What is Bitcoin Mining? simple answers to Understand

  What is Bitcoin Mining  

Base on what I am limitedly understood, it is making or doing the process of adding transaction history that is recorded to Bitcoin's public ledger called the blockchain. The Blockchain's purpose is to confirm the transactions from the network, in order to have a continual verification of transactions, thus to secure every block created. A certain amount of bitcoin is rewarded to miners.

I believe without the miners/ or mining, there will no bitcoin to create, as well as to be processed for sending, receiving, exchanging that are called transactions.

Most Crypto enthusiasts and analysts believe that mining is not profitable anymore. Recently Bitcoin has already reached more than 12 million blocks in the blockchain which means, the more blocks, the level of difficulty is rising. After bitcoin's price reached its peaked value for more than 20,000$, the price drops more than half to around 6,000 to 8,000$ which also cuts the profitability in mining. Although with the said difficulties arise and bitcoin's price between 6,000 to 8,000$, other miners are still pulling a positive net profit versus the expenses in mining, most especially if Bitcoins will go back to its peak value and might be even more.

Aside from bitcoin, there are other crypto and coins that miners are alternatively mining. These coins are called altcoin (alternative coins). Some of these altcoins have been potentially grown to fame as well and its value.

There are thousands of coins that are speculatively may increase its value. People who are actively holding coins and miners are eyeing for the next bitcoin. These virtual coins can be mined also by using the correct tools and software.

 How to Mine Bitcoin 

In order to mine bitcoin or altcoin, you will need to have the following:

• Mining Hardware that is capable to compute cryptography to secure and validate transactions of bitcoin in the public ledger.
• Mining Software that will perform the Mining
• Electricity, that will supply power continually your Mining Hardware
• Internet Connection, accessing the blockchain to perform mining.

  Mining Hardware  

1. Computer RAM

RAM stand's for Random Access Memory, it is one of the important parts of the computer, laptop, and smartphones. Without a RAM, you may not able to use your computer and smartphones.

Computer's RAM was first used to mine bitcoins. Lately before Bitcoin's went to fame, bitcoin was easily mined by using computers RAM not until today, where Mining on your Computer's RAM could probably take forever to be rewarded or given a share of profit with Bitcoin.

RAM mining are still been used by other miners for fun. RAM mining is usually used to mine altcoin that are cheaper or no value at the moment. It commonly used mining on mobile mining applications and browser-based miners, Desktop mining software such as Honeyminer and Browser-based miner like the CryptoTab Browser.

2. Computer GPU 

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), also known as a video card or graphics card that purposedly designed for a variety of work aside from gaming. GPU is widely used for video editing, gaming, machine learning, and tasks that need a higher number of cores to boost their performance.

GPU mining is typically used by miner enthusiasts until today, It mostly became the replacement of RAM in mining because it generates more hashes to10th folds, even more, depending on the upgrade.

3. ASIC

ASIC hardware is specifically build to mine Bitcoin. Unlike GPU and CPU, ASIC is designed to calculate 100 times faster to validate transactions securely in the public ledger. The more power a hardware can contribute, the bigger the shares it can take.

Antminer is one of the popular brand of an ASIC Hardware.

 Mining Software  

• Mobile-based Mining App
• Desktop Mining Software
• Web Browser Mining

1. Mobile-base Mining App

It was originally created by pool/cloud mining companies as a mobile app to help their clients, the miners to be able to access their data and portfolio. Mining became an option in the mobile app since it is possible to mine with mobile processors and with higher specs smartphones that have become more powerful than the older versions.

Mobile-based apps are genuinely user-friendly compare to desktop software, with a one-tap button to mine. You can able to adjust the speed to protect your phone from overheating, but also lower the speed/ hash rate in mining.

2. Desktop Mining Software

Desktop mining software was first used to mine bitcoin and other Crypto and it is still the most widely used and most preferred to use. Mainly because of the wide array of flexibility to use to different hardware and Operating System, even though it has been very difficult to set-up and with not a newbie-friendly tutorial.

There are various desktop Mining Software you can find on the internet. These software's are free and open-sourced. Most Desktop Mining Software supports almost all Mining Hardware. Although precaution must be observed when downloading with this software as it may contain virus that could steal your Crypto.

But there are few developed mining software nowadays that makes mining a lot more easier. One of these is Honeyminer, with just few clicks from registration, to download, and you can start mining immediately. It supports RAM (CPU) and GPU (Graphics Card) Mining only. 

HoneyMiner

Honeyminer (Recommended for Beginners)

Unlike other software, Honeyminer is an automated multi-miner, in which it will mine depending on what is the best coin preferred by the software. You can not change what the software will mine, but you will eventually gaining Bitcoin. Honeyminer is available to desktops with an Operating System of Windows, MAC, and Linux.  Read More  

Few Examples of Desktop Mining Software are:

   CGminer

Cgminer has been around for long to be one of the best Mining Software for bitcoin, It supports GPU, FPGA, and ASIC. It can run in Windows OS, MAC, and Linux.

   Phoenixminer

Phoenixminer is an open-source software for EThash algorithm miner. Known to be the best miner for ETH, and Ethereum Classic.

With Desktop Mining Software, you can mine either in Solo Mining or in Pool Mining.

1. Solo mining is when you mine crypto alone using your hardware. This may not be recommended, but it is possible to do so but without a clear view of profiting,  even with having the latest ASIC miner could only have a very thin chance to be rewarded with bitcoin, the probability is based on luck.

2. 

Pool Mining is when a group of individual miners combined their individual hardware's power to create a 1 bigger hash power. When the group successfully rewarded with bitcoin, it is then divided based of the number of hashes you contributed. the higher your hardware contributed, the bigger the pie you will get.

  List of Pool Mining   

3. Web Browser-based Mining

Web browser mining was previously used to secretively mine crypto when people visited a website that has a mining script injected into their website. People are now realizing it and start avoiding these websites. It was flagged as malicious by Anti-virus software and other browsers.

Companies like Coinhive together with their affiliated website owner make web browser mining more transparent and not malicious, now that cryptocurrency is widely accepted today. More people are getting into web browser mining and rewarded a few Crypto for enabling the mining script from a certain webpage.   

Cryptotab Browser

One famous web-browser miner is Cryptotab. Similar to a browser like chrome, edge, and Mozilla, CryptoTab is the first browser with a mining feature and lets you earn bitcoin. It can mine using your CPU computing power when you switch on the mining. It has also extension plug-in available in chrome. Read More 

4. Cloud Mining

With this type of mining, you will not be needed to buy your own equipment, and hustling to install a mining software, and electric power costs. Cloud Mining is typically buying a contract to a host crypto mining company that owns bigger equipment that is capable to generate bigger hashes.

There are numerous Cloud Mining company out there and there is few that are known to be trusted.

List Cloud Mining Company

• Minersgate
• Genesis Mining
• Hash24
• Nicehash
• ViaBTC
• Hotel Honey (by HoneyMiner)

 As you may not be aware of, frauds are often using Cloud Mining to scam investors. And you must be aware of these fraudulent websites, by checking their reviews all over the internet.