How to Turn Your Azure Free Credits into NIMIQ (NIM)

The rate can fluctuate between 1:1 and 1:4, i.e. in the best case you'll get almost 1$ worth of cryptocurrency for every 1$ spent on azure (depending on the current exchange-rates). With an MSDN Enterprise subscription you can mine cryptocurrency worth up to 147$ every month! This is possible because the newly introduced Azure-batch-service is dirt cheap!

Short summary:
With the instructions provided here you will be mining NIMIQ (NIM). NIMIQ is the hot new browser-based cryptocurrency. If you are interested in Monero (XMR) or a different Cryptonight-based cryptocurrency, check out my other guide. Even if you are interested only in NIMIQ you could still have a look at the guide because there's a video of the setup-procedure available there.

Setup Azure with Free Credit

Do you have a MSDN-subscription from your day job? Great! You must have already noticed that Microsoft keeps sending you emails asking you to open an azure-account with up to 150$ monthly credit. Follow the instructions in the mail to claim your free credits. Note that by default you don't even have to enter your credit-card-number, so you can be sure that your mining is running purely on your monthly free credit.

Even if your company pays for the MSDN-subscription, the associated azure-account is your personal account and completely separated from the company. Your boss has no way of accessing it. Microsoft encourages people to use the free credits for testing and learning, and this is what you'll do: learning about using the azure-cloud and the blockchain-technology in a very practical way :-)

If you don't have a MSDN-subscription, you can at least use the one-time credit of 200$ you get just for opening the Azure-account. Depending on the current altcoin-exchange-rate and whether azure adds tax to you bill or not it might even be profitable to keep running your azure-account on your credit-card - but note that you'll be operating on a razor-thin margin!

Get a NIM-Wallet

Create your NIM-wallet at the official NIMIQ-site: safe.nimiq.com. Do it the right way and store your secret words in a password-safe like keepass. Trust me, you'll regret it otherwise.

Cryptocurrencies are notorious for being targets of spectacular hacks and scams. Don't enter your login-details on a phishing site (check your browser's address bar to make sure that you are really on safe.nimiq.com before entering your password!). Stay vigilant and educate yourself about proper computer-security.

Setup the Azure Batch-Service

After signing up for your azure-account you can click on the following link to create a new batch-account: https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.BatchAccount I recommend using Chrome to access the azure-portal. Fill the form with the following information:

Once you get the notification that your batch-account has been created (it will take a few seconds), go to your batch-account (link to your batch-accounts: https://portal.azure.com/#blade/HubsExtension/Resources/resourceType/Microsoft.Batch%2FbatchAccounts) and create a new pool: select 'Pools' and then click 'Add'. Fill the form with the following information:

Whenever the computers in your azure-pool get started up, they will execute a custom script which will download the mining-executable and start mining. To generate your personal startup-script you have to enter your NIM-wallet in the field below (it should look similar to NQ61 KHGQ A4N6 NTAA 192U SBRR PNX5 L1S1 E8FQ):

In the next field you have to enter the Address of the pool to use, it should look similar to eu.sushipool.com:443. If you don't know which pool to use, just leave the field blank: the script will then mine at sushipool.


Press the button above to generate your personalized script in the field below:


Notes:

Once the azure-pool is created, go to 'Start task'. Fill the form with the following information:

The last step is to tell Azure how many mining-nodes it should start for you. This depends on the amount of free credits available in your azure-account. Basically you want to use up as much of your monthly credit as possible without actually consuming all of your credit (otherwise you'll have to repeat the setup again in the next month because azure will delete your pools if your free credits are exhausted).


Professional Platform Enterprise
Number of low priority nodes (F4s_v2, 4 Cores, 8GB) 1
3 5
Cost of nodes for 31 days ~30$ ~88$ ~147$
Monthly free credit 50$ 100$ 150$

Now go back to 'Overview' and click on 'Scale'. Enter the number from the table above in the field 'Low priority nodes' (e.g. 1 if you have MSDN Professional), and click on 'Save'. Congratulations! The azure cloud is now mining Monero for you!

Watching your Mining-Progress

Unless you have entered a different address in the field the script will use sushipool as a mining-pool (don't mix up the terms 'mining-pool' and 'azure-pool' - they describe two totally different concepts). To see your mining-status, go to sushipool.com and enter your wallet in the field at the top of the site.

Important Notes:


Do you need help following the instructions? You can contact me at