Worth it?

A few months ago, I set up a cryptocurrency miner on my PC. It's nothing special - just an i5 with 8 Gigs of RAM and a single Nvidia Geforce 1050 Ti. I was mostly trying it out of curiosity.

I looked into a few coins to mine. A few different ones were recommended such as Vertcoin, SumoKoin, Verge, Monero, and a couple others I don't remember. I liked the ASIC-resistance and grassroots community of Vertcoin and ended up settling on it. At the time, Vertcoin was trading around $1, so I wasn't going to exactly be making a fortune off mining the coin, but it was really just for the sake of experimentation. I downloaded the CCMiner, watched a few YouTube videos on how to set things up, and off I went (later, I switched to the one-click miner, which is more user-friendly). My PC was managing to run around 14 MegaHashes per second, which apparently, is about where it should be for this set-up (correct me if I'm wrong!).

Fortunately, Vertcoin increased significantly in price to a high around $9 a couple months after I started mining. In hindsight, Verge would have been an awesome pick at the time as it was trading at less than a single cent when I began mining! Monero has done well, but only quadrupled in value (heh), whereas Vertcoin did 10X in the same time span... and I don't want to think about what Verge did in that time (OK, I know, cuz I bought some Verge at 2 cents, but still...).

Anyway, on my modest PC, I was pulling in about 3 Vertcoin a week. This was before everyone started mining it and also before the halving, when block rewards were reduced. So, before the big jump in value, I had mined maybe 15 or so Vertcoin over about a month and a bit. This ended up being worth around $130 only a couple months later (before the price of Vertcoin crashed again, along with most of the market). Right now, those same 15 Vertcoin are worth about $45 in total. A little spending money for coffee or something.

I remember curiously awaiting my electricity bill to see how much of a dent my mining would put into my monthly utilities. Granted, it's a pretty modest computer, so it wasn't really sucking up much power, but I was surprised to find it had virtually no effect on my electricity consumption at all. I live in Canada, and my electrical costs are pretty cheap. I usually pay more just for being connected to the grid (a so-called "distribution charge") than I actually consume in electricity costs for my household on a monthly basis.

Now, after the halving, I'm pulling in less than one Vertcoin a week, but it doesn't seem to be costing me much in electricity, and it is fun opening up the wallet to hear a cheerful bling from my rewards. But it's kinda pointless for so little money.

What I'm starting to think though, is, maybe I should be looking at other currencies that are more profitable, with a more serious rig that could actually make some kind of useful income. I do see Vertcoin having some good potential; being listed on more exchanges, getting a USD to Vertcoin direct exchange (Vertbase), and advancements like lightning and atomic swaps, but I wonder if something like Ethereum, or even Ethereum Classic would be a better bet. I also have contemplated spending a bit of money on a more serious miner - something with maybe 3 or 4 video cards with which I can actually get some decent hash rates.

Have you had any experiences with mining? Please share your thoughts and advice here!

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https://www.mykapuskasingnow.com/14891/provincial-funding-leading-mining-jobs-timmins/

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