Bitcoin mining - Part 2
(Reading time 6 minutes)
In the previous post I have
covered some of the basics about the mining, what it represents and the
way you can mine. The first way was to
start mining by yourself, to buy all the necessary equipment and to start
mining from your home. If you love to do mining by yourself, in my opinion it
is not that much profitable. Again, this depends on the price of the Bitcoin.
If the price goes very high, this might be a good investment. Today I am going
to focus on the mining pools, which in my opinion are far better than mining by
yourself.
First let’s see what mining pools
are?
Mining pools are groups of miners
working together to mine bitcoins and share the rewards based on the hash rate.
Once a block is mined successfully a share is then awarded to the members of
the pool who can present a valid proof of work for their part in mining the
blocks. Basically the pool is like a club or community of miners that work
together. The concept began when the difficulty of the mining increased to the
point where it could take months or years for a slower miner to generate one
single block.
There are 2 types of mining pools
that you can join:
· Cloud mining
· Pool mining
Cloud mining is the process of buying CPU power from dedicated data
centers, who use their own equipment to mine Bitcoin and other coins on your
behalf. The advantage of this is that you don’t need to have a lot of knowledge
about mining hardware. A lot of the companies either source their own equipment
or build it cheaply and have placed their data centers in countries like
Iceland and China where the electricity is cheap, and they are passing the
savings to you. Another good thing is that most of them operate in some MLM
structure so you can also make money from referrals. Here are some of the top
companies that you can do cloud mining:
· Genesis Mining
Genesis is one of the oldest and
largest cloud mining centers. It’s website offers a live feed of some of the
data centers which are based in Iceland, where there is a cheap geothermal
electricity. There are mining contracts not only for Bitcoin, but as well for
all the major cryptocurrencies. There are certain fees as well. Genesis offers
different mining contracts. You can always have a look at their website.
· Hashnest
Hashnest was launched in 2014 by
Bitmain, which is a world-renowned manufacturer of ASIC mining hardware.
Bitmain also operates one of the largest mining pools : Antpool. While Bitmain
is based in China, Hashnest has mining farms around the world. Hashnets also
offers different mining contracts.
· Hashflare
Hashflare is a part of Hashcoins,
another manufacturer of Bitcoin mining equipment which has been around since
2013. Hashflare offers you the chance to purchase hashpower Bitcoin, Litecoin,
Ethereum and ZCash. You are also free to choose your own mining pool. Currently
Hashflare only offers a guaranteed Hashrate for Bitcoin and Litecoin mining for
12 months. Previously the mining contracts were unlimited. This may make it
harder for you to make a profit on your original investment.
· Hashing24
The Hashing24 team claims to have
been involved in Bitcoin mining since 2012, although the website itself has
only been around since 2016. The company appears to have no data centers of its
own, rather it has partnered with big name providers such as BitFury to lease
hashpower to customers. Hashing24 is mentioned on Bitfury’s website. After
registering you can sign up for Bitcoin mining contracts only for a period of
36 months.
If you want to make cloud mining
can be very rewarding, due to the fact that you can make money also from
referrals. The more people you are going to sign up under you, the more money
you can make. If you are considering to join any of the cloud mining pools, you
must take into consideration all of the factors like: fees, the price and
length of the contracts, the compensation plan, reviews about the company,
calculate how much time you will need to make the ROI. Do not jump right away. If
you want some more detailed information about the pools, you can always contact
me, and I will be more than happy to guide you where you can find this
informations.
Mining pools
While with the Cloud mining you
are purchasing contracts for hashing power from certain company
or you are paying a service provider to
mine for you and you get the rewards, in the mining pools you are
buying mining equipment. Different mining pools, have different offers. The
mining equipment is also on a remote place, depending of where that company
mining farm is located. This companies usually have a referral plan, where you
can make extra money by referring it to other people. The profits of the mining
by itself are not bad, but they are slow. The real money are in the referral.
That means that you must have some skills and knowledge of how to refer it to
other people. If you would like to know some more about this, do not hesitate
to contact me, and I will gladly show you how it’s done.
There are about 20 major mining pools
in the world. Broken down by the percent
of hash power controlled by a pool, and the location of that pool’s company,
the Chinese pools control 81% of the network hash rate. Iceland 5%, Japan 3%,
Czech Republic 3%, Georgia 2% and India 2%.
Here is the list of
the biggest mining pools:
· Antpool
It is based in Beijing China and it’s
owned by Bitmain Technologies Ltd.
Antpool mines about 19% of all the blocks and it is a consistent top
ranker in the list of the mining pools
· BTC.com
The
second-largest mining pool that produced the maximum number of bitcoin blocks
after AntPool over the past six months is operated by BTC.com. It generated
around 16.5% of bitcoin blocks. The pool was launched in September 2016, and is
currently owned by Bitmain Technologies Ltd., the same Chinese firm that runs
AntPool.
BTC.com
supports full pay-per-share (FPPS) payout methodology. Proponents claim
that's more beneficial to miners as it calculates and adds a standard
transaction fee to the regular block rewards, making the overall payout higher
than the standard pay-per-share (PPS) payout. It currently maintains a hashrate
of 5.88 Exahash per second (EH/s).
BTC.TOP
The third-place
holder is BTC.TOP, and it has mined a little over 13% of the total bitcoins in
the past six months. In August 2017, the pool offered the option to mine Bitcoin Cash (BCC),
in addition to bitcoin. The pool hashrate hovers in the range of around 3100
Petahash/second (PH/s).
· ViaBTC
Fourth on the
list is ViaBTC, a diversified pool that offers options to mine different kinds
of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin,
ETH, ETC, ZEC and Dash. During the past six months, ViaBTC generated
around 11.5% of total bitcoin blocks, and it currently maintains a pool
hashrate of 2.772 Exahash per second (EH/s) for its bitcoin mining pool.
Slush
One of the oldest
mining pools, Slush pool takes the fifth spot for mining the largest number of
bitcoin blocks. It was started in December 2010, and has since mined over 1
million BTC coins. It managed to collect around 9% of total bitcoins mined
during the last six months. It has a pool hashrate of around 2.342 Exahash per
second (EH/s).
These are the top
5 mining pools that you can join and start mining with. Since mining is a dynamic activity, the number of blocks discovered by a
particular pool may change based on the pool’s activity and the varying
difficulty levels of mining.
Here is the list of the other pools:
BW Pool, Bitclub Network, BitFury, Waterhole,
Dashminer, P2Pool, Multipool, ZPool…
The mining pools
have been very profitable for years. Pooled mining has increased in popularity
significantly in the last few years. You can see a lot of people promoting the
mining pools on the internet. Do not jump right away in some of the pools.
There is a lot of fraud out there. Have a look at the ROI, compensation plans,
the fees, the types of the contracts (how is their pay out plan). Always have
in mind that the mining can be very unpredictable and fluctuant, and no one can
tell you the exact amount of money you are going to receive on a daily basis.
You can’t control it, no matter how much
hashrate you are adding to increase the computing power of the mine, plus the
complexity of the mining is always increasing. Always be careful, be safe. Do
not believe what others are saying, especially some of the promoters out there.
It is a very good way to earn extra money, if you learn how to play it safe. It
is a slow process, but it is worth it.
Until the next post…..
Thank you for reading
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