Is mining still profitable?

over 3 years ago

Ways to earn with Crypto currency

Of course, looking for ways to earn with cryptocurrency is something we are all concerned with. And that there are several ways to achieve that will certainly not be a secret. I am therefore not telling anything new at all.

By now we all know how to find our way in blogging, we know how to earn cryptocurrency by buying it and seeing the value of our tokens increase. But we also all know the pain of a major price drop for the token you purchased. It is one of the risks in cryptocurrency.

No technical explanation for trading from me

And it is precisely the price fluctuations that make it a market in which you must be constantly on your guard, but where you can also profit from it. I am not at all familiar enough with the secrets of trading to write a technical explanation about it. And because I consider myself quite a 'newbie' on the traders market, I also find it very difficult to make huge profits. I understand too little about trading charts, I have no technical knowledge of the candlesticks, I lack all the knowledge about the important triangles that one needs to be able to pay attention to in order to be able to predict somewhat what the price will do, and as a result are not yet able to take big profits. Also, because at times I threatened to suffer from the FOMO, and so quickly changed my order, which turned the big profit that I had actually hoped to grab into 10 to 15 satoshis at the most. Well, long story short ... I urgently need more knowledge about trading and I really need to learn more about it so that I can 'read the cards' and understand what people are talking about when talking about candlesticks and important triangles .

Could MINING be the thing?

Because this knowledge cannot be gained 'overnight', of course, I decided to read about mining after a good conversation with my partner. After all, we both have PCs, and I feel less of a newbie when it comes to PC. I'm not so afraid to change things about that. And installing a program is also something I'm not so afraid of. My partner is even more technical than I am with his IT past and is certainly not afraid to install and figure things out. Hell, he was even willing to invest in a new graphics card if it turned out that mining could be really lucrative these days. And believe me, when he said that I almost jumped in the air, because this is the first time in all my time in crypto that he's showing any serious interest.

Searching the internet for information

So okay, look for information on mining. Because I've heard several people say that mining crypto, especially ETH, is still really worth it. And that you can even mine with a Raspberry Pi. Now that would be great fun, because we also have a Raspberry Pi 4 here ...

If you are now also interested in mining, keep an eye on three things. You need a PC, you need internet. A stable connection. At least 20mb / s is recommended. And you need a CPU or GPU. In general, you can say here that the better your graphics card is, the better you can mine.

What is mining?

To put it very simply, mining is placing a new block on the blockchain. For this, your PC must be able to solve mathematical calculations at a fast pace. And the PC that did that first gets the block reward. Sounds very simple ... But is it that simple? And more important than that ... is it still lucrative? Can anyone mine?

For this we have to consider a number of things. Since the demand and interest in Bitcoin has increased enormously, and many people discovered that mining could make a nice penny with it, mining for Bitcoin has become an impossible task for most people. It is best to imagine this with the following picture in mind. You are on an island where you are 100% sure there is a treasure chest hidden there. You are alone on the island AND you also have a map WHERE that treasure is hidden. Easy to find, right? That was a bit of mining for Bitcoin in the early years of Bitcoin. You knew for sure that you could mine Bitcoins if your equipment was suitable. And that wasn't even terribly difficult in the beginning. Most PCs with a graphics card could mine.

Later it got more difficult. Compare it with the fact that on the island where you were previously only looking for that treasure, more and more people came to look for that same treasure. This greatly reduces the chance that you will be the one to find the treasure.

That is also what happened with the mining of Bitcoin, more and more people started mining, and the equipment used for this became more and more powerful. The chance that you could put the block on the blockchain with your PC and therefore could credit the block reward to your balance became smaller and smaller.

Now there are also professional search teams, with sonar equipment, and tracking dogs on the island to search for the treasure. The chance that you will find the treasury decreases even further and is almost equal to 0%

Wait! Bitcoin is not the only one!

That is the situation today with Bitcoin mining for the average person. Large mining farms have sprung up, huge networks with computing power have been bundled together and you as a loner with your PC cannot compete with that. The earnings will no longer be proportional to the costs you incur for electricity, for example. In addition, you will need very strong equipment and that usually requires a considerable investment.

Nowadays it can be said with certainty that mining Bitcoin is no longer possible for private individuals.

Now of course I know that there is more cryptocurrency that you can mine. For example, you can also mine Ethereum, you can mine Monero, you can mine Zcash and these are just a few examples.

Finding some mining calculators

Because I was curious about what it would yield, I tried to find that information. I have no experience with it myself, but what I could see so quickly is that it is no longer really profitable in the Netherlands. First, we would have to invest in a graphics card, and what I found is that the Nvidia Geforce 3090 delivered the best results, which would amount to an investment of roughly 2000 euros for a graphics card. You could then earn an average of around 6 euros per day with this AFTER deduction of the electricity costs. And that is under ideal circumstances… because the internet connection would also need an upgrade for this. We currently have a very slow internet connection. This has everything to do with the fact that we live in the countryside, but a switch to fiber optic internet is a possibility. Which, however, does increase the monthly costs. Which in fact would reduce the profit per day. A quick simple calculation taught me that mining is not profitable at all with those investments and that you have to mine for at least a year to earn back your investment. If the rewards remain the same, you could expect that you would be in the plus after a year of mining… but making money is actually not the case in the first year.

Whether mining is lucrative varies per situation

Now I dare not argue that mining CANNOT be lucrative, because of course a lot depends on the equipment you already have at home AND the costs you spend on electricity in the country where you live. But for me, it can be said with certainty that it is no longer profitable to join. The investments I would have to make are TOO high compared to the earnings I could get. If you are interested, I would recommend you to do your own research very careful because maybe it IS profitable for you!

So looking for a different way and very quickly immerse myself in trading, because, I really feel that it must be possible to make some profit there!

For the time being, I think I have to buy myself some more LBI, because that is increasing well in any case.

And if you are not too sure how you can make profits, I would suggest buying some LBI because there I promise you that you will make profit.

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