Mining the most profitable coin vs. Less profitable coin

[davemanet]

Hi, can anyone help explain how mining a less profitable coin is a good idea?

For example, say Ethereum is #1 most profitable.

Say Ubiq is #5 most profitable.

Some people will still prefer to mine Ubiq, even if it's #5.  Why is that?  Isn't it smarter to just mine Ethereum since it's most profitable, and then use the earnings to buy Ubiq?  You will get more Ubiq per day wouldn't you?

[danialzo]

Hi, can anyone help explain how mining a less profitable coin is a good idea?

For example, say Ethereum is #1 most profitable.

Say Ubiq is #5 most profitable.

Some people will still prefer to mine Ubiq, even if it's #5.  Why is that?  Isn't it smarter to just mine Ethereum since it's most profitable, and then use the earnings to buy Ubiq?  You will get more Ubiq per day wouldn't you?

This is a million dollar question and nobody can answer you with 100% certainty. If you go through this forum you'll find out that so many people asked the similar questions (same context) hoping someone can guide them or provide the "Best" answer!

It's all up to your research, opinion, analysis, believe, speculation towards a coin. Some take the easy way and mine the most profitable, some other do research to discover the full potential of a less profitable coin to profit in future. Each strategy has its pros and cons. Who can guarantee the current most profitable coin will retain or increase in value? And who can give you assurance that "this" less profitable coin will skyrocket? 

[davemanet]

Hi, can anyone help explain how mining a less profitable coin is a good idea?

For example, say Ethereum is #1 most profitable.

Say Ubiq is #5 most profitable.

Some people will still prefer to mine Ubiq, even if it's #5.  Why is that?  Isn't it smarter to just mine Ethereum since it's most profitable, and then use the earnings to buy Ubiq?  You will get more Ubiq per day wouldn't you?

This is a million dollar question and nobody can answer you with 100% certainty. If you go through this forum you'll find out that so many people asked the similar questions (same context) hoping someone can guide them or provide the "Best" answer!

It's all up to your research, opinion, analysis, believe, speculation towards a coin. Some take the easy way and mine the most profitable, some other do research to discover the full potential of a less profitable coin to profit in future. Each strategy has its pros and cons. Who can guarantee the current most profitable coin will retain or increase in value? And who can give you assurance that "this" less profitable coin will skyrocket? 

To me, it seems the math proves the point though.

If you mine the #1 coin and make $100 in a day > Mine #5 alternative coin and make $80 in a day

If you take the $100 you made, you can buy more of the $80 coin, you are better off, right?

I may be wrong though but it seems pretty clear.

[maxmeme]

If you think certain coin to have value and will go up in long term, mining a less profitable coin at the moment is better than mining most profitable coins. Everyone else will be mining the most profitable coin. So you will get less coin compare to the less profitable coin. Do own study and stick to the coin you think the best.

[danialzo]

Hi, can anyone help explain how mining a less profitable coin is a good idea?

For example, say Ethereum is #1 most profitable.

Say Ubiq is #5 most profitable.

Some people will still prefer to mine Ubiq, even if it's #5.  Why is that?  Isn't it smarter to just mine Ethereum since it's most profitable, and then use the earnings to buy Ubiq?  You will get more Ubiq per day wouldn't you?

This is a million dollar question and nobody can answer you with 100% certainty. If you go through this forum you'll find out that so many people asked the similar questions (same context) hoping someone can guide them or provide the "Best" answer!

It's all up to your research, opinion, analysis, believe, speculation towards a coin. Some take the easy way and mine the most profitable, some other do research to discover the full potential of a less profitable coin to profit in future. Each strategy has its pros and cons. Who can guarantee the current most profitable coin will retain or increase in value? And who can give you assurance that "this" less profitable coin will skyrocket? 

To me, it seems the math proves the point though.

If you mine the #1 coin and make $100 in a day > Mine #5 alternative coin and make $80 in a day

If you take the $100 you made, you can buy more of the $80 coin, you are better off, right?

I may be wrong though but it seems pretty clear.

Theoretically yes. If you are referring to whattomine.com profit calculation based on Current Profitability + Current Difficulty , you need to consider a possible scenario that everybody else would think the same and jump in to mine that, by the time you mined enough of that coin, you'd try exchange with your favourite coin, right? are you sure the value is the same as when you started mining it?

[h311m4n]

Hi, can anyone help explain how mining a less profitable coin is a good idea?

For example, say Ethereum is #1 most profitable.

Say Ubiq is #5 most profitable.

Some people will still prefer to mine Ubiq, even if it's #5.  Why is that?  Isn't it smarter to just mine Ethereum since it's most profitable, and then use the earnings to buy Ubiq?  You will get more Ubiq per day wouldn't you?

This is a million dollar question and nobody can answer you with 100% certainty. If you go through this forum you'll find out that so many people asked the similar questions (same context) hoping someone can guide them or provide the "Best" answer!

It's all up to your research, opinion, analysis, believe, speculation towards a coin. Some take the easy way and mine the most profitable, some other do research to discover the full potential of a less profitable coin to profit in future. Each strategy has its pros and cons. Who can guarantee the current most profitable coin will retain or increase in value? And who can give you assurance that "this" less profitable coin will skyrocket? 

To me, it seems the math proves the point though.

If you mine the #1 coin and make $100 in a day > Mine #5 alternative coin and make $80 in a day

If you take the $100 you made, you can buy more of the $80 coin, you are better off, right?

I may be wrong though but it seems pretty clear.

Meh.

I used to stick to the most profitable, but you end up being a small fish in an ocean of farm whales and nicehash a-holes where the difficulty just grows constantly and you're mining crumbs. As soon as I was unable to mine 1 ETH a day, I switched. I didn't like the whole diff bomb BS either. Miners made ETH what it is today and I felt like Vitamin Butterflick just told us all to go screw ourselves. This made me realize that just because something is extremely profitable to mine, doesn't necessarily make it the right choice at my level.

I also used to think like you, get the most profitable then sell it to buy other coins. Sounds good,  but doesn't work, unless you do this all day long and have no full time job, family, house etc to take care of.

What has been way more profitable to me has been to look for coins that are easy to mine and accumulate while using algorithms that also use less energy, like cryptonight. While everyone was going mad on ethash to mine 0.5 ETHs a day, I was happily mining my XMR, then switched to sumo when no one cared about it (it reached 10 bucks today) and then to electroneum.

The key is really to find a coin that has a solid project, community, dev etc. Most of the time, the patience pays off once the coins starts to shine and gather interest.

Then again, you need to do this research yourself...

[treanski]

most profitable is to mine what is not on whattomine  

regarding whattomine i would do ~0.0028btc/day with my hashrate, im doing around ~0.0048btc/day by doing own research

whattomine is even a worse cancer then nicehash

[oricatmos]

I like whattomine because lazy miners (the most) go to first profitable coins in his ranking and let miners who made his own research mining more profitable coins without raising difficulty

[davemanet]

When you guys say to do your own research for other coins that are more profitable, what does that usually mean?  I thought that whattomine listed all of the profitable coins.  Where does one start to research other profitable coins?

[oricatmos]

Everyone has their method, you should look for your own. But if you feel confident with whattomine go on.

[davemanet]

Everyone has their method, you should look for your own. But if you feel confident with whattomine go on.

Oh no I'm not confident in whattomine lol, that's the whole point of the thread.  I'm starting to dig around but not quite sure.  I thought that whattomine was doing research already compared to most beginners that just do ETH.

[nsummy]

Everyone has their method, you should look for your own. But if you feel confident with whattomine go on.

You always see this response, but will never get a straight answer as to what "research" people do beyond whattomine.  A pro tip with whattomine is that many of the coins they list, are not listed on that main page.  You have to go to the coins section, where there are many more.  There are also some coins that don't appear on there at all.  If you want a good starting point to do basic research, start going here daily:  https://coinmarketcap.com/new/  Any coin without the asterisk can be mined.  Usually the coins on this list have only been around for a few months, so they are good if you want to speculate.

In response to why someone would mine something less profitable:  Profitability can change quickly.  If you switch every time something is slightly more profitable you will lose in the end.  Different coins require different overclocking, miners, etc.  Not saying you should continue to mine something that is significantly less profitable, but if you are talking about a couple of bucks a day, I think its best to stick with a coin that you think will appreciate in value.  For example I have been mining Zcoin for the past few months, haven't sold a single coin and it has been extremely profitable. 

[Alexertor]

With own research I can find a coin in his early stage not so profitable at the moment, but later it can be very good.
But that is always a risk.

[oricatmos]

Look for example dogecoindark, I remember it was born as a copycat of dogecoin, the same algo , similar specifications.. I was mining this shit with a couple of gridseeds because the more profitable scrypt coins like litecoin or dogecoin have super high difficulty. But in 2016 was renamed to "verge" and you know what has happened to it in 2017...I admit it was good luck.
Always the question must be: Do you want bitcoin now or don't you mind waiting?

[chriss0r]

Are you talking about Solomining or Poolmining? With poolmining some altcoins bring the same profit like monero. At the moment i think you can gain a lot of profit with poolmining BTX (Bitcore). With your own hardware the  don't try BTC. It's waste of time and hardware.

But maybe compare by yourself at whattomine.com