crypto mining is like life
you get out of it what you put into it

Don't you have Google on your Internet?

Brent

It all depends what you want to mine. Are you going to solo mine or join a pool ? What is your cost of electric in your area. A lot of areas it is not worth mining. . Some projects are better suited for CPU over GPU. If you want to mine Bitcoin you need a ASIC miner or your wasting time.

With the price of Graphic Cards and the short supplies of the latest Nivida's and other brands you will pay more then list price.

One final not PC Age or another magazine similar in name had a great article on Crypto Mining back in the Late fall.

Heads Up - Long Post!

I. Quick & Easy Answers

a) What is GPU Mining?
> This is the process of mining coins that are based on an algo designed to be mineable with GPU resources, i.e. Equihash algo like ZCash, Cryptonight like Monero, Scrypt like LiteCoin, etc.

b) What Hardware Can be Used for GPU-Mineable Coins?
> A standard computer with NVIDIA or AMD GPUs, which are running on Windows or Mac OSX or Ubuntu among other Linux distros, can be used to mine these coins; and
> Keep in mind that there are multi-GPU desktop motherboards, as well as multi-socket CPU server boards with multi-PCIe slots where you can place GPUs ...

c) What Software to Use for GPU-Mineable Coins?
> There are lots of mining software programs designed for Windows, Mac OSX, Ubuntu and other Linux distros, such as CCMiner, Minerd, XMR-Stak (for both CPU and GPU), XMR-Stak-NVIDIA and so on;
> Some of these are specifically optimized for GPU-mineable coins, such as CCMiner, XMR--Stak-NVIDIA, XMR-Stak-AMD, etc.; and
> These are also optimized for certain algos, i.e. XMR-Stak is optimized for CPU and GPU-mining Monero and a few other Cryptonight algo-based coins ...

II. Checklist

First, decide on which coins you want to mine - My thinking here is to use the following things to form my decisions:

a) UTILITY
> I want coins whose short term objectives and long term goals I'd want to support, i.e. The goals and real world utility targets of (enter certain type of coin here); and
> I also don't want anything to do with those pump-and-dump coins that are mostly there for day traders and without any real world utility targets in mind ...

b) MINEABILITY ACCESS & CURRENT / FUTURE COMPETITIVENESS
> Of course, I want coins that can be mined using relatively straightforward to acquire hardware components based on my currently available resources;
> I also want coins currently with reasonable mining difficulty levels;
> Plus, it should be relatively straightforward for me to stay on top of my game along the way through my specialized expertise, technical knowledge and relevant resources in terms of optimizing my mining hardware, software, speculative and business development capabilities;
> So, I want coins whose future mining difficulty levels could still be reasonable enough to allow me to re-invest some of my earnings to increase my mining capacity over time while I keep on honing my expertise and technical knowledge;
> I want coins that'd require others to acquire the same specialized expertise, technical knowledge and relevant resources just to keep up with me; and
> That way, I'd likely be several steps ahead most of them at any point, unless I procrastinate ...

c> SPECULATIVE VIABILITY
> I want coins that would most likely increase in value over time as the devs and their partners along with the entire supporter and developer community begin to achieve their common short term objectives and long term goals ...

Second, learn about the various algos that are more receptive to certain types of hardware resources, then pinpoint the current and possible future mining difficulty levels that each coins in your shortlist would most likely gain over time. Here are just a couple of examples:

a) EQUIHASH
> This algo's mineability is designed for casual users and their home / small office hardware resources, i.e. GPU.

b) SHA-256
> ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) machines have already been built for coins based on this algo, most popular of which is BTC;
> These ASIC miners mostly come with reasonable price tags when you manage to purchase it a few days upon manufacturer batch release, though after that, expect to pay 3x to 5x more;
> A lot of commercial groups already have farms with hundreds of these ASIC machines, in which most of their operations are based in countries with cheap electricity; and
> I for one think that mining coins based on this algo will remain highly competitive for a long time, especially because anyone can purchase an ASIC machine and won't have problems setting it up or optimizing it or doing anything highly technical since these are designed as out-of-the-box mining solutions - By "anyone", I'm more worried of commercial groups buying hundreds or thousands of these machines, especially since manufacturers, even new ones, can design much cheaper machines any time soon ...

Third, use what you learned at this point to pinpoint the coins you want to mine with the hardware resources you can acquire now and in the future (for re-investment purposes); and

Fourth, create an initial investment development plan, as well as integrate a set of sustainability and scalability or expansion re-investment goals and plans to achieve your targets, of course with contingencies ...

P.S. As a hobby because I'm a bonafide geek, I decided to build and operate a mining grid network that now produces 80 kilohashes per second for CPU and GPU-mineable coins - Definitely not BTC nor ETH, though I sometimes rent out some of my hash power for 10 hours or so every 2 to 3 days of the month via MiningRigRentals to get paid BTC (only when I need BTC);
> This is a combination of CPU and GPU mining machines that I assembled and operate at my home and offices, as well as just several dedicated servers with powerful CPU and GPU resources; and
> At current market prices, I'm netting a mid 4-digit figure payout each month - Not bad for a hobby ...

A pick, shovel and Bible should do the trick!

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But they do get to dig their own graves first!

I've heard that mining is no longer viable since a lot of people are doing it now and there are giant mining pools. As far as I know, the more people mine the more complicated the algorithms are. Thus making it harder to obtain a bitcoin.

it's really worth to start. Radeon rx560 cards cost about $200 and can produce about 14mh/s. If electricity cost $0.1kwh, you getting $25 per month. So after about 8-9 months you will break even. If you buy 10 such cards an build a rig, it can produce 140mh/s ($2000 per month).

Radeon rx570/580 producing about 30mh/s, but these cards cost more.

So all in all its really worth to start and it's really nice way to earn money.

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you know it is a risky, we have bitmain minners also gpu minners .... well for example card gtx 1080 now mine only 4 usd .... bitmain minner L3+ only 10 usd per day ....

i dont think its possible to find rx580 for $240, mate if you find for $240, I could buy hundreds of these for $300 from you

Are there some new ways to mine cryptocurrencies? Maybe there are some more efficient and cheap solutions?

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