Bitcoin Forum

I've gotten into mining only recently. I've had experience with mining monero for the last half a year, but only on regular PC's when they were idle... I've now started the process of building a mining rig.. and I keep seeing everyone is mining ethereum, and I was wondering.. Am I missing something? Is ethereum more profitable?

Please can someone explain it to a noob? :)

http://whattomine.com/

Ok but why would anyone mine anything else than what's at the top then?

@puwaha, thank you so much for the reference. This is what most of us newbies needed.

You can mine other coins for speculation.  You believe in the coin, its functionality, or believe it will be pumped by a whale soon.

Think of it like a "hot stock tip."

but surely the main motive for mining is profit. So why mine anything other than the most profitable coin? even if only to sell the coins later to buy other coins.

Because profit and long term profit are not the same?

Ok but if you want to invest in a coin for a long time, isn't a better strategy than mining it at less efficiency worse than mining a more profitable coin, lets say zcash according to the website above, then selling those zcash coins for lets say monero, if you're long on monero.

My question is how come anyone even mines on less profitable coins? Because of loyalty? Or what? What am I not getting? :)

Since you can't directly exchange lots of coins, but have to go through BTC, thats a lot of conversion fees along the road

That's really not a good argument tho, surely. Those fees are nothing compared to mining differences according to that website.
So am i being unbelievably stupid and not seeing the big picture (which is completely possible lol), or do you not understand what I'm asking, or do you intentionally not tell me? :)

Edit: Or a fourth option... that website is bogus..