we'll have
affiliate links for down below first using nice hash's quick Miner then for
another hour with Norton crypto and here's the thing it's normal for
your return to fluctuate somewhat throughout the day but the results were
staggering with Norton crypto our 2080
super on an open-air test bench hit 65 degrees pulled about 160 watts and saw a
maximum hash rate of 37.2 Mega hashes per second with the quick Miner after
running OC tune we pulled about 100 to 105 Watts hovered around 50 degrees
Celsius and had a higher hash rate
averaging closer to 40 or even 45 Mega
hashes per second now obviously the winner here doesn't
surprise us much do we trust the experts or the newcomers but I did not expect a
performance Gap the size of the Grand Canyon 65 degrees might seem fine
overall but we anticipate a lot of users
to be on laptops with hot components in a more enclosed environment that 65
could easily turn into 80 degrees or higher in the right or wrong environment
and don't forget that power is expensive
in some parts of the world so that 30 or 40 dollars of monthly income could come
with a hefty power bill and you'll also be paying gas fees a small or sometimes
not small fee when you want to exchange your ethereum and the best part is that
if the sucky performance isn't enough to keep you away there are even more
problems with one of the biggest being how hard it is to remove Norton crypto
from the rest of Norton 360. now actually enabling the software is
optional but installing it isn't and to
get rid of it you need to temporarily turn off Norton's tamper protection
feature then delete the encrypt executable now some other users have
also mentioned things just not working from time to time or suddenly empty
wallets both of which are frustrating but at least you can usually find an
answer from Norton in the comments so far it looks like they only have
plans to mine ethereum although they will look at potentially adding other
currencies in the future in case you didn't know ethereum is supposed to go
from proof of work which is what's currently happening when you join the mining pool to proof of stake which
instead uses staked ethereum to validate blockchains and add new blocks it's
meant to be much more energy efficient but to be a Staker you need 32 ether
about a hundred thousand US dollars worth
fear not though staking pools are already a thing so the little guy isn't
completely shut out and the full transition has actually been pushed back
a number of times but once it happens there's no telling what Norton crypto
will do next whatever it is I expect that it'll
reflect their obvious attitude over there which is hey you're already stupid
enough to waste your money on our software you're probably stupid enough
to share a disproportionate amount of your mining profits with us
perhaps the worst part of all of this is the obvious conflict of interest that
exists Norton has a clearly inferior
product it performs worse and costs more
but they can use their position as a trusted malware blocker to allow their
product to work while scaring users away from better competing products
but would they be so Brazen is to do that the answer is yes
so I have no doubt that this endeavor will be insanely profitable for Norton
they get 15 of your ether and you pay for both the hardware and the abnormally
high power consumption I just can't figure out anyone else who
is benefiting here except maybe our sponsor thanks kiwico
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50 off your first month of any crate thanks for watching guys if you enjoyed
this video and you want to get into mining at home maybe check out our Mining Adventure Series where we show
you a much much smarter way to do it