Mining

The mining software is often simply called a miner. The miner is mostly free. However, some of them mine to the wallet address of the author in one percent of running time or similar. You can find and download many miners from the internet with detailed description on how to configure them. Some of them are as easy as starting them, provide your wallet address and press the run button. More complex ones let you set up a mining pool from which you are going to mine. It is often just an URL. The most complex ones require complicated configuration and profound IT knowledge is needed. You can also download a source code of a miner and compile it on your own computer. This is the best you can do from the point of performance. However, it is not easy to configure all the tools that are needed for the software compilation.

A mining pool is a place where more miners combine their computer resources in order to increase profitability. Thus the whole mining pool has a big hash rate. When more computers are combined, the probability of finding a block is much higher. When a block is found, the reward is split and distributed to all participants based on the computer resources they have provided to mine it. The membership is free but the pool owner often takes some profit for managing it. It is wise to check more mining pools and compare their profits before joining one. The closer a mining pool is to your home the better since during mining huge data is transferred between the pool and your computer. The pool should provide a webpage where you can find yourself at your wallet address and see your hash rate and current mined balance.

The most expensive investment is related to the hardware that you use for mining. Do not consider a cell phone or a laptop. The efficiency of these devices is not sufficient to generate sensible income. You can start at least with your desktop computer but do not expect much profit as well. Additionally, you will not be able to use your desktop computer when the miner is running since it takes all the available computer resources and thus other applications seem to be stuck. So, the best you can do is use a dedicated computer. The computer will run constantly which generates a noise. Moreover, the cooler the room is the better since computers generate heat and mining utilizes the computer‘s resources to the maximum. Consider locating your mining computer in a decent ventilated, cool room. The basement is often the best solution. When considering hardware you should also check which one is the best to mine a particular coin. Some are fine with a computer processing unit (CPU) mining but often graphics processing unit (GPU) mining is more profitable and preferred by people. You can also consider buying the most powerful graphics card. The favorite ones are created by ATI. If you are willing to invest more you can buy a graphics card designed for mining. These graphics cards have an ASIC chip. You can even combine more graphics card together in one rack. With this you will achieve a high hash rate and the profit will also be much bigger. If you consider this solution you definitely must also have a dedicated cool room for it. To build such a device requires either profound IT knowledge or googling in dedicated forums. Fortunately, there are a lot of articles and forums on the internet where you can get the information you need.