Mining

Finding an answer to the question which electronic currency is the most profitable to mine is quite difficult. The fact is that the cryptocurrency market has only been formed in recent years. It is constantly changing, in addition, new types of virtual money regularly appear. All this makes a more or less accurate prediction of further developments in the market extremely unlikely.

Nevertheless, every year it becomes more and more difficult for single miners to make a profit by “mining” the most popular cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoins or ether. Therefore, it makes some sense to pay attention to less popular types of virtual currency.

Mining Prospects
It’s important to understand that as virtual money grows in popularity, it becomes more problematic to make a profit from mining. This is due not only to an increase in the number of participants, but also to the arrival of significant financial resources in this segment of the market. As a result, mining individually is simply becoming unprofitable and unprofitable.

Another potential danger is the fact that some recently emerged cryptocurrencies do not provide for the possibility of mining. For example, Ripple or IOTA are among such virtual currencies, showing a steady growth in recent years.

How much can I earn?
It is almost impossible to give an unambiguous answer to the question about potential earnings from mining. This is explained by the fact that it is determined taking into account a lot of difficult to predict factors, including the current rate of a particular cryptocurrency and the dynamics of its change, the amount of investment in mining, the number of participants in the “mining” process, etc.

One should understand the following: the growth of the overall capitalization of the virtual money market leads to a constantly increasing average payback period of the investment. For example, not so long ago, investments in bitcoin mining were returned within 2-3 months, bringing further profit, and the entry threshold was quite low. Today, in order to start effectively mining the most popular cryptocurrency, a serious amount of money is required, amounting to at least several thousand dollars. In this case, the payback period is 9-12 months, and in some cases even more.

Is it possible to mine without investment?
Nowadays, it is quite difficult to talk about serious mining without investments. However, many companies providing cloud mining services are trying to increase the number of customers through a variety of advertising campaigns. In some cases, users are offered an opportunity to “mine” cryptocurrency for free for a certain period of time.

There are also so-called cryptocurrency cranes, which are advertising sites that offer satoshi, i.e. a small portion of bitcoin, as a reward for visiting them. This way of earning cryptocurrency is hardly a full-fledged mining, nevertheless, the number of such resources increases every year, which shows their demand in the market.

Investment risks
The cryptocurrency market is one of the most unstable. Even bitcoin, the value of which has grown tremendously, has fallen in price many times. There is no guarantee that it will pick up again after another crash, which could happen at any time.

Possible problems and pitfalls
The main potential problems of any cryptocurrency are two factors. First, the unclear legal status, which in addition varies from country to country. In today’s global financial market, this is a serious obstacle to further growth.

Second, the main condition for the popularity of cryptocurrency is trust in it. This criterion is hardly stable and objective. Therefore, any problems that arise can easily bring down even the most promoted cryptocurrency.

Energy Inefficiency
The arrival of major players with serious financial resources to the cryptocurrency mining market has drastically reduced the efficiency of “mining” most types of virtual money. Naturally, the profits made in the process often do not recoup the funds invested, including electricity costs, which constitute the main share of costs, in addition to the purchase of equipment.

The disparity between early and late miners

Every year, the rewards for mining are decreasing. This is due to a very rapid increase in the total computing power of the participants in the process, resulting in a noticeable increase in the amount of resources spent on “mining”, which is torn between electricity consumption and hardware capacity. It makes sense that early mining was much more efficient and profitable than late mining, a trend that continues even now.

What cryptocurrency to choose for mining?

Finding an answer to the question which electronic currency is the most profitable to mine is quite difficult. The fact is that the cryptocurrency market has only been formed in recent years. It is constantly changing, in addition, new types of virtual money regularly appear. All this makes a more or less accurate prediction of further developments in the market extremely unlikely.

Nevertheless, every year it becomes more and more difficult for single miners to make a profit by “mining” the most popular cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoins or ether. Therefore, it makes some sense to pay attention to less popular types of virtual currency.

Mining Prospects
It’s important to understand that as virtual money grows in popularity, it becomes more problematic to make a profit from mining. This is due not only to an increase in the number of participants, but also to the arrival of significant financial resources in this segment of the market. As a result, mining individually is simply becoming unprofitable and unprofitable.

Another potential danger is the fact that some recently emerged cryptocurrencies do not provide for the possibility of mining. For example, Ripple or IOTA are among such virtual currencies, showing a steady growth in recent years.

How much can I earn?
It is almost impossible to give an unambiguous answer to the question about potential earnings from mining. This is explained by the fact that it is determined taking into account a lot of difficult to predict factors, including the current rate of a particular cryptocurrency and the dynamics of its change, the amount of investment in mining, the number of participants in the “mining” process, etc.

One should understand the following: the growth of the overall capitalization of the virtual money market leads to a constantly increasing average payback period of the investment. For example, not so long ago, investments in bitcoin mining were returned within 2-3 months, bringing further profit, and the entry threshold was quite low. Today, in order to start effectively mining the most popular cryptocurrency, a serious amount of money is required, amounting to at least several thousand dollars. In this case, the payback period is 9-12 months, and in some cases even more.

Is it possible to mine without investment?
Nowadays, it is quite difficult to talk about serious mining without investments. However, many companies providing cloud mining services are trying to increase the number of customers through a variety of advertising campaigns. In some cases, users are offered an opportunity to “mine” cryptocurrency for free for a certain period of time.

There are also so-called cryptocurrency cranes, which are advertising sites that offer satoshi, i.e. a small portion of bitcoin, as a reward for visiting them. This way of earning cryptocurrency is hardly a full-fledged mining, nevertheless, the number of such resources increases every year, which shows their demand in the market.

Investment risks
The cryptocurrency market is one of the most unstable. Even bitcoin, the value of which has grown tremendously, has fallen in price many times. There is no guarantee that it will pick up again after another crash, which could happen at any time.

Possible problems and pitfalls
The main potential problems of any cryptocurrency are two factors. First, the unclear legal status, which in addition varies from country to country. In today’s global financial market, this is a serious obstacle to further growth.

Second, the main condition for the popularity of cryptocurrency is trust in it. This criterion is hardly stable and objective. Therefore, any problems that arise can easily bring down even the most promoted cryptocurrency.

Energy Inefficiency
The arrival of major players with serious financial resources to the cryptocurrency mining market has drastically reduced the efficiency of “mining” most types of virtual money. Naturally, the profits made in the process often do not recoup the funds invested, including electricity costs, which constitute the main share of costs, in addition to the purchase of equipment.

The disparity between early and late miners

Every year, the rewards for mining are decreasing. This is due to a very rapid increase in the total computing power of the participants in the process, resulting in a noticeable increase in the amount of resources spent on “mining”, which is torn between electricity consumption and hardware capacity. It makes sense that early mining was much more efficient and profitable than late mining, a trend that continues even now.

Hidden mining
Hidden mining refers to the use of someone else’s computing power to generate cryptocurrencies, primarily bitcoin. This can be, for example, the launch of the corresponding services by an employee on a company-owned computer, or the use of special programs, embedded as viruses on third-party computers.

Recently, there have been frequent reports that some popular websites have also been found to contain elements of software that allow for mining by using the resources of visitors’ computers. Obviously, such activities can hardly be called legal. Nevertheless, given the complexity of the issue, it is far from easy to fight such manifestations.

What is a mining farm?
A mining farm is a number of computers or servers combined into one system. In this case, at different times and for different cryptocurrencies different equipment is used. For example, for bitcoin “mining” some years ago there were mainly video cards used, then they were replaced by specially developed processors (ASIC). However, some cryptocurrencies, such as the second most popular Ethereum, are still the most effective when using high performance graphics cards.

Mining equipment
Simple mining schemes, which were effective a few years ago, included the following equipment: 2-3 video cards, a motherboard, a processor, RAM and permanent memory, and a power supply. Naturally, in order to connect to the system it was required to install the appropriate software, which is freely available. An important resource, which is consumed in the process of mining in large quantities, is electricity.

Programs for mining
Nowadays, many different programs have been developed that can be used for mining cryptocurrencies. The choice of a particular product is determined primarily by the capabilities of the user’s computer. Obviously, for different configurations and computing power, the efficiency of different programs will not be the same.

The easiest way to mine is to use a cloud pool. In this case, you rent or buy the power of a specialized company along with the software installed on it. However, in most cases, the cost of renting or purchasing resources is quite high.

The popularity of bitcoin in recent years does not mean that this cryptocurrency will maintain its leading position forever. On the contrary, many experts predict the emergence of new virtual money or the spin-off of any of the existing cryptocurrencies. An additional argument in favor of this is the fact that any virtual payment system is based primarily on trust on the part of users. Obviously, this is a highly subjective factor, which is currently in favor of bitcoin, but could well turn against it as well.

Ether mining
In recent years, the rate of Ethereum (in Russia it is called ethereum or, even more simply, ether) has been growing quite rapidly, certainly inferior to bitcoin, but being the second most popular cryptocurrency. Special programs are used to mine ether. It is important to understand that this process today is much more efficient than “mining” bitcoins, as it involves a noticeably smaller number of users. The most effective is the use of equipment in the form of productive video cards.

Ripple mining
Ripple (XRP) is quite different from most cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Currently, this virtual currency is popular, on an equal footing with Ethereum. The main feature of Ripple is the impossibility of mining. This is because the developers immediately issued 100 billion units of XRP, keeping about 2/3 of it for themselves, and one third distributed among users. As a result, additional cryptocurrency issuance is not provided, and mining is also not required for the system to function.

Litecoin
The cryptocurrency Litecoin (LTC) was created in 2011 and is a derivative (another name fork) of bitcoin. At the moment, its development is completely independent and has several fundamental differences from the most popular type of virtual money. These include:

Greater efficiency of mining using powerful processors;
The need for a large amount of free memory;
The wide spread of pools, including cloud pools.
LTC is much less popular and in demand than bitcoin. Therefore, mining this cryptocurrency is currently available and quite effective even for individual miners. However, it is much more profitable for the user to become a member of a pool, which significantly increases the profitability of mining.

NEM
The cryptocurrency called XEM was created based on the NEM blockchain technology. It is very popular in the Asian market, especially in Japan. The features of this type of virtual money became the issue of the entire amount of cryptocurrency at once. However, XEM mining is quite possible. It is necessary to generate new blocks needed to conduct transactions, to form appropriate records in databases and to ensure the security of transactions. At the same time, XEM mining is considered one of the most democratic processes, as it does not require large computing power.

Dash
The capitalization of the Dash cryptocurrency, created in 2014, has now exceeded $2 billion. Of course, its popularity today is no match for bitcoin, however, the virtual currency shows steady growth. Almost any computer equipment can be used for mining but the most effective is using ASIC technology and different cloud services.

Iota
The IOTA cryptocurrency, which appeared on the market at the end of 2015, quickly enough became widespread. This is due to the features of this payment system, the main of which are: the absence of commission in carrying out transactions and the speed of their implementation. The operating principle of IOTA does not provide for the possibility of special mining, as in fact the user of the system becomes a miner when carrying out any transaction, because it requires the confirmation of the previous two.

ZCASH
The developers of the cryptocurrency ZCash declare it as the first anonymous virtual monetary unit. This payment system provides a standard possibility of mining, for the implementation of which the appropriate equipment, first of all, a powerful video card, appropriate software and connection to the pool will be required. It is in this case the mining will be the most effective.

Monero
Mining a relatively new cryptocurrency called Monero can nowadays be a very profitable activity even for single users. The fact is that the payment system service does not allow the use of specialized ASIC processors. As a result, even having an ordinary, but rather productive computer, it is possible to mine Monero.

Stratis
The cryptocurrency Stratis (abbreviated as STRAT) appeared in 2016 and is one of the latest such developments, which has already managed to make quite a loud statement in the financial market.

To put it simplistically, but not quite correctly, mining is the mining of cryptocurrencies, most often bitcoins, which is due to their most serious demand and popularity on the market at the moment. Essentially, the owner of a computer, using its resources to operate a virtual payment system, collects and processes information about the cryptocurrency transactions currently taking place. This activity is necessary for the transactions to take place, to ensure a high degree of security, as well as the smooth functioning of the entire peer-to-peer decentralized system. The greater the number of miners and, accordingly, computer resources involved in the process, the more reliable and stable the system is.

Working Principle
The owner of a computer resource receives remuneration for the processing of information in the form of a commission assigned by the owner of the virtual money, or remuneration in the form of a part of the cryptocurrency emitted in the process of mining. This is the basis of one of the main principles of payment systems, involving the use of bitcoins and some other virtual money. The transactions where the highest commission is set are processed and conducted first. Therefore, transactions with zero fees can take a very long time.

Why does bitcoin need miners?
It is important to understand that the common belief that the need for mining and, consequently, miners will disappear after the last bitcoin is released is extremely far from the truth. As already mentioned, no less important functions of mining are processing information, conducting transactions and securing the functioning of the payment system. Obviously, this kind of work will always be required.

Bitcoin mining
Undoubtedly, the most popular cryptocurrency today is bitcoin, created in 2008-2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. That is why, more often than not, the decision is made to mine this particular type of virtual money. However, it should be understood that the flip side of the popularity is a huge amount of resources involved in processing the information. Therefore, today, in order to really make money mining bitcoins requires the presence of extremely large computing power.

Mining schemes
The simplest mining scheme involves the installation of special software on the computer, then the connection of its resources to the payment system.

State-owned mining programs
Nowadays, the interest in various cryptocurrencies began to appear in some countries at the state level. It should be noted that in most developed countries this sector of the economy is given to entrepreneurs. However, in North Korea, the mining of cryptocurrencies is one of the important measures to support the national monetary unit.

In recent months, there has been serious interest in virtual money, especially bitcoin, and its mining process among the leaders of the national government. Some high-ranking officials have repeatedly understood the issue of developing state mining programs. However, it is somewhat premature to talk about actually putting these plans into action.

Mining Pools
An important principle behind the most popular virtual payment system is the random distribution of issued bitcoins. In order to make this process more predictable and uniform, special online services have been created, which are called mining pools. Individual users put the available computing power at their disposal. Eventually, the bitcoins received as issue fees are distributed among pool members based on the pool’s rules. The features of the software allow users to work in a pool much more efficiently than on their own, which has led to the widespread use of this type of mining.

Cloud Pools
Today, in order to effectively engage in mining, you need to have serious computing power. Obviously, to acquire such powerful computers requires considerable financial resources, which are unlikely to be available to a single person. As a result, there is a new type of pool, called a cloud pool. It provides purchase or rent of computing capacities from specialized companies possessing the corresponding equipment.

In this case, all transactions are carried out over the Internet, and the scheme of interaction looks as follows. A specialized company receives funds from a client in the form of profit, necessary for its further development and the purchase of new, more powerful computers; the user is left with the result of mining on the most modern and advanced equipment.