How do we start mining ETH or ETC with our own equipment at home today? Will you read this post because it shows how easy it is to get started mining with a small investment in equipment and the willingness to learn how to set everything up and explains what steps are needed to decide if investing in the time and equipment for mining?
With the Ethereum price over $300 today and the Ethereum Classic price at $20, the opportunity to mine Ether is now extremely profitable! Even as Ethereum prepares to go to a Proof of Stake model at the end of 2017 or beginning of 2018 which will greatly reduce the possibility of making a profit mining, any mining rig built to mine Ethereum could easily be switched to start mining ETC or another coin after the switch with a huge potential to profit before!
In this post or the matching video on YouTube below, see an introduction to what research and purchases are necessary to begin. While I thought mining any cryptocurrency was too technical for me, I now see getting started on a small scale is relatively straightforward with scaling up possible with confirmation the initial system is working. The GREAT NEWS is that making a very basic and functional mining computer system can be done for less than $1,000! Once we verify it works, the motivation will come to scale up the system into one that easily can produce $200+ a day in profit with current Ethereum and ETC prices as explained in the YouTube video from today below along with in more detail in text below that.
In summary, using a new or used Windows or Linux machine to begin just for mining seems ideal because this will be the only need and function of the computer. For a few hundred dollars, buying a new machine to just do mining is the most basic starting point. Next, buying a small amount of graphics cards to get started is the next step to verify the mining setup is working and to get an idea of the costs to scale. While the idea of dropping $20,000 to make a mining setup that produces $13,000 a month seems like a big risk, how about starting out with $1,000 in graphics cards to produce $600 a month to verify everything works?
After confirming the setup is working, then it is logical to slowly scale up by adding more graphics cards and machines steadily over time using the profits generated as proof that more is possible with more power. While I would not start off spending much without any proof I could actually set it up correctly, after confirmation that I could indeed build a mining machine that worked, I would be motivated to build more.
The real opportunity to earn much more than $200 a day is to learn how to build mining rigs for Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. Once we have the system down, we can just keep building more over time and then the money comes in on autopilot! This seems ideal compared to paying into a mining pool where another company is likely earning a significant share of my profits and maintains control over all of the machines.
What are the steps to start mining Ethereum or ETC?
Read an introduction to mining Ethereum at https://www.ethereum.org/ether which seems to currently be the most profitable to mine today.
Read another post with a summary of all the steps at https://www.meebey.net/posts/ethereum_gpu_mining_on_linux_howto/.
Visit the daily profit estimate tool I used at https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth.
Compare with ETC profit at https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/etc or any other altcoin to see which is currently the most profitable to mine based on the price. After the ETH switch to PoS, mining another coin will be necessary but by then all the equipment should be paid for!
Learn about graphics cards because they are responsible for most hashing power. A list to get started is available at https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining#/equipment which will help with learning but then also show you that most of the ones already proven to work well for others are sold out!
With a few hours of research, the single best graphics card I found for the money which is actually in stock and has same day shipping for me is the EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SC GAMING, 4GB GDDR5, DX12 OSD Support (PXOC) Graphics Card 04G-P4-6253-KR on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MF7EQJZ. I chose this graphics card because all the others I looked at for a better value were sold out! The EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SC has SAME DAY delivery near me with an estimated hashing power for ETH at 12 MH which equals repayment in less than 2 months at the current price for Ether! If I was starting today this is what I would begin with by ordering 2 to 8 of these. I am not starting today because I have a trip coming up next week and am considering beginning Ethereum mining and/or being a Steemit Witness in late June 2017.
Using a dedicated Windows or Linux desktop PC is ideal for mining because it keeps the computer free from any other slowdowns and keeps existing devices free for normal use. Fortunately buying the machine to run all the GPUs on is a small part of the total expense. Read https://www.bestvpn.com/ethereum-mining/ to get a good look at the parts required for the computer.
Order the minimum initial parts to get started to build the desktop mining rig OR test this out on your existing computer if you have good enough graphics cards and want to start today! Note that in calculating the cost you will want to account for a maximum of 10 to 16 graphics cards per PC!
The beauty of this system is once we get it built, we can modify it to mine whichever coins are the most profitable instead of relying on a third party to continue paying us out in whatever we started with at a fixed hashing power. Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a wonderful day! If this post was helpful, would you please vote it up because that helps me to continue writing more for you?