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.