Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys!

I'm still quite new to bitcoin and obviously still have a lot to learn. My question, what is mining and what makes it different from faucets?

Thank you and have an awesome Monday!  ;D

Mining is the creation of coins, for an old but still valid intro read this -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504530.0

Faucets are business that earn money by giving a way small amounts of bitcoin. Their income is commonly based on the ads you see. Some also let you do small tasks. There is a section dedicated to faucets -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=212.0

well mining is creating new coins which is made through the GPUs or ASIC ( advanced something somthing circuit... just google it) create huge amount of hash (low end can create like 10-100 Mega Hash, ASIC can be a few tera-hash) that helps secure the blockchain. The first hash that meets the difficulty requirement will be selected and the miners are awarded ( at the moment is 25BTC but the halving is coming soon!!!). Pools are just like huge miners which receive the hashes from individual and find the one who can meets the difficulty requirement. However pools still award for miners who certain difficulty like 1, 2, 100, 1000, 1 million or more. The amount of bitcoin you receive equals to proportion of share you submitted. For example, your share got the difficulty of 1 then you got 1 share, your share got the difficulty is 500 then you got 500 shares. Your amount of shares in 1 round is divided for the total shares of the pool is your proportion (PROP system). When your pool finds a block ( which means someone submitted a share that meets the requirement), the round will end ( I think so) and the pool will receive 25BTC and share the amount with the miners. For example if your proportion is 1% you will receive 0.25 BTC. However it depends on the system like PPS ( pay per share) PROP ( proportion system like in my example), PPLNS ( pay per last n share - just google not really understand it LOL). If you are a solo miners ( without pool) and you find a block, you will receive 25 BTC on your own.

Faucet just like its name, is all about dripping ;D . You will earn various amount of BTC but is really really small like 100 satoshis to 100000 satoshis ( depends on how rich the faucet is) by solving a captcha and receive it through faucetbox account, micro something I don't remember or xapo wallet but maybe it is through accumulating to some amount ( usuall 5500 satoshis).

Hope this will help you my friend! Good luck

For the easy answer is, for mining you need to have machine to mining bitcoin we call it antiminer. And machine work for you to earn bitcoin.

For faucet you don't need specific machine. But you need to work to earn bitcoin.

Mining is when you are obtaining bitcoin from solving blocks using a bitcoin mining machine, gou pay for the machines, the electricity and all, you get profit from it, so eventually it's an investment to make. While in faucets, you obtain bitcoin from the bitcoins of the other users. You will only spend your time in here and ofcourse internet and electricity. This is unfortunately unprofitable because you will only get small amounts of coins from this.

:) from profitably point of view, both are same.

sorry, but I couldn't resist.

Profitability is very nice right now. You won't be earning a few BTC per month as a small miner by doing faucets. But with winter coming in the North, the difficulty not raising by much and the BTC price right now being very good, this is a good time to mine, if you don't have an exorbitant electricity rate.

This is a simple summary. Bitcoin mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions or blockchain. This ledger of past transactions is called the block chain as it is a chain of blocks. The block chain serves to confirm transactions to the rest of the network as having taken place.
Bitcoin mining requires a miner or we can call it ASIC miner. There are too many types of asic miner like usb asic miner or a hardware miner like ant miner s3..
Before late year we have a pc that can mine without asic. But now we have no profitable mining for pc or laptop...

mining is done with expensive equipment that consume plenty of electricty, faucets is done with plenty of captcha spam, you can use 2captcha to automate it with a bot and resolve your pain of writing

with mining i believe there are still some fresh coins that can give you a etter profit than faucets

using cheap device for mining is worse than resolving captcha for the best faucets out there, which should give you 10k satoshi per hour

Finally, one new constructive comment after 4 or 5 repeated comments from people who don't bother to read the thread!

Since it takes so much money and effort to create a faucet site or a mining operation, I wonder which one might be more profitable (should someone have the resources to do it effectively).

It's really different things.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_faucet

Mining nowadays need an expensive equipment, free power, cool room.
Faucet actually good start for a beginners to understand how bitcoin transaction works(in practice), but if you earn with this method, it's totally waste your time.