Bitcoin Mining - Beginner

[millz90]

Hey guys....new to mining and have done a ton of research but i have some questions.

I was thinking of buying a Antminer R4 to start with and a bitmain APW5 PSU, 1300W-2600W power supply....Is that good to start with?

With that, do i basically buy the miner and power supply then hook a monitor up to the R4 connect to a pool and start mining?

Also, with the R4, does that mean i can ONLY mine Bitcoin and not others like Facton, Feathercoin, etc?

Thanks for your help!

[Wusolini]

Hey guys....new to mining and have done a ton of research but i have some questions.

I was thinking of buying a Antminer R4 to start with and a bitmain APW5 PSU, 1300W-2600W power supply....Is that good to start with?

Hi millz90. Yes, the R4 indeed is the most efficient homeminer. But they are quite faulty and lot of users complains about their reliability (you should count with some risk)
Also Bitmain is sold out at the moment so try to search in forum board: Marketplace > Goods > Computer hardware.

With that, do i basically buy the miner and power supply then hook a monitor up to the R4 connect to a pool and start mining?

No monitor, the miner has ethernet connector. Check some youtube tutorials for installation.
And pay the el. bill.

Also, with the R4, does that mean i can ONLY mine Bitcoin and not others like Facton, Feathercoin, etc?

Seems you haven't done a ton of search as you said.
With R4 you can mine any SHA256 coin (BTC,NMC,PPC...). Feathercoin is NEOSCRYPT and can be mined with GPU (check https://whattomine.com for other popular coins and their algorithms)

Thanks for your help!

You're welcome and good luck

[Biplop420]

Yes I like mining. Bitcoin R Best Currency

[noone000]

Hi everyone, I'm a bit new to the whole bitcoin mining thing so I was wondering if someone could explain to me the gist of it. A friend of mine tried to explain the whole concept of how people have to use very powerful computers to verify certain transactions or blocks or something and how this is sort of like a mathematical puzzle that is very difficult to solve, and how when someone solves it they get bitcoins for it. However, my question is where do those bitcoins they get even come from? Is money just made from thin air?

[actmyname]

Hi everyone, I'm a bit new to the whole bitcoin mining thing so I was wondering if someone could explain to me the gist of it. A friend of mine tried to explain the whole concept of how people have to use very powerful computers to verify certain transactions or blocks or something and how this is sort of like a mathematical puzzle that is very difficult to solve, and how when someone solves it they get bitcoins for it. However, my question is where do those bitcoins they get even come from? Is money just made from thin air?

Mining is a little complicated to explain but essentially you have machines brute-forcing hashes (since they are one-way only) to receive a reward. This is PoW and the difficulty of doing so is dependent on the network and adjusts accordingly. The bitcoins that are sent to the miner that succeeds in hashing a value lower than the target (refer to the Bitcoin Dev. Guide) consist of the mining reward (right now at 12.5 BTC) and the transaction fees in their chosen block. This is why paying a higher fee/byte ratio will get your transaction confirmed faster since miners will want to earn the highest amount for their work.

Check out this link for more information, because it's a pretty interesting read: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#proof-of-work