Cloud Mining
cloud mining
You might ask why someone would bother spending the huge sums of money on expensive mining equipment to rent it out to someone else. The reason is simple. They want to guarantee profits on their investment and not have these affected by swings in the price of Bitcoin.
The concept seems strange, but some people choose how to mine Bitcoin in this way. Let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of cloud mining.
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Advantages of Cloud Mining
✓ You’re not responsible for the equipment. If something breaks, you often don’t need to replace it or repair it (however, always be careful to read the small print in a cloud mining contract. The company might require you to pay for damage done to their equipment!).
✓ You can make money by Bitcoin mining without spending thousands, or millions on mining equipment. This also means you don’t need to deal with the heat or the noise in your own home or other potential locations.
✓ The final advantage is that you don’t need to know anything about cryptocurrency mining. If you want to cloud mine, you probably don’t need this guide on how to mine Bitcoin at all!
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Disadvantages of Cloud Mining
✗ You pay money upfront. If the price of Bitcoin drops considerably, you might be stuck in a contract and mining at a loss until the price increases again (if it ever does). You take all the risk as the cloud mining operator is guaranteed a profit.
✗ You can’t upgrade or change either the mining software or hardware used by the cloud mining provider.
✗ Cloud mining companies are targets for hackers. In July of 2017, Genesis Mining was hacked. Bitcoin was transferred from the company’s hot wallet to an external wallet.
Personal opinion: If you want to get hold of some cryptocurrency but don’t want to invest in expensive mining hardware, just buy some Bitcoin with the money you would have spent on a cloud mining contract. That way, if the market takes a dramatic downturn, you can sell your position. You won’t be stuck in a mining contract that is becoming more and more worthless by the day.
How to Mine Bitcoin in a Pool: Tutorial
So, you probably want to start mining Bitcoin already? There are a few things that you must have before you begin:
At least one ASIC Bitcoin mining rig.
A mining application.
A digital wallet to store the Bitcoin you make.
Ventilation equipment – fans, ducting (only for larger operations).
Membership at a pool.
Power Splitters.
Power supply units (the wattage of your ASIC will determine how many and of what power you need).
Ethernet cable.
Internet connection.
Computer or mobile device capable of browsing the internet.
Setting up the Gear
The specific setup options will vary depending on the model of ASIC miner you are using. The manufacturer should detail exactly how to do this in their user manual or on their website. The following guide is specific on how to mine Bitcoin with the Antminer S9 unit on the Antpool. However, much of it will be useful no matter what ASIC miner you decide to use.
1. Find the power draw of your ASIC. This should be clearly stated in the manual under specifications. The S9 uses 1,275 Watts.
2. Match your power supply units to the power draw. Two 110v PSUs of 1,000W and 650W will be sufficient for most single miner operations.
3. Connect the power supply units to the Antminer unit using the relevant connections.
4. Once connected to the power supply, insert ethernet cable and plug it into your internet’s router.
5. Make sure all the necessary connections are made then power up the power supply. Your Antminer S9 should now come on.
6. On your computer or mobile device, use an IP scanning tool to show the devices connected to your internet connection. You should see your Antminer listed. You can then type the IP address of the Antminer into your browser window on your chosen device.
7. The next screen you see should be the login window of the miner. In the case of the Antminer S9, the default login details are username – root, password – root. You can change these by clicking on the “Admin” tab. I recommend doing this.How to mine Bitcoin: Ant Mine.
8. You will now need to enter various details from the mining pool you will be using. You should be able to find these out easily from the website of your mining pool.
How to mine Bitcoin: Ant Miner general configurations.
9. Once entered, your Antminer should begin mining in the pool.
Choosing a Mining Pool
On your path to learning how to mine Bitcoin, you can choose any Bitcoin mining pool you want. However, we recommend you choose from one of these recommended pools to begin with:
Pool Name Pool Fee Minimum Payout Pool Address Pool Size
Slush Pool 2% 1mBTC (with fee) 10mBTC (free) stratum+tcp://eu.stratum.slushpool.com:3333
(Euro address)
Medium
ViaBTC 2%-4% (depends on how shares are paid) 0.1mBTC stratum+tcp://btc.viabtc.com:3333 Large
F2Pool 3% 1mBTC stratum+tcp://stratum.f2pool.com:3333 Large
Antpool 1% 0.5mBTC stratum+tcp //stratum.antpool.com Large
Note: Pool addresses are for users from Europe where indicated. Other addresses will apply from other parts of the world.
Note: 1mBTC is 1/1,000th of a Bitcoin.
How to Check How Much You’ve Mined
Every mining pool will have its user interface. However, the idea is always the same. You need to visit your pool’s website and type in your wallet’s public address when prompted.
Type your wallet’s public address in the search bar. This will let you see all the information about your Bitcoin mining efforts so far. Some pools will let users set how much they want to mine before their Bitcoin is automatically sent to the external wallet address they specified.
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How to Calculate Expected Profits
If you want to check how much you should be earning, you can use a mining calculator. CryptoCompare provides an easy to use one.
Open your mining software and check how many Megahashes per second it is doing (Mh/s).
Load up the mining profitability calculator.
Enter your current mining hashing power.
Enter the power consumption of your unit or units.
Enter the cost of your electricity in kWh. You should be able to get this from your energy supplier.
Enter the pool fee for the pool you are using.
In the example from the picture below, we’re using a single DragonMint T1 miner mining on the Slush mining pool. Our electricity is about the average rate in the UK. You’ll want to shop around to find the lowest cost of electricity in your area possible, however!How to mine Bitcoin: calculate expected profits on CryptoCompare.
As you can see, mining in the UK isn’t particularly profitable! The high price of electricity means that you will be losing $2.45 every day, even with the most efficient miner on the market. When you factor in the price of the unit itself, this example operation is going to be incredibly expensive!
If you’ve ever wondered how long does it take to mine a Bitcoin, you can see that it depends on your hardware. With this highly advanced bit of kit, it would take just over three and a half years. That’s at the current difficulty rating, too. As more miners work on the network, the difficulty increases, and the number of Bitcoin a miner can expect decreases.
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Closing Thoughts
So, that’s it! That’s my guide on how to mine Bitcoin. I’ll close the guide with a few thoughts on Bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin mining is very important. It’s worth doing even if you’re not making huge (or any) profits. The more miners working on the network, the more secure it is. Some hobbyist miners mine the network at a loss. They see it as their duty to run a miner to increase the network’s decentralization and reduce the likelihood of a potential attack being successful.
Unfortunately, Bitcoin mining is highly competitive these days. Without a huge investment and the freedom to set up somewhere with low electricity rates and a cool climate, your chances of making a lot of money Bitcoin mining are very slim.
Even if you’re not planning on mining Bitcoin, it’s still good to learn how to do it so you can understand the technology better, as well as the wider industry.
If you’ve not got a lot to spend and are more interested in profits than you are securing the network, you can always mine a different cryptocurrency. Several digital currencies can still successfully be mined with a GPU or CPU chip. Ethereum and Monero are amongst the most popular choices. However, a quick search of the web will find many more obscure projects that can be mined with less expensive hardware.
So, that was it. That’s the end of this how-to mine Bitcoin guide. I hope you learned a lot!
You should now know pretty much everything you need to know about mining Bitcoin; from the reasons, you should consider mining Bitcoin, to the setup procedure, and the answer to the question “how long does it take to mine a Bitcoin.” If you wish to know more about Bitcoin mining software, click here. If you're interested in top Bitcoin mining hardware, press here.
Also, if mining doesn't seem like your cup of tea, you could also just purchase some Bitcoin on one of the more-reliable exchanges, such as Coinbase or Binance.
Here, there’s no singular centralized authority that maintains a single ledger (like there would be in a centralized system).