What are cryptocurrencies?
As the name implies, these are coins. However, they have the characteristic of being completely digital and not being centrally regulated by any financial institution or government.
Their existence depends on the users and the mechanisms for their creation, so they can be considered exchange assets with high security, but also with high volatility. However, their value is determined by the computer chains that contain each of these currencies, as well as the data used for their encryption.
How to make a cryptocurrency miner at home to mine BitCoin or Ethereum
Cryptocurrency miners
As we told you, it is not necessary to leave the pearls of the virgin when wanting to be in the cryptocurrency market. Although it is true that disbursing the value of these would be easier, the way in which these are created is through miners.
These are computational equipment that generate information in code to be able to create the blockchain that supports each cryptocurrency. That is to say, BitCoin, Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency do not come out of nowhere, they come precisely from these miners that generate the necessary information so that they can exist and, therefore, have value.
Putting them together is actually quite easy. What you need are basic pieces for an office automation assembly and, to give it mining power, one or more graphic cards that are responsible for providing the necessary computing power of the blockchain algorithm.
It is true that to do it on a large scale you need large devices integrated by large ASIC clusters, but it can also be done on a much smaller scale on home computers and this is how you can do it step by step.
- Build your team
To make a mining rig you don’t really need much in terms of high-end components. The only two components you should look at are your power supply and your or your graphics cards. Otherwise, almost anything is enough.
- Deciding what cryptocurrency you want to mine
It is true that BitCoin is currently around 20 thousand dollars per unit. However, this coin, for its very value, is increasingly difficult to mine. There are many other opportunities to mine cryptocurrencies and all of them will work in the same way and are based on the same algorithms.
Which cryptocurrency to mine will also depend on the power of your equipment as well as its layout and the components that make it up. If your miner will only return the cost of your parts after a long time with a cryptocurrency, look for the one that does it in the shortest time possible, because you cannot forget that all hardware has a very specific life time and, in addition, its Price varies and fluctuates for many uncontrollable variants.
- Enter a mining protocol
Once you have decided which cryptocurrency to mine, you just have to enter the mining commands on your computer. This means that the moment you do it, your components, in this case your graphics cards, will work uninterruptedly to provide data to the blockchain.
- Monitor miner performance
As soon as you enter the protocols, through the command of your preference, all you have to do is literally wait. Depending on the power of your mining system, it will be the amount or pieces of cryptocurrency that you will acquire over time. These many providers will assign it to you with dollar values, but you must continue to bear in mind that what you are doing is investing your components in cryptocurrencies and their fluctuation will also modify the amount that they will grant you.
Obviously, what you have left is to constantly monitor the performance of your parts and the condition of your miner. Being connected to the grid and electricity all the time, their energy consumption and thermal radiation is high, so they need a dry space with a stable temperature, if not controlled.
What hardware to use
There are no specific hardware recommendations to use. The same can serve a GTX 1060 as an RTX 3070. It is clear that the one with the highest raw computing power will provide better results, but cryptocurrency mining requires being efficient in its return capacity rather than in gross power.
Likewise, there are protocols that take better advantage of certain graphic cards and also motherboards with PCIe port extensions to be able to enter more and more GPUs to a single system, which requires only its computing capacity and not its capacity to condense or reproduce graphic information.
