Mining, Any Easy Way to Do That?

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For last few months, the cryptocurrency was one of the hottest topics worldwide. Even one of my colleagues, who never invests his own money to any stocks nor other investments, just began to ask me

"what the heck is the bitcoin? And is it still possible to mine?"

To be honest, I sometimes asked myself about same question again and again many times.

From < The Economist > "The magic of mining"

Of course, there are many hardcore-miners in worldwide level as can be seen in picture above. Being myself as normal citizen, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do such hardcore-mining for living. Throughout this posting, it is my duty to tell you people about EASY cryptocurrency mining method by using common desktop PCs and Android smartphones that most of people usually have.

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Tell Me about It, What is the Easiest Way?

The definition of 'Mining' is basically about obtaining certain cryptocurrency as a reward(or compensation) of solving mathematical problems of blockchains which are created for validation of coin (or any type of token) transactions. In early days you can even use your own desktop computer to mine well-known cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to mine bitcoins in efficient manner. Compare to the electricity you may consume during the mining, the coin you may obtain reaches almost nothing.

However, here @alex.the.one would like to suggest easier way of mining cryptocurrencies using your own computer. That is a Minergate.

• Preparation?

  You may need only Desktop PC or Android Smartphone, and Network connection (necessarily)

  http://www.minergate.com

  Throughout their website link above, you can download and install the Minergate software in your PC. Prior to proceed, you need to register yourself to Minergate website. (I personally recommend 2 way authentication of minergate) In their website, you can find minergate software based on Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu, and Fedora applicable to both 32 bit and 64 bit.

  Using the single account, you can install the minergate software as many computers as you can use. For my case, I downloaded and installed around 10 computers with permission of my supervisor. Few of the computers have monsterous CPU and GPU specs, but some of them even showed same mining performance as my 2-yr old android smartphone.

• Two Type of Mining - Smart? Manual?

  As soon as you installed the minergate, the only remaining step is the Actual Mining. Minergate provide two different type of mining approaches, such as Smart Mining and Manual Mining in the picture below. I prefer the manual type of mining to the smart mining which automatically detects the best coin based on your hash rate and the value of currency. The reason of choosing manual type is that you can mine a single coin or several coins at a single time with different number of CPU cores you desired. From my experience, all in for mining a certain single coin shows the most efficient mining hash rate.

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Optimization of Your Mining Process

• What is Your Best Option for Mining?

  As explained above, the performance of mining significantly depend on your computer specification, mostly related with CPU and GPU. The Minergate website provides estimated calculator that suggests the best efficient way of mining. To confirm your total hash rate, go to Dashboard of minergate website. In the Dashboard, there are detail information of your mining status with currently mining coin, total number of mining computers including smartphones, total hash rate of your all devices, and total mined coins.

  You need to check out "Total Hash Rate(H/s)"

  

  When you type down the number you have for your Total Hash Rate in Calculator, it automatically estimates best condition of your mining status. In my case, I chose Bytecoin(BCN) to mine, although the calculator suggested Monero(XMR) after all. Because, in case of BCN mining, somehow you can closely experience actual mining since the number of obtained BCN(Appx. 1500 BCN/day) were increased rapidly compared to XMR mining (0.07 XMR/day).

• Feel Still Hunger for Further Mining? Then, Use Your Smartphone to Mine!

  Not only mining by desktop PC, Android based smartphone can mine coin through Apps! Go to Google Playstore, then search with keyword Minergate for android. Unfortunately, iOS does not support minergate yet.

  

  Thanksfully, I've got some of old smartphones in my drawer to be available for 24 hr miner. Although hash rates from old smartphones showed cruel performance, those old smartphones are currently working so hard as I followed old saying "A little makes a lot".

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Personal Comment for "Light" Mining

As can be seen some of pictures above, some of my devices are mining with 1.3KH/s hash rate. From the point of heavy-hard core miner's view, this is nothing but time and electricity wasting. Having this light mining as one of hobbies, obtaining 29 USD / 1 week is considerably okay to do this work continuously. In my perspective, all cryptocurrency values would increase. Then this little amount of mined coin may help me out of one month credit card payment or so. Having this posting, I wish the the thought "mining is difficult" can be transformed into "well, let's try this one".

※ Using this Minergate program, you can probably mine Ethereum(ETH) and Ethereum Classic(ETC) as well as other cryptocoins. FYI, Only CPU mining without GPU would show poorest hash rate performance.