To mine or not to mine? This is the question that many crypto traders keep posing. With the market down, it is important to understand the basics. And once again decide which coin to choose when mining. Altcoin Buzz offers an insight.
Without a doubt, mining is a controversial undertaking nowadays. Given BTC’s continuous downward spiral, some began to doubt its rationale already in the summer. After all, the activity is energy-consuming, costly and not too rewarding.
And yet the majority of players have not given up. On the contrary, it remains on their to-do list. Thus back in August, Bloomberg noted that “With Bitcoin declining this year, you might expect mining activity to follow. That hasn’t happened.”
Indeed, the appetite for mining is still there. The question is how to satisfy it given the current bear market? What other coins apart from the Holy Trinity of BTC, ETH and XRP are worth considering? And most importantly which coins are currently the easiest to mine and how rewarding are they?
Painting the whole picture
If you are new to the game (or feel like refreshing your memory), then before mining you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:
- How reliable is the coin? Has it been on the market long enough? What is its price?
- If it’s a mining pool, are they offering good terms?
- What kind of CPU/GPU are you using?
- How much electricity will the mining consume?
The list is by no means exhaustive. But it is a good starting point, especially since staying safe in the crypto world is A MUST. Thus always consider the reliability of a coin. If it looks dodgy, better stay away in the first place.
Besides, before you start mining, you need to figure out how. For example, you could buy hardware miners sold by Canaan or Bitmain. But for a regular crypto user, this is hardly an option, as the equipment is expensive and energy-consuming. Mining via a pool is, therefore, a sounder option. However, it is not only important to choose a reliable one, but also such which has bearable fees and offers solid returns. Remember that the world of crypto is rampant with fraud so it of utmost importance to avoid pools like Hashflare. Some of the most reliable on the market include Slush Pool, Ant Pool, BTC.com.
Choosing an optimal CPU/GPU is another notion to keep in mind. There are plenty of options on the market. Some of the most popular ones include AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, Intel Pentium G4400.
Naturally, you also have to consider how much energy is consumed. And assess whether you will able to foot the bill. A Chinese citizen Xu Xinghua, for instance, dreamt so big that he went to jail for stealing electricity.
So what to mine?
If you feel like you are ready to whirl in a hurricane of altcoins, the next big step is to determine which ones are the most facile to mine. Be prepared that the list is not rigid. Different observers point at different coins which they believe are the easiest to mine. Some still believe that BTC and ETH are a good option. Others name a variety of coins like Steem, ETH classic, Peercoin, Namecoin, Novacoin, Feathercoin, Dash.
Still, in this plethora of choices some coins are mentioned more than others. One of them is Litecoin which is often considered BTC’s copycat. Despite its close affiliation with the “mother and father of all crypto,” it has its own unique competitive advantage. Thus, it takes about 2,5 minutes to generate a block compared to BTC’s 10 minutes. Besides, it uses the Scrypt hash function from Tenebrix instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 function. Currently, it rewards miners with 25 new Litecoins per block. Many LTC miners opt for mining the coin through Litecoin Pool, Antpool and LTC.top.
Privacy coins like Monero and ZCash, which secure the identity of its users, also top the list. Monero, which based on a proof-of-work hashing algorithm known as CryptoNight, for example, is easily mined solely with your CPU. The only thing which you have to do is to download Monero mining software and install it. Depending on your goal, you can either mine Monero using only your computer’s processing power. Or you can increase your earnings by purchasing a graphics card that will enhance your computing power. Then you can mine even more Monero.
Likewise, ZCash has been described as “ASIC resistant.” It is easy to mine it with uncostly GPU chips.
Safex is another great option. You can download the Safex 1 Click Mining App which operates on its own blockchain network and a new wallet and mining will be easy and enjoyable. What is more, the mining will be possible on any kind of computer.
Dogecoin wins the day
Electroneum which was originally based on Monero is also a solid option. Electroneum enables its users to mine on their phones through a specialized app. The latter is available on Android and soon on iOS.
Surprising as it might sound but coins like Dogecoin and Vertcoin are also worth considering. The perplexed Shiba Inu coin uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm and offers its wallet on the Dogecoin website. It is facile to mine it with your CPU. But you can also increase your mining power with an AMD/NVIDIA graphics card.
Finally, Vertcoin, the coin which uses a proof-of-work algorithm, is a worthy choice. It is ASIC-resistant and has recently released an easy-to-use one-click miner which is CPU and GPU friendly. However, if you choose to mine it, then make sure to remember that Vertcoin solely supports AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.
The world of the unknown
If none of the above has impressed you and you are looking for something completely unconventional, then here is a different list. It comprises less-known coins which are hardly worth anything on the market. But perhaps these will turn out to be your hidden gems.
1.Belacoin (BELA)
2.Ambercoin (AMBER)
3. Megacoin (MEC)
4. Talkcoin (TAC)
5. Aricoin (ARI)
These coins are appealing because all of them have extremely low difficulty rates and high reward blocks. For example, Belacoin, has a difficulty rate of 31.782, while its reward block reaches 25.0. TAC, which uses the NIST5 algorithm, also offers such a reward.
Concurrently, Aricoin, which uses the Scrypt algorithm (just like BELA and MEC), has a difficulty of 33.357, a block reward of 500 ARI, and a hash rate of 500.0 Mh/s. If you mine Aricoin at this rate, then generating 1 BTC will take you approximately 11.87 days.
Lastly, Ambercoin, which uses the X13 algorithm, has a very low difficulty of 0.306 and a hash rate of 4800.0 Mh/s. It is a very cost-efficient option and will save you a lot of time and hence energy.
With that said, there is one more rule to keep in mind. Do not rush into decisions. There is a myriad of mining options out there but it is highly important that you do your own research. And only then make your final decision.
Here are a ton of different pools you can check out. >>Best Bitcoin Mining Pools<<
when was this text written? the date of the post is 2019, but most of the coins quoted are not even listed anymore in exchanges.
It was written in January 2019. All coins are listed on exchanges, not sure where you get your facts from. With that being said, of course, the coins mentioned in ‘The world of the unknown’ are worth a lot less or as Leisa puts it “hardly worth anything on the market. “. I’d recommend you focus on the bigger coins.
Also said CPU/GPU options then just talked about CPUs even though they’re not even profitable to mine with anymore.
Hi,
Will get the article updated soon. As time goes by, ‘The easiest coins to mine’ change.