1. Your Mining Hardware Limits Your Choice
There might be thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, but you can’t mine all of them. One of the big limitations is your hardware. Obviously, you can’t mine currency your hardware is not suited for. For instance, if you have an ASIC miner, then you don’t have much choice because these can mine one or few currencies only. If you have GPUs, even if they are high level, for many currencies such as Bitcoin, you can’t compete with ASICs. Also, different cards are better for different currencies, so you might want to check what works for other miners with the same brand and model of GPU.
2. Difficulty vs. Block Award vs. Market Price
There are a few factors that determine the profitability of mining a particular currency. Some of these factors are difficulty, block award, network hashrate, your hashrate, and of course market price. Basically, the higher the difficulty and the network hashrate, the less profitable it is to mine a currency, even if the block reward and your hashrate are high. You need to factor your electricity costs, too. If your electricity is cheap (such as under $.10 or less) or free, then many more currencies are profitable to mine. With the high price of electricity, even the most profitable currencies tend to earn you next to nothing.
3. Use an Online Calculator
You will hardly be willing to do profitability calculations on your own. Actually, you don’t have to because there are online calculators you can use for the purpose. One of the best online calculators is WhatToMine. With it you can calculate the profitability of almost any currency imaginable. However, don’t take the results too literally – these are just estimates to give you an idea, not precise predictions. And as my experience shows, the actual profits can vary drastically from what the calculator says.
4. Choose the Right Pool
Even if profitability calculators give you mind-blowing estimates about the profits you can make in theory from a particular currency, this might not happen if you don’t choose the best pool.
5. Rent Your Mining Equipment
As a last resort, if you are too lazy to constantly monitor which currency is the most profitable to mine right now, you can consider renting your mining equipment. There are a few sites, such as nicehash or MiningRigRentals, where you can list your equipment. It’s almost certain renting won’t be as profitable as mining directly, but if the hassle is becoming way too much for you, renting is still better than not using the equipment you have paid for.
Mining crypto can be profitable, but in order to make it a tangible source of income, you need powerful equipment. If you want to mine just for fun, you can do it even with a low end GPU. If you choose the right currency, you can make a few bucks a month, which isn’t a mind-blowing amount for sure, but the thrill is worth it. If you discover you enjoy mining, you can always invest step by step in more powerful equipment, and ultimately you can even make a living as a crypto miner.
