How to mine bitcoins on your home computer - all the tricks and useful tips

Nadezhda Zakharova 11/28/2020

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Let's look at how to mine bitcoins on your home computer and whether it is possible to do it.

All the advantages and disadvantages, as well as more profitable alternatives for mining coins.

Contents:

• How to start mining on your home PC
• How much can you earn from home mining?
• Is it profitable to mine on a home PC?
• Types of mining
• Cryptocurrency mining programs
• Is it worth mining on a laptop?
• What is the difference between mining on a PC and a farm - which is more profitable?
• conclusions

Mining (from Mining - mining) is the only way to receive crypto money. Its essence lies in the fact that a computer or network of computers performs mathematical calculations. The result of the calculations is the discovery of new blocks of the cryptocurrency network chain (blockchain). For each block found, a reward in the form of coins is paid.

If you are still a beginner in the field of crypto, but want to start mining bitcoins and making money from it, you need to study the current realities of this activity. The complexity of the calculations does not allow us to talk about adequate profitability when working with low-performance equipment, for example, a home PC.

The concept of home mining was popular in the early 2010s.

Today, stationary or cloud-based Bitcoin farms are being created that use dozens or even hundreds of video cards simultaneously. However, this will not stop you from starting coin mining on your PC. You should immediately prepare for the fact that your earnings will be very small, but with constant mining it can amount to several hundred dollars a year (subject to the active growth of the exchange rate of Bitcoin).

How to start mining on your home PC

If you are one of those who have heard a huge number of times about cryptocurrency mining, but did not dare to create your own mining system, first you need to decide how you will work and what currency will be the main one.

We recommend performing the steps in this order:

• Select one of the cryptocurrencies . Further in the article we will consider mining Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, whose capitalization is more than $171 billion;
• Open the wallet for the appropriate currency . As a rule, the official website of the creator of crypto coins has all the information for registering a wallet;
• Select which service will be used for mining . This stage should be carefully thought through, since with the increase in demand for cryptocurrency, the number of fraudulent services that use the resource of your PC for mining has also increased, but the earned funds are not sent to your wallet. However, there are a lot of reliable and proven platforms for mining Bitcoins. It is important to choose a pool with maximum performance;
• Download and install the application . After registering in the pool, you will be asked to download the desktop program for mining. Each service has its own program. Typically, there are always basic computer requirements to consider;
• Start mining and earn Bitcoins. When you reach the minimum withdrawal amount (each service has its own threshold), you can withdraw coins by sending them to a pre-created wallet.

It should be remembered that without good hardware characteristics of the processor and video card, mining will be impossible or the number of coins will be minimal (if any). If you have a good enough home PC, you can try to start mining.

Services that provide users with the opportunity to mine from only one computer, at the software level, combine the power connected to the network into a pool - a group of devices.

This unification is necessary so that at the mathematical calculation stage you do not compete with powerful stationary or cloud farms.

If the device pool has completed a successful calculation and a reward has been obtained, it is divided among all group members according to capacity.

Less powerful PCs will receive less money. In any case, participating in a pool is practically the only way to make money.

If you don’t understand much about the principle of mining coins and don’t want to deal with a lot of concepts, work with automatic miners that you can simply run in the background.

Then the program will do everything for you. The only thing is that you definitely need to create your Bitcoin wallet in advance and indicate its address in the application.

List of reliable applications for automatic cryptocurrency mining on your home computer:

Kryptex - here, after each successful calculation of coins, users have two options - send the amount to their crypto wallet or exchange the mined money at the current rate and then transfer it to their electronic money account (WebMoney, Qiwi, Yandex, and so on).

Fig. 3 – main window of the Kryptex application

Nice Hash Miner is a mining utility with a very simple and intuitive interface. Users have the opportunity to manage a connected wallet and rent the computing power of sellers to mine coins.

Fig.4 – main window of the Nine Hash Miner application

Please note that it is difficult to give an exact figure for earnings, because it depends on how often you run the program and on the technical parameters of the processor/video card.

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Cryptocurrency cost

The cost of my favorite coins, as of 04/11/2021:

These are crypto coins that are worth paying attention to, they have healthy growth, large capitalization, and they have a huge community of fans, and this gives us confidence, which is the most important thing in the accumulation of cryptocurrency.

One of the Important factors that we look at when deciding to engage in cryptocurrency mining is the jumping cost. But no matter how much the crypto rate falls, if you wake up and look at a slightly larger range than a month, it turns out that the bulk of the crypto is only growing, sometimes by 200% annually. Here are examples of charts for the year , -

Bitcoin per year

Broadcast per year

Litecoin per year

VeChain for the year

Also, the seasonality of the year matters in the cost of cryptocurrency; most often, but not always, in May, June, July, August, the cost of cryptocurrencies falls, due to which mining profits decrease, but in these 4 months you should not stop mining, because already in September, the value of the crypt will begin to rise, and in February, you will definitely not regret that you mined in the summer.

How much can you earn from home mining?

The most powerful gaming cards are capable of producing up to 0.01 BTC per day.

Of course, such indicators will be realistic only for the most expensive video cards that have hardware acceleration applied.

And they must work around the clock. Owners of their own farms earn good money, but also invest a lot of money to support mining operations.

Cards regularly “burn out” and have to be replaced, and electricity bills increase tenfold.

However, the output is still a decent profit per month.

Fig. 5 - example of a home farm

Today, for mining, beginners are recommended to use an NVIDIA GTX 1070 card. And any other model of the NVIDIA GTX series.

Such video cards are capable of achieving good performance:

• Without hardware overclocking, the card will easily bring you 1.5-2 dollars per day;
• Cards with hardware overclocking work faster and are capable of extracting up to 2-2.5 dollars per day. It is important to understand that an overclocked card will wear out quite quickly and it is better not to do this if you decide to mine cryptocurrency on your only computer.

You can get more accurate information about the performance of your video card and how much money it can bring you from the hashrate table.

In mining, as in any other business, it is important not to go into the red. Earnings should recoup the money spent on electricity and a video card.

You can calculate the payback after determining the hashrate.

Go to the online calculator page and select the currency you want to mine. Then, in a new window, enter the previously calculated hashrate and click on Calculate.

Next you will see how many Bitcoins your card can mine (average value). Compare the cost of equipment and the final forecast for income.

This will allow you to understand whether mining will pay off. The calculator window also displays data on how much energy will be consumed during continuous mining.

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Overclocking a video card for the program - MSI Afterburner

It is very important to understand that any overclocking manipulations are, first of all, a risk for which you are personally responsible!

The tables below show approximate parameters for each video card. By decreasing the Power Limit, we reduce the video card's power consumption, but even then the screen may go dark if there is not enough voltage for the video card to work. The main idea is to choose the optimal parameters for your hardware. Like there would be a lot of megahashes, but it would consume little) That is. We do everything by trial and error, selecting the necessary parameters

For myself, I selected these settings:

overclocking rtx 2060 super

Using the GPU-Z program, we determine the type of memory of our video card, and based on this we can roughly understand how much we raise the sliders in MSI Afterburner. Here are the approximate values ​​for different manufacturers:

• Samsung up to +800MHz
• Micron up to +600MHz
• Hynix up to +200-400MHz

I have Micron:

Determine memory manufacturer

Below is a table with approximate values, but again, everything is individual!

Nvidia

AMD

Is it profitable to mine on a home PC?

With the growing popularity of Bitcoin, mining it on home computers has become unprofitable.

If you hope to receive an income of several hundred dollars already at the initial stage, we advise you to take a closer look at such concepts as cloud mining or creating your own farm.

Working as a miner on a regular PC will bring you up to hundreds of dollars in income per month. We recommend using this method only if you have a PC with a good level of performance and when working with it you do not use even half of the video card’s resource. For example, you have a powerful gaming PC at your disposal, but you rarely run games on it and constantly only use a browser and simple programs. In this case, periodic operation of the miner will not harm the system. Also, you should not mine bitcoins on your home PC around the clock. Limit yourself to 6-8 hours a day.

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Power consumption problem

The hashrate of modern ASICs is calculated in terahashes per second, that is, in trillions of hashes (solutions). For such power, these devices are very efficient: one ASIC consumes several times less electricity than a set of video cards (GPU) with the same total hashrate.

Popular ASIC Antminer S17 Pro. Source: Antminer Distribution

Although each individual ASIC has good efficiency, all ASICs taken together consume a huge amount of electricity: more than Austria or Venezuela. Much of this electricity comes from fossil sources such as coal. This is what Elon Musk meant when he said that Bitcoin mining is not environmentally friendly.

The problem can be stated as follows: the Bitcoin network is well protected from attacks and manipulations because all miners must reach a consensus and complete the work. However, the fact that they are all competing to solve the same problem leads to a huge waste of resources.

This is the paradox of the Proof-of-Work algorithm, and Bitcoin mining will remain expensive until the last coin is mined - presumably in 2140.

The only thing that can be done is to switch miners to renewable energy sources. Elon Musk and the recently created Bitcoin Mining Council are calling for this. By the way, the Council’s latest report states that in the 2nd quarter of 2022, the share of renewable energy in miners’ consumption increased from 37% to 56%, so green mining is not just a fantasy.

Types of mining

As mentioned above, mining is the only way to obtain cryptocurrencies, but there are different methods of mining:

• Farming is the most efficient and profitable way of production, but it requires investment. You will have to buy several powerful video cards and arrange for them to work simultaneously. This method requires a separate room and will entail significant electricity bills;
• Pools are groups of computers that can be located in different parts of the world, but at the time of computing and mining cryptocurrency they will work together. A home computer is connected to the pool using a mining program. You can independently configure the operation of several of your PCs through a pool;
• A video card is the easiest way to mine coins without killing your computer. The essence of this mining method is that a third-party program uses the resource of your video card to calculate mathematical operations. The computer can be combined into a pool or used by the utility as the only link in the mining network;
• Processor – today, the method of mining coins using the computing power of processors has become a relic of the past. It is much more profitable to work with video cards, since they are able to mine coins faster, and in the event of a breakdown, the computer does not stop working - all computing operations are switched to the video card, which is built into the central processor;
• ASIC-miner is microprocessor-based equipment created exclusively for the mining of BTC and coins mined using the same algorithm. ASICs provide maximum computing power and are reliable enough for long-term use. The disadvantage is the high cost and the impossibility of using this equipment anywhere except for mining specific cryptocurrencies.

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Okay, we have mining equipment, what next?

And then we need to choose a service that will give our hardware problems, and for solved problems (balls), money will go into our wallet. So these services are called “pools”, i.e. The next task is to select and connect to the pool. Now there are a lot of these pools, each with its own pros and cons. For example, our hardware is chugging along hopelessly, but the money is not increasing, this is a minus. Or, for example, everyone found a pool, registered on the site, but it’s unclear how to set up the program, not a clear text manual or video or support chat, that’s also a minus.

How is it mined?

Is it worth mining on a laptop?

This question comes up very often, so it needs to be answered as part of the review. You should not mine Bitcoin on laptops.

Firstly, the power of even the most powerful model is not enough to mine coins, the cost of which will cover the cost of purchasing a laptop.

Secondly, the laptop cooling system is not ready for constant maximum loads on the GPU.

And finally, replacing a burnt-out video card in a laptop is only possible by replacing the main board, which is equivalent to purchasing a new one.

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Bitcoin mining pools

Very soon after the advent of Bitcoin, savvy miners realized that the process of earning money could be significantly accelerated if they acted not alone, but by teaming up. Even those who owned high-power equipment felt the benefits of this method. After all, if you mine without a pool, you will have to constantly increase the hashrate by buying or improving equipment. But it is impossible to do this indefinitely, then we will be talking about exorbitant sums.

A mining pool is a server whose purpose is to divide one large and difficult computing task into many easier ones and distribute them to all devices connected to the network.

It turns out that the powers of all participants are simultaneously working on the task, and the chances of finding a block increase. Each miner contributes to the common cause to the best of his ability, and then receives a reward, also in accordance with the invested resources.

When choosing a mining pool, it is important to pay attention to its total hashrate. The larger it is, the greater the probability of block closure. Small pools have little more chance of success than solo miners.

There is such a subtype of pools as multipool. It allows you to mine many different coins and automatically switches to the most profitable one if the user activates the appropriate setting.

What is the difference between mining on a PC and a farm - which is more profitable?

Regular mining on a PC can only use one video card. If you use a video card farm, your earnings will increase proportionally.

For beginners, it is more profitable to use a regular PC for mining, since you do not need to invest any money in creating a system.

If you are determined to earn a decent amount and invest money in the business, buy several video cards and create your own farm. As world practice shows, it pays off within 6-9 months after the start of work.

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Where to sell or exchange mined bitcoins

You can do with the mined BTC coins as you wish:

1. Accumulate and wait for the next cryptocurrency growth. An investment strategy that lasts for several months or years.
2. Immediately sell and withdraw to fiat, fixing the income received from mining.
3. Increase the number of coins by trading Bitcoin on the exchange. The most liquid platforms are BitMEX, Bybit, Currency, Binance Futures and others.

With the first option, everything is clear: you need to accumulate cryptocurrency in your wallet and wait for the “Tuzemun”. It is better to store what you have mined on cold wallets, such as Ledger or Trezor.

In the second case, you need to find a way to sell bitcoins. You can do this through:

1. Crypto exchanges. The following platforms work with fiat and stablecoins: LocalBitcoins, Currency, EXMO, Binance, Crex24, Livecoin, Cryptolocator, Bitpapa and others.
2. Exchangers.
3. p2p exchangers.

You can hedge risks using futures crypto exchanges.