How do I start mining?

Question

I have only known about Bitcoin for maybe a month now.

I don't know what I need to start mining, but I had these two programs that were said to be needed for the Bitcoins. I deleted these programs and thought maybe I shouldn't mess with all this, but I just can't do that.

Please, any help on starting the process of mining and the way everything works would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

To be honest, you came in a little too late. Mining is now done by ASIC's (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). These are chips (like the ones Intel and AMD make) that are only capable of hashing SHA-256. These chips are very limited (they can't run any other software), but can do what they were made to do extremely fast.

An Intel 'universal' CPU can do somwhere around 1.2 million SHA-256 calculations (it is also running an Operating System in most cases), whereas an ASIC chip can calculate these hashes at around 4 billion a second, per chip. That's 4000 times as much. Also, when these chips are made to connect over Serial or USB, you could hook up 100 of these on one computer or Raspberry pi. It is quite difficult to scale up CPU's the same way.

Your best bet at mining would be to buy an ASIC miner and do a lot of research (preferably in opposite order; research first...). It is really easy to buy a miner right now and not make ROI (Return On Investment) because of the rising difficulty in Bitcoin. The rise of difficulty is stagnating a bit, but it is still rising. So please do some more reseach and know what you're getting yourself into.

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Source: I have been mining myself for over a year now. I started out with graphics card mining and actually lost 1700 euros (2040 bucks) on the equipment. I now own ASIC miners and make a bit of profit every month. It takes me about 10 hours a week for maintenance, financial administration, trading/selling of (alt-)coins and I am still 'in the red' for about 800 euros (960 bucks). I like it a lot, even though my wife is not so happy with the space the miners take, the electrical bill being 400 euros higher each month, our house sounding like a server center and me spending more time on mining than on something else. Also, in the summer it's like I live in the tropics, with the heat generated by the miners.