Is it worth it to mine Bitcoin? The answer may surprise you!
In the very early days, years ago, before the cryptocurrency hype got crazy, people who mined Bitcoin and saved them would up being very rich.
Even those who mined on ‘inferior’ devices made a really impressive profit.
Then these stories of people getting rich from mining hit the media, and everyone booted up their gaming computer or bought high powered nVidia/Radeon graphics cards to get rich mining.
The problem with this is the mining difficulty increases the more computers are mining at the same time.
This was Satoshi’s vision behind mining. If few are mining, then those few people will get all of the rewards.
Is it worth mining in 2018?
I can confidently say that it’s not worth it to mine Bitcoin or any of the other top 20 cryptocurrencies.
But why?
Yes, if you join a popular mining pool you’ll earn something but you must also factor in costs of power and hardware.
If you live in an urban or suburban area, power costs are extremely high.
Likewise if you live anywhere in Europe,, the UK, or America, you’re going to be paying significantly more for power.
This severely limits how many graphics cards you can run on a mining rig at once without paying a substantial sum on mining costs.
The companies/organizations who are mining most of the top 20 cryptocurrencies buy out massive warehouses in very remote locations where electricity is next to free.
These remote mining rigs allow for thousands of GPU to process at once, and it makes the income close to being worth it.0
This is unlikely the scenario for anyone reading this article.
The hassle and time-sink of setting up a mining rig
In addition to power and hardware costs, there’s the time investment.
You should consider your time as being worth something. Even if you break even mining, you still have to factor in how long it took you to get set up.
Simply put, mining is most often more hassle than it’s worth.
What about mining contracts – free power, right?
A mining contract is where you buy a percentage of space on a server farm.
You pay a company that owns a huge “mining farm” a sum of money to use some of their equipment.
They spend the time, they pay the electrical bills, they calculate the reward distribution, and you simply check in once per day to see how many coins you mined.
I’d recommend a mining contract more than I would to set up your own mining.
That’s because there’s a lot less time and stress involved. And I’ve gotta admit, it’s very thrilling to check in every day and see if your mining pool hit it big!
I wouldn’t invest a lot in this, however, but that’s just me.
I’d rather invest in a coin by purchasing it up front than merely hope that a mining contract pays off.
If you’re interested, you could at the very least buy a small contract just to see how it works out for you.
What about very new coins – coins I mine those and potentially get rich?
I must admit, it’s very possible that a coin that is in its infancy now – or has yet to be released – will take off and join the other major players in the top 20.
If this happens, then if you mined it today, you could potentially earn a considerable sum.
However, it’s very difficult to predict exactly what coin will hit it big in the months to come.
So if you want to try out mining for yourself (I recommend it for fun!) then simply pick an arbitrary coin that has SHA-256 or Scrypt mining.
These mining algorithms are compatible with most GPU on the market today.
Why you should mine for fun
I recommend it for reasons you wouldn’t expect.
I believe that cryptocurrency is a future aspect of finance.
It might not replace wire transfers or credit cards, but it will certainly be an enhancement of those things.
Therefore, the best way to learn how these cryptocurrencies function is to set up your computer to mine.
This provides the best first-hand experience in this crazy new world.
But don’t expect to get rich doing so. If that happens, then you certainly got lucky (or you had some insider knowledge!)
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