Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone,

I am coming back after a long break "around 8 years or so" and wanted to get back into mining a few bitcoins.

First off I read the newbie posts and stickies and was not clear on which path I should take so that's why I am posting here. Something that is new is all the forms of different crypto currencies floating around and this new "cloud mining" which I am not interested in.

I have a few machines at home which I want to start mining on. No they are not S9's, they are just home PC's which I would like to get mining some coins. I also have a few computers which I will setup at work to help earn a few extra bucks each month.

My goal is very simple, turn enough of a profit every month to be able to put towards a savings account and slowly watch it grow. Nothing more than that. I am not trying to "get rich quick" or make thousands a month. I simply wish to "partake" in the venture.

The problem is things have grown so much in an organic sense I don't know which wallet to use or which software to use for mining.

I want to go with the safest solution and stick with the mainline currency being Bitcoin and the mining is being done in the USA.

So if anyone can help me with which:

1.) Wallet to use for Bitcoin mining
2.) Which software to use on Windows PC's for mining Bitcoins
3.) Any additional information you find relevant for a returning miner

I would be very grateful.

Again thank you to all who read and take the time to reply!

If you want to mine Bitcoin you need ASIC. You will get nothing if you try to mine Bitcoin with CPU or GPU (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining#Hardware).

If you try to mine with CPU, there are a few coins you can mine, but there's a good chance your electricity would cost more than the worth of those coins.
If you have very good GPUs you can mine altcoins with those, there you can get profit indeed, but I have a feeling it's not the case.

Unfortunately for you the mining is much much harder than years ago.

Thank you for the prompt response!

The two strongest machines I have have a 8700k cpu and 1080 gpu and the other has a 1060.

My price per kwh is 0.17$.

Are altcoins the item I should be after then?

So your saying the time of mining from several PCs is over?

Yes after looking it appears I would have to go after an alternate Cryptocurrency.

But which one?
Which software?
Which network?

It seems this entire process has grown much more than what it was. This is where I and many other people need a little help and direction.

Thank you all again for your efforts!

I recommend you read thru some of the results from last month / few months for google with mine 1080 site:bitcointalk.org
From what I know ETH can be a good choice, also some of the coins with algo Lyra2v2. It would be quite some work to check for more of the coins what hash rate you get and what rewards can you expect.
Or you can use NiceHash, which will do the work for you, but it has higher fees.

Edit: maybe you move this to altcoin mining subforum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=160.0), since the actual miners could give more precise answers.

Yes please move this thread to its appropriate sub forum if need be.

So I spent a good amount of time reading before actually posting here and one thing I read was there are a lot of fakes out there in regards to mining. I read that some wallets and networks are scams.

These are all things I am trying to avoid. I will look into ETH as well.

It's you or a mod that can move this.
About scams, indeed, there are plenty of scams and (scammy) forks.

I think that until you get on track a good option for you is to start with NiceHash. While you read and learn more you'll be able to improve this. Then you'll see what coins you mine better and can ask more specifically what miner and wallet you should use for those specific coins. And NiceHash converts everything into Bitcoin for you, so a normal Bitcoin wallet (Electrum? (https://electrum.org/#download)) will do.

The only flaw in my logic is that if your income is too small, you may have to wait more until you get Bitcoin payments than altcoin (smaller, cheaper) ones.

I found this review about NiceHash: http://jkcrypto.com/nicehash-review-pros-and-cons/

Pretty good read, but tells me I need to be looking elsewhere.

Its mentioned pool-mining but I was reading about scams with these as well.

It seems there is a lot of risk involved unless you go with an easy one-stop -shop solution like NiceHash.

The site you've found is pretty good, it explains it fair enough. But I respect your choice, let's try something else.

Something else that came into my mind this morning is multipool. Something like https://miningpoolhub.com/ There you can get the coin you are mining or Bitcoin, you can mine one coin or more. They even claim to have multi-algo mining, which may be best to see how your stats go (I've never used that, even in the days I've been mining a little)
Maybe it's a direction to look closer to your needs.

I expect that after experimenting a little you'll settle for one coin and one pool. Until then you should not mind if you don't start it perfect.