Everyone has probably heard about bitcoins today. The modern era of electronic currency has embraced millions of people. They were divided into those who remain an ordinary user and those who combine use with a new direction, called "mining". The latter get the opportunity to extract additional profits.
Before you start mining, you should make preliminary calculations and understand whether it will be possible to extract profit from this activity. Mining is a very competitive activity, every day there are more and more people who want to do it, it becomes more and more difficult to get bitcoins.
The question of how to start mining and what programs are better to use is purely individual and requires detailed consideration.
How does Bitcoin solo mining work?
The essence of bitcoin mining is that you need to install a program for mining bitcoins, which willperform many mathematical calculations, the results of which will be combined and blocks will be formed. For each such block, the miner (this is the one who mines cryptocurrency) can count on a reward of 25 crypto coins.
Important: the efficiency of mining and its speed directly depend on the capabilities of the computer of the miner (or "miner"). The software is also important, since the appropriate program is also selected based on the configuration of the computer. At the same time, it is much more convenient to use a proven program with a Russian interface and advanced features.
What needs to be done to mine bitcoins
Here are the basic steps:
- Selection of the video card that is best suited for bitcoin mining. Not all video cards are suitable for mining various cryptocurrencies. Choosing a card for a specific currency requires relevant knowledge.
- Searching for a bitcoin mining program. There are many different programs for mining and choosing the most effective in each individual case is a serious matter.
- Software setup. It is not enough to download and install a program on a computer. It still needs to be properly configured so that cryptocurrency mining does not turn out to be unprofitable.
- Exchange of extracted funds or withdrawal to the wallet.
Getting a cryptocurrency wallet
Before you start mining coins, you need to prepare a place where to store the mined. For these purposes, bitcoin wallets are used. You need to get yourself one. To be able to receive rewards for mining, you needopen (public) address of a bitcoin wallet. It is a sequence of numbers and letters. It's not hard to get it. The main thing to remember is that to transfer mined bitcoins, you should specify the wallet address, and not the private key, which is used as a password to it.
After receiving a crypto-wallet, it is necessary to copy the wallet.dat file to external media, print it and store it carefully in a safe place. If a situation happens when the PC fails and there is no copy of this file, then the owner of the wallet will forever lose access to his money. No one will take them away, they just seem to disappear. Therefore, the wallet.dat file is extremely important.
Choosing a graphics card for mining
Everyone who is seriously involved in mining tries to find the most suitable equipment. Of course, based on financial capabilities and goals. It's no secret that a powerful graphics card costs a lot of money. The issue of choosing hardware for bitcoin mining should be approached very responsibly.
There are several ways to mine cryptocurrency yourself. On processors, on a video card, or using equipment specially manufactured for this purpose - ASICs. Mining on processors has long lost its relevance. Working with ASICs is not suitable for everyone (due to the high cost of equipment). ASICs are not only expensive, but today they are a rather scarce commodity.
As for video cards, the leading position continues to be occupied by the modelRadeon. These cards are inexpensive, fast, very reliable and show excellent performance. With these cards, solo mining is quite effective. It is recommended to purchase devices of the 7850 series and above. If you want to save money and buy a card of a lower class, most likely, there will not be enough performance for full bitcoin mining. Yes, and electricity consumption will be unreasonably high.
GPU requirements for mining
When choosing a video card, you need to consider three criteria:
- power;
- price;
- electricity consumption.
To pre-calculate the approximate amount of possible earnings with the selected bitcoin mining program, you can use special online calculators. The power of the card and its other indicators are entered into separate fields of the service, the price for 1 kilowatt / hour of electricity is indicated.
Choosing a mining pool
After the equipment is selected and the wallet is created, it remains to choose which mining pool to join. A pool is a group of miners who have pooled their computing resources in order to mine more coins. Collective work lies in the fact that by joint efforts everyone has a much better chance to execute a large algorithm and, as a result, get their money. Usually the reward is distributed among the participants in proportion to their contribution to the common cause.
When choosing a pool, consider the following:
- what is the commission for withdrawing bitcoins and formining;
- how profits are distributed;
- how often blocks are found;
- what statistics are provided to users;
- how easy is withdrawal;
- how reliable is the pool.
After registering on the pool, an "employee" is created in the personal account - Worker. It is created for each PC miner and helps track the statistics of personal contribution to the collective work.
Popular bitcoin mining programs
After determining the main points of preparation, you need to download the mining program. There are several best bitcoin mining software.
Soft 50 Miner is software that is rightfully considered the best in the field of crypto mining. The developers have created a functional and convenient shell that makes the program easy to use, it will not be difficult to figure it out even for a novice miner. There is no need to log in every time you start the program. This is done once during registration, and then, thanks to the personal information stored in the program's configuration file, all information about the miner is used in the background.
Like most programs for mining bitcoins on a computer, it is compact. It is enough to write the program file to a memory card and you can use all the features of the software (without installation on a computer and without being tied to one PC). If you wish, you can (by inserting the card into any computer device) run the executable file and continuemining. The program does not require payment, just go to the official website and download it.
There is also the BFGMiner program. This option is suitable for those who value convenience and reliability. With the help of this program, it becomes possible to use the FPGA and use the power of the video card. There are usually no problems with the settings, they are intuitive. In addition to general settings, this software allows you to adjust the frequency and speed of the cooler. This is especially useful when you need to set custom computer settings based on the operating conditions of the entire system.
Client Ufasoft Miner - a very popular software that has a console view. The advantages of this program include the ability to adjust the PC temperature, change information and the availability of several other coin mining options - for example, BitFORCE. In addition, there is the possibility of changing the address of the pool site and others.
CGMiner is a well-known bitcoin mining program. This software can be equally useful for both beginners and experienced miners. But those who already have experience in crypto mining are likely to be able to benefit more from the program. The software allows you to expand the functionality of the video card, as well as get the maximum number of coins from each mega hash. Especially valuable for miners is that the program works without overloads, which significantly increases the efficiency of mining.
A good program is Eobot.exe. This software requires a powerful video card, and to get started, you need to set the maximum possible mode. This will lead to a sharp increasetemperature. After that, the system itself will correct the situation and optimally adjust the work. In addition, it is recommended to install additional software, such as MSI Afterburner. This optimizer allows you to manually adjust the temperature, and this is the key to the smooth operation of the system. If you have the opportunity and desire, you can purchase an additional hash miner, the cost of which is about $50 (2920 rubles).
Regarding the so-called "solo-mining" (in other words, independent mining of coins), these programs will not be so effective. After all, they are designed to work on pools.
Soft Coin Maner is a program that is quite famous in the crypto network. Its difference is that it allows you to mine coins using only a processor. This software allows you to overclock your PC to the required performance. The downside is that programs for mining bitcoins on the processor do not make it possible to make good money.
Mining on mobile phones
Mining is possible not only on personal PCs, but also on smartphones. To do this, there are special programs for mining bitcoins on the phone.
The most famous - Miner MinerGate is a mobile client that is installed on a smartphone and works on both Android and iOS. The pool performs a kind of "parallelization" of the calculations between the participants, as a result of which the maximum efficiency of crypto mining is achieved.
NeoNeonMiner is not a specific pool client, but a mining application. Which pool to mine withthis application is the task of the user himself. Works with Android 2.2 and above.
The oldest smartphone mining app is ARM Miner. This is also not a bitcoin mining program for Android, but a cryptocurrency mining pool client, you can use it to work on any suitable one.
There are many similar programs for mining on phones. However, it should be understood that smartphones are not designed for long-term loads. Due to overheating during mining, a number of difficulties arise that can turn into a device failure. Given this, it becomes obvious that mining will not pay for a broken expensive smartphone, and if successful, the profit from such mining will be microscopic. Programs for mining bitcoins on phones also do not inspire confidence, anti-virus scanners are constantly triggered and annoying ads are tiring.
An alternative way to mine bitcoins
As an additional income or as an alternative, you can use the so-called bitcoin faucets. These are sites that give a small amount of crypto coins for performing certain actions. By visiting such sites systematically, you can collect some money.
Due to the ever-increasing complexity of cryptocurrency mining, many miners are leaving this business, which also reduces the overall level of earnings.
It should also be taken into account that most sites on the topic of mining for investment are not created for beginners, but for more advanced users. You will need to understand programming, know Ubuntu and Linux.
Sometimes it is more profitable not to mine, but to buy bitcoins or acquire power in cloud mining services. Before buying expensive equipment, you should carefully study all the possibilities and choose the most suitable for yourself.
