Chronicles of a Crypto Miner.2

Do you want to generate phat stacks of your very own crypto, and maybe even become a bitcoin millionaire in 2018?

Who doesn't? Don't know where to start? This post is just for you- to assist the beginning miner of 2018 to get a solid foothold in this space.

Now, I must tell you that this is a highly competitive arena. Mining and holding will be difficult at times. Sometimes you might break even, or even lose money when compared to fiat. Do not attempt to enter mining or cryptocurrencies in general unless you view it as highly speculative and that it's gambled money that wouldn't affect your life if you lost it. It's the only way to be fully be able to seperate your feelings from the crypto, and this is vital to catching the best mining, trading, buying and selling opportunities. But, I digress.

Most begin their portfolios by mining a smaller and easier to mine crypto and then trade it. In case you don't know, mining is basically a race to see who can solve complex mathematical equations, or blocks, the fastest. Whomever solves it gets the block reward. A miners power is rated by hashing ability. The more hash you have, the more attempts at solving the blocks, and the more crypto you ultimately generate.

When it began, you could use the CPU of your home desktop computer for significant returns, and processors with more cores and greater speed resulted in more profitability. After that, the system became dominated by multi-graphics card systems, then field-programmable gate arrays (or FPGAs), and finally application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), in the attempt to find more hashes with less electrical power usage. Remember Butterfly Labs?

Hang in there

Since the escalation of the network happened quickly and the difficulty to mine these blocks increased, it became increasingly difficult for new investors or miners to enter the space. The adjustable difficulty was created intentionally in the design of bitcoin to prevent inflation. To get around that problem, individuals most often work in mining pools. This collection of hashing resources spreads out the earnings equally amongst the participants equivalent to their individual hashing power- their ability to solve blocks.

Have I bored you to death yet? I know, it's not all Lambos yet, but trust me, if you stick with me, it will be worth your while.

So, that leaves us with acquiring as much hash as we can acquire, and then applying said hash to the right crypto to achieve maximium ROI. This issue is highly debateable and experiences can differ wildly, but where I am in the US, there is cheap hydro-electricity and that definately helps play a role in my profitability. You can calculate on WhatToMine.com your mining setup to estimate returns.

What crypto do I suggest mining to start? Mining Monero and all of the major forks of it (Electroneum, Sumokoin and Karbowanec, even Bytecoin) are all great, but I think Sumokoin may be best to mine overall right now for many reasons- I'll get into that in another post. And, the best equipment to do this with is, again IMHO, is a graphics card called the Radeon RX Vega, either the 56 or 64. They might be had, but good luck finding one. I'm looking to buy another one so hit me up if you want to let one go..? The best advice I can give you is to use NowInStock.net and buy one as soon as they come in because you'll likely miss out if you don't. Until then, use whatever graphics card(s) you have available to you. Search forums to find others with your card mining the same crypto so you can mirror their settings in an attempt to find your own equipments' sweet-spot.

For pools, the best I've found thus far is called Spacepools, and they sport a Sumokoin (https://sumo.spacepools.org) and a Electronem (https://etn.spacepools.org) pool that I frequent for their high hashrate and low fees. They have an excellent tab with all the configuration info that you need to get started.

What mining software should you use? AMD STAK (https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-amd/releases), either the GPU or CPU editions finely tuned, accordingly using soft tables or by editing the registry once you got your settings dialed. I haven't had as much luck with the STAK all-in-one miner that supports NVIDIA cards as well, but again all results vary greatly and I don't run an NVIDIA in my mining rig so what may work amazing for me might suck for someone else. Usually though, you can get a good idea on what to expect just by letting the miner run for 24 hours or so and gauging those results. Make sure you're profiting, and then hold onto those coins for dear life (HODL).

Hopefully this post has inspired you to start mining, and if so, then sincerely welcome to the mining world. Spreading these currencies around is the only way to acieve the vision of their creators. Remember to pay it forward when you made it. Until next time... See you deep in the mines...

-klymacks

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