Probably everyone has heard about bitcoins today. The modern era of electronic currency has embraced millions of people. They are divided into those who remain a regular user and those who combine use with a new direction, called "mining." The latter get the opportunity to extract additional profit.
Before embarking on mining, you should make preliminary calculations and understand whether it will turn out to be profitable from this lesson. Mining is a very competitive activity, every day there are more and more people wanting to do it, it is becoming more and more difficult to mine bitcoins.
The question of how to start mining and which programs are better to use is purely individual and requires detailed consideration.
How does Bitcoin mining solo work?
The essence of bitcoin mining is that you need to install a program for mining bitcoins, which will perform 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 is engaged in cryptocurrency mining) can count on a reward of 25 cryptocurrencies.
Important: on the capabilities of the miner’s computer (or “miner”), production efficiency and its speed directly depend. The software is also important, because the appropriate program is 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 functions.
What you need to do to mine bitcoins
Here are the basic steps:
- Selection of the video card that is best suited for mining bitcoins. Not all video cards are suitable for mining various cryptocurrencies. Choosing a card for a particular currency requires appropriate knowledge.
- Search for a program for mining bitcoins. There are many different programs for mining and choosing the most effective in each individual case is a serious question.
- Software setup. It is not enough to download and install a program on a computer. It still needs to be correctly set up so that cryptocurrency mining does not turn out to be unprofitable.
- Exchange of funds or withdrawal to the wallet.
Getting a cryptocurrency wallet
Before starting the extraction of coins, you need to prepare a place where to store the mined. Bitcoin wallets serve for these purposes. You need to make yourself like that. To be able to receive a reward for mining, you need an open (public) address of the Bitcoin wallet. This is a sequence of numbers and letters. Get it is not difficult. The main thing to remember is that to transfer the mined bitcoins, it is the wallet address that should be indicated, and not the private key, which is used as the password to it.
After receiving the crypto-wallet, it is necessary to copy the wallet.dat file to an external medium, print it and carefully store it in a safe place. If a situation occurs when a PC fails and there is no copy of this file, the wallet owner will permanently lose access to his money. Nobody will take them, they just seem to disappear. Therefore, the wallet.dat file is extremely important.
Choosing a graphics card for mining
Everyone who is seriously engaged in mining, tries to choose the most suitable equipment. Of course, based on financial capabilities and goals set for ourselves. It's no secret that a powerful video card costs a lot of money. The issue of choosing “iron” for mining bitcoins should be approached extremely responsibly.
There are several ways to get cryptocurrency yourself. On processors, on a video card or using equipment specially manufactured for this purpose - ASICs. Processor mining has long lost its relevance. Work with ASICs is not suitable for everyone (due to the high cost of equipment). ASICs are not only expensive, today it is a rather scarce commodity.
As regards video cards, the Radeon model continues to occupy a leading position. These cards are inexpensive, have high speed, are very reliable and show excellent performance. With these cards, solo mining is quite effective. It is recommended that devices of the 7850 series and higher be purchased. If you want to save money and buy a card with a lower class, most likely, there will not be enough productivity for the full production of bitcoins. And the energy consumption will be unreasonably high.
Mining graphics card requirements
When choosing a video card, three criteria must be considered:
- power;
- price;
- electricity consumption.
To pre-calculate the approximate amount of possible earnings with the selected program for mining bitcoins, you can use special online calculators. Card power and 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 combined their computing resources with the goal of extracting more coins. The collective work consists in the fact that by joint efforts each one has a much greater chance of fulfilling a large-sized algorithm and eventually getting their money. Typically, remuneration is distributed among 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 for mining;
- how profit is distributed;
- how often are the blocks;
- what statistics are provided to users;
- how easy is the withdrawal of funds;
- how reliable is the pool.
After registering on the pool in your account, an "employee" is created - Worker. It is created for each PC miner and helps to track statistics on personal contribution to teamwork.
Popular programs for mining bitcoins
After determining the main points of preparation, you need to download the program for mining. There are some of the best bitcoin mining software.
Soft 50 Miner is software that is considered to be the best in the field of crypto mining. The developers have created a functional and convenient shell, which makes the program convenient for use, to understand it will not be difficult 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 stored personal information in the configuration file of the program, 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 the memory card and you can use all the features of the software (without installing it 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 continue mining. The program does not require payment, just go to the official website and download it.
There is also a BFGMiner program. This option is suitable for those who value convenience and reliability. With this program, it becomes possible to use FPGA and use the power of a video card. There are usually no problems with the settings, they are intuitive. In addition to general settings, this software allows you to configure the frequency and speed of the cooler. This is especially useful when you need to set special computer parameters based on the operating conditions of the entire system.
The Ufasoft Miner client is a very popular software that has a console look. Among the advantages of this program, one can single out the possibility of adjusting the temperature of the PC, changing 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.
The CGMiner program is a well-known Bitcoin mining program. This software can be equally useful for both beginners and experienced miners. But already having experience in crypto mining, they are likely to be able to extract more benefit 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-cache. It is especially valuable for miners 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 of the possible modes. This will lead to a sharp increase in temperature. After that, the system itself will correct the situation and optimally configure the work. In addition, it is recommended to install additional software, for example, 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, self-mining of coins), these programs will not be so effective. They are still 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 the processor. This software allows you to overclock the PC to the required performance. The downside is that programs for mining bitcoins on the processor do not provide the opportunity to make good money.
Mobile Mining
Mining can be done not only on personal PCs, but also on smartphones. For this, there are special programs for mining bitcoins on the phone.
The most famous - Miner MinerGate - is a mobile client that installs 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 client of a specific pool, but a mining application. On which pool to engage in mining using this application is the task of the user. Works with Android 2.2 and higher.
The oldest smartphone mining app is ARM Miner. This is also not a program for mining bitcoins for Android, but a cryptocurrency mining pool client, with its help you can work on any suitable one.
There are a lot of 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 are also not credible, anti-virus scanners are constantly triggered and annoying ads are tiring.
An alternative way to mine bitcoins
As an additional income or as a kind of alternative, you can use the so-called bitcoin faucets. These are sites that give a small number of crypto coins for performing certain actions. By visiting such sites systematically, you can collect a certain amount.
Due to the ever-increasing complexity of cryptocurrency mining, many miners are leaving this business, which also reduces the overall level of earnings.
It is necessary to take into account the fact that most sites on the topic of mining for investment were created not for beginners, but for more advanced users. You will need to understand programming, know Ubuntu and Linux.
Sometimes it’s more profitable not to mine, but to buy bitcoins or to acquire power in cloud mining services. Before buying expensive equipment, you should carefully study all the options and choose the most suitable for yourself.