Today, we’re going to do something a little more practical. We’re going to mine for Bitcoins, Money Trade Coin, and other digital currency. This is where the real fun begins.
You’ll need a few basic facts before you can start mining, so let’s run through that first.
As we mentioned in our previous article, in order to mine for the cryptocurrency, you’ll need to devote computational power which goes towards calculating the value of the next block on the blockchain. At one point in time, you could do it with any standard computer. However, as time passes and more blocks are discovered, more computation power is required for the processing of additional blocks. That’s why most miners today use specialized hardware.
That doesn’t mean you can’t get away with using your own system. Technically, you can, but it’ll take a lot longer. You can also choose to mine cryptocurrencies that aren’t quite as popular as bitcoins, as they’ll mine quicker, at least until (if and when) they reach the value of bitcoins.
The Equipment You’ll Need
Most miners today run their mining set-ups on a network with a series of graphics/video cards. Why these particular cards? It’s because they have the most sophisticated computational ability. They are designed with heavy computational processing in mind. Unfortunately, traditional CPUs and the graphics cards that come with a run-of-the-mill laptop don’t have the processing power of these graphics cards.
Today in the mining world, you’ll need specific hardware called ASIC chips to mine for coins. These have hundreds of times the processing power of a typical laptop. The cost for these can range from a few hundred dollars for entry-level hardware to a few thousand dollars for a top of the line equipment. The good thing here is that you can quickly recover your investment after a few months to a year’s worth of mining, depending on your mining set-up.
Bitcoin Cloud Mining Services
Fortunately, you’ve got another option, if you’d rather not buy hardware. You could opt for cloud mining services, which will offer you the ability to mine over the cloud for a particular period at a particular performance rate. You won’t need the hardware, though you should exert some caution as you do not have control of the hardware itself. Pick a trustworthy vendor.
The Process of Mining
Once you have your hardware ready, you’ll have to download some free software to get started. If you’re technically inclined, you can try software that requires some basic programming skills. If you’d rather try something simpler with a GUI, you’ve got EasyMiner, which runs on Windows, Android, and Linux.
You’ll also need to set up a bitcoin wallet. This is where all of your earned bitcoins go. It’s sort of like a bank account. You’ll get your own unique address, which is how you are identified on the network. You should also take steps to keep it secure by using two-factor authentication.
You can choose to mine by yourself or join a pool of miners. The former will take a long time to mine coins, but by joining a group of other miners, you greatly reduce the time taken and split the collective earnings among the group.
This is the basic gist of how to mine. There’s plenty of detail in each of the decisions you make - the choice of hardware, cloud mining, the choice of bitcoins wallets and software. But you should now have a fundamental understanding of mining requirements. You’ll hear more about how to perfect each of these steps in upcoming posts at Money Trade Coin.