[tech] How much altcoin can an apple mbp mine when an apple mbp mines altcoin? MinerGate

Truth is, if it is from mid 2009, not a lot! Although saying which my 8 year old macbook does continue to surprise in it's sparkle to munch along through heavy computational tasks - it can still render 30-40GB Adobe files faster than most modern Windows PCs.

Setup: Apple MacBook Pro(5,5) 13inch, Mid 2009 8GB RAM 256MB GPU

The space I'll be setting up my mining rig soon:

Image Source: PEXELS
Just kidding.

But what altcoin should we mine?

Good question and I had no clue myself when starting this experiment a few weeks back. The issue was with MinerGate, which although a great tool for newbies, only releases your mined coins once certain conditions are met or blocks complete. This can be frustrating, hence you'll see I held on and only just stopped ByteCoin because now I have the 40 coins (previous batch was 27, then I had the rest in 'Unconfirmed' for a while).

I've since read up on all the pre-mined ByteCoin going on, so I'm going to cease any activity with it and just hold these 40 ByteCoin like something for the 'collection' and likely never do anything with them. Maybe one day they will be worth 40c as antique collectables? OR will they be worth tens of thousands in years to come? Unlikely. Let's see.

Whether you're an Apple Fanboy or not, the engineering prowess that went into these era laptops is second to none. There is no denying however, much larger rigs are required to mine any altcoins at a profit. Maybe the picture above shouldn't be laughed at - It's getting to that point you need serious horsepower like our favorite TV motoring baffoon Jeremy Clarkson would say GIVE ME POWERRRR!!!!!!

The new money

Image Source: PEXELS

So why am I bothering, with just a minnow laptop to mine in 2017? Well, before plunging into the expense and time consuming setup of a few empty beer crates, crazy cooling systems and household fans and those now hard fought over GPUs, it makes sense to 'dip our toes in the water'. Hopefully as this post shows, and as my numerous old Androids set to work quietly focused on mining Monaro (XMR), I feel I've learnt in the process to almost qualify myself as an ametuer altcoin commentator for now ...

I've earned 40 ByteCoins, worth exactly $0

I'd love to know results from newer Apple models, especially thier top of the range Pro desktops.

However, as you will see there is a quick easy lesson and pointers for us mining and crypto newbies; you can mine on anything you have - and MinerGate is a great tool to consolidate them into a single wallet. You're also getting to play with the Miner, it is a great way to learn about each of the altcoins available to mine.

Who knows, with enough time and patience, we could get lucky like a penny stock ....

Image Source: Memecrunch