How to make money mining cryptocurrency with your PC
HEIGH-HO, HEIGH HO! IT’S OFF A-BIT-COINING WE GO!
AFTER A LONG period of stagnation, Bitcoin and the endless rabble of alternative currencies have hit a new all-time high in value. While Bitcoin itself needs specialised mining gear, there are loads of alternatives that can be mined using a normal gaming GPU. With the coin values up, it’s profitable enough to mine that the major video-cards from AMD and Nvidia are out of stock and backordered across Australia. But for those who already have a gaming rig, it’s possible to make a little money on the side. It’s not going to pay for your retirement, but might be enough for a new gaming headset, or larger SSD on your next upgrade.
MINING 101
In very simplified terms, cryptocurrency mining is solving hard maths problems with your CPU or GPU, and using the answer to authenticate transactions. Mining is a race between everyone mining, and as a reward, the winner receives some of the currency. The hard maths part means that, unless 51% of the mining is controlled by one entity, fake transactions are not possible to create.
Bitcoin itself is mined with custom hardware, but alternative coins are designed to be mined with normal CPUs and GPUs.
HOW PROFITABLE IS IT?
The cryptocurrency market is currently very volatile, so value changes of 50% in hours or days are common depending on who is mining, or buying and selling. This means that no one currency is always the best, and it constantly changes. At the time of writing, CPU mining is generally very low profit, and not worth the power cost, so we will focus on GPU mining. A single Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon 480 could make around $3–8 in profit (after power costs) per day. It gets quite complex, though, as AMD and Nvidia GPUs each mine some coins better than others. There is no hard and fast rule for a specific card either, as different factory OC levels and even the memory type have an impact.
CHOOSING A COIN
www.whattomine.com is a great place to start, as you can select from a range of the most popular mining GPUs, and get a ranked list of the most profitable coins to mine at the time, as well as information such as the algorithm used. Power cost is in USD, so make sure you convert from your own bill.
The typical mainstream currencies often use the same underlying algorithms for mining, so What To Mine also shows the hash rate (how fast your GPU mines) for the different coins. A higher hash rate does not mean higher profit, as it also depends on how much the coin is selling for.
Two of the most popular coin algorithms are Ethash and Equi hash. But what if your GPU is not shown on What To Mine? Instead, we can check the hash rate for other GPUs via benchmarks of cards currently mining. Head to yiimp.ccminer.org/bench and select the algorithm (such as Equihash) and then the GPU chip (such as GTX 1050) and compare the hash rate other users are getting. You can then input that hash rate into What To Mine under the same algorithm instead of selecting a GPU.
MINING GUIDE
Let’s say you have a GTX 1070 and www.whattomine.com says Zclassic (ZCL) is the most profitable coin. Clicking the name of the coin brings up more information, including a link to the coin website —
zclassic.org in this case. On the website of the coin of your choice, there will be a getting started guide — many include video tutorials to make it easy.
With thousands of people mining one coin, the time between getting a reward can be very long. So instead, miners band together in pool and split all the profits. The pool itself takes a small cut, but each miner gets a share based on how powerful their hardware is, and how long they mined for. This makes it easy to get consistent rewards, even when mining for a short time. Each coin often has many different pools, but these will be listed in the getting started guides. Each pool then has its own guide to installing the software needed to actually mine.
Mining will run your GPU constantly, but 100% inside the normal thermal design limits, so while it will wear the fans a bit more, it’s not inherently bad for the videocard.
CASHING OUT
Your mining rewards will be listed in your mining pool dashboard. Depending on the coin chosen to mine, you can transfer them to a wallet on your actual system, or through an exchange to sell for other currencies, including to AUD. The website of your coin of choice will include a tutorial on how to install and use the wallet, as each one is different. To see what exchanges are supported by your coin, search it on
www.coinmarketcap.com and select the markets tab. Not many exchanges support selling to AUD — a good place to start is www.coinspot.com.au.
Keep in mind you may need to sell your mined coins to Bitcoin or another supported currency before selling to AUD. Another choice with low fees for cashing out to AUD is www.coinjar.com.au.