Mining of altcoins on video cards brings a small income
I will say briefly - unlike cryptocurrency, for the extraction of which ASIC chips have already been created, although I’m not talking about based FPGA (chips with programmable logic), I haven’t seen these for a long time, or just missed it, mining using CPU or video cards, and such exotic as proof-of-capacity - space on the disk, is justified and sometimes brings a significant income, about 6p-15p per hour per kilowatt - the average estimate for the year, with the cost of energy in 3p. per kilowatt.
But under a number of conditions.
If we talk about the terms of months and years, practice shows that at different times it is effective to extract cryptocurrencies from the point of view of energy costs for mining in fiat currency, you can only if you immediately sell the mined cryptocurrency. Within one algorithm, there are multipools that automatically select the currently profitable one and switch the miner's power to it, automatically change the mined output to bitcoin and pay the miners according to their contribution.
The most famous is nicehash , offers to download opensource application, which automatically downloads and tests popular miners, and according to the test result of your equipment, will automatically switch mining to a profitable cryptocurrency at the moment. There is a handy calculator that allows you to estimate the current income from the selected equipment. Unfortunately, everyone wants to eat, and such a popular project takes a tangible share of its own. To estimate this difference can only be statistically, studying the work of their miner and calculating the possible income on their own, according to my estimates it is about 3-5% on average, but sometimes there are peak differences up to 30%.
Also, in Russia, I noticed frequent problems with connecting to their pool, pings go, other pools work and nicehash does not respond, giving a message in the client that there is no Internet. But I think these are local problems of providers, all the same the creation of the greatChinese firewall cheburnet cannot go smoothly.
The nicehash application is opensource, you can specify your own pool settings in the source, but you need to understand that you will have to deal with selling extracted altcoins yourself, and do it automatically better by developing the appropriate application.
If your capacities are insignificant (less than a few dozen video cards), then you can get into an uncomfortable situation with rare, not very interesting altcoins - since the miner switches to their production rarely, their number in the pool accounts will be too small to be brought to the stock exchange , and sell with a delay in time is fraught with loss of income, as the course could jump for a short time. In any case, even if you have large capacities, I recommend keeping a stock of all the extracted altcoins in small quantities on the exchange, and selling them at the same time and volume as they appear in your pool account.
The main costs, in addition to the actual acquisition / creation of rigs for production based on video cards, are electricity and cooling costs. Do not dream that it will be enough for you to rent a rack in a data center and install your rig there - all income will be eaten up by rent, and you should even stay. But it is precisely on such sterile conditions that equipment operation is usually designed — a constant 18 degrees and filtered air with low humidity. Unfortunately, such conditions are not cheap to get, except to sit down. The lion's share of successful miners install their rigs in garages, where society pays for energy, and a small rent is taken from the owner (for me this is the usual theft), many huddle in the shops and back rooms of friends or their main business, of course, without paying for the room at its price.
For small miners who want to start mining with 1-3 kilowatts, the option of installing a house is available, especially if it is a personal house - a roof / basement or on a balcony (but remember the heat in summer and cold in winter, at 0 ° computers may not turn on). Installing iron in your room is not possible because of the noise that coolers create, but if you spend money on a liquid cooling system (approximately 6t.r. additional per each fullcover video card + tubes, pumps, fittings, etc.) and output cooling outside - you can collect rig dreams, silent, reliable (liquid cooling is better than air, does not break so often, video cards will work longer), but as a result the rig becomes one and a half times more expensive.
Otherwise, it turns out that the miner invests all the mined into some kind of cryptocurrency, almost certainly it will be bitcoin or ethereum - and this is already speculation, and it is not correct to consider them as income only from the extraction of cryptocurrency.
Unlike ASIC devices for the extraction of crypto-currency, video cards can be sold at the secondary market at almost any time, thus getting out of mining, losing a maximum of 30% of their value. This keeps the market for video cards at some level below, usually the cost of electricity throughout the world, where it is $ 0.1 - $ 0.05 per kilowatt (some European countries do not consider $ 1- $ 10), with incomes below this price, many miners turn off their equipment, since they will have nothing to pay for electricity. With overpriced incomes, new miners appear with a jerk, as it happens every time as the bitcoin rate rises sharply and many new people learn about cryptocurrency and their method of mining, this increases the complexity of mining and reduces profitability.
Also, another reason for income is the incessant emergence of new altcoins, more and more speculators are investing their money in them, and some of this money goes to miners.
Long live the speculators - let their incomes and expenses grow!
But under a number of conditions.
Miner must be ready to quickly change the algorithm.
If we talk about the terms of months and years, practice shows that at different times it is effective to extract cryptocurrencies from the point of view of energy costs for mining in fiat currency, you can only if you immediately sell the mined cryptocurrency. Within one algorithm, there are multipools that automatically select the currently profitable one and switch the miner's power to it, automatically change the mined output to bitcoin and pay the miners according to their contribution.
The most famous is nicehash , offers to download opensource application, which automatically downloads and tests popular miners, and according to the test result of your equipment, will automatically switch mining to a profitable cryptocurrency at the moment. There is a handy calculator that allows you to estimate the current income from the selected equipment. Unfortunately, everyone wants to eat, and such a popular project takes a tangible share of its own. To estimate this difference can only be statistically, studying the work of their miner and calculating the possible income on their own, according to my estimates it is about 3-5% on average, but sometimes there are peak differences up to 30%.
Also, in Russia, I noticed frequent problems with connecting to their pool, pings go, other pools work and nicehash does not respond, giving a message in the client that there is no Internet. But I think these are local problems of providers, all the same the creation of the great
The nicehash application is opensource, you can specify your own pool settings in the source, but you need to understand that you will have to deal with selling extracted altcoins yourself, and do it automatically better by developing the appropriate application.
If your capacities are insignificant (less than a few dozen video cards), then you can get into an uncomfortable situation with rare, not very interesting altcoins - since the miner switches to their production rarely, their number in the pool accounts will be too small to be brought to the stock exchange , and sell with a delay in time is fraught with loss of income, as the course could jump for a short time. In any case, even if you have large capacities, I recommend keeping a stock of all the extracted altcoins in small quantities on the exchange, and selling them at the same time and volume as they appear in your pool account.
Cheap or free electricity and space
The main costs, in addition to the actual acquisition / creation of rigs for production based on video cards, are electricity and cooling costs. Do not dream that it will be enough for you to rent a rack in a data center and install your rig there - all income will be eaten up by rent, and you should even stay. But it is precisely on such sterile conditions that equipment operation is usually designed — a constant 18 degrees and filtered air with low humidity. Unfortunately, such conditions are not cheap to get, except to sit down. The lion's share of successful miners install their rigs in garages, where society pays for energy, and a small rent is taken from the owner (for me this is the usual theft), many huddle in the shops and back rooms of friends or their main business, of course, without paying for the room at its price.
For small miners who want to start mining with 1-3 kilowatts, the option of installing a house is available, especially if it is a personal house - a roof / basement or on a balcony (but remember the heat in summer and cold in winter, at 0 ° computers may not turn on). Installing iron in your room is not possible because of the noise that coolers create, but if you spend money on a liquid cooling system (approximately 6t.r. additional per each fullcover video card + tubes, pumps, fittings, etc.) and output cooling outside - you can collect rig dreams, silent, reliable (liquid cooling is better than air, does not break so often, video cards will work longer), but as a result the rig becomes one and a half times more expensive.
Income is constant, regardless of the course, if you sell the mined immediately
Otherwise, it turns out that the miner invests all the mined into some kind of cryptocurrency, almost certainly it will be bitcoin or ethereum - and this is already speculation, and it is not correct to consider them as income only from the extraction of cryptocurrency.
Why income is still there
Unlike ASIC devices for the extraction of crypto-currency, video cards can be sold at the secondary market at almost any time, thus getting out of mining, losing a maximum of 30% of their value. This keeps the market for video cards at some level below, usually the cost of electricity throughout the world, where it is $ 0.1 - $ 0.05 per kilowatt (some European countries do not consider $ 1- $ 10), with incomes below this price, many miners turn off their equipment, since they will have nothing to pay for electricity. With overpriced incomes, new miners appear with a jerk, as it happens every time as the bitcoin rate rises sharply and many new people learn about cryptocurrency and their method of mining, this increases the complexity of mining and reduces profitability.
Also, another reason for income is the incessant emergence of new altcoins, more and more speculators are investing their money in them, and some of this money goes to miners.
Long live the speculators - let their incomes and expenses grow!
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