Programs for mining cryptocurrencies on a home computer. Current programs for mining

21.10.2019

Bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin, ether - on every node of the World Wide Web, calls to mine cryptocoins and buy power for cloud mining come across every now and then. And someone buys equipment to collect their home crypto-farm or buys ready-made ones. However, iron alone is not enough, special programs for cryptocurrency mining are also needed. I will briefly tell you about the most popular ones today.

Yes, this topic is very relevant now, and many users strive to make money on the Internet precisely on mining, with their subsequent exchange for dollars, rubles and other currencies in special exchangers, for example, or. Someone converts virtual currency into real money, someone uses it to pay for purchases on the Internet, and someone invests bitcoin in cryptocurrency exchanges and earns even more there.

Today in the article

Programs for cryptocurrency mining at home

Do you know, dear readers, that you can practice at home. You just need to stock up on the necessary equipment of proper quality and install one of the programs available on the Internet on your system. Fortunately, during the existence of the cryptocurrency market, a lot of them have been created, and on the network you can choose software for any, as they say, taste and color.

If you take a non-professional, philistine level, then any will do, however, in the case of professional approach, it is necessary to carefully select software based on the characteristics of the hardware. Professionals use console miners, prescribing everything down to the smallest detail, thereby getting a high performance boost. For beginners, mining programs are suitable, which I can recommend below.

Mining on 50Miner

The first program on the list is called "50Miner". It will be enough to start mining crypto coins. This assembly is a very well optimized console client, wrapped in a well-made graphical shell. To test this program, you can use absolutely any device, up to an ordinary laptop with not the most powerful hardware. On it, a beginner will be able to understand how mining works.

To start, you just need to register on one of the pools and get an account there. Further, on the main panel of 50Miner, all information, including the worker number and password, is entered in special lines. Finally, the program is launched and the mining process begins. The money will come to the pool, from which they can then be withdrawn by paying the appropriate commission to the pool.

BFGMiner

Configurable directly from the main screen. Nothing needs to be changed here to get a well-functioning program. The address of the wallet and pool is indicated at the very beginning, after which the mining process starts.

You can download BFGMiner on the forum

Ufasoft Miner

It does not have a graphics core, as it was created for professionals. It can be mastered in a few minutes by using one of the guides on YouTube. In a specially created batch file, the miner prescribes the address of the pool, the mining algorithm and the wallet of one or another. Further, all control is carried out through the console using special commands.

You can download Ufasoft Miner on the official website

CGMiner

More classic mining software, considered a reference in this business. CGMiner was created specifically for professionals, it should not be used by a beginner, because during configuration there is interaction with the executable files and the console.

You can download CGMiner on the forum

NiceHash Miner

And finally, NiceHash Miner is a program that I use myself. Convenient graphical shell with an intuitive interface. The peculiarity of this program is that it automatically selects the most profitable algorithm for your GPU / CPU equipment at a given time, which allows you to maximize mining profits. All mined crypto coins are eventually converted into bitcoin, which settles either on your NiceHash or on an external one. In general, work on autopilot. More about this program, dear readers, I will write soon in my review.

HF17TOPBTC3 Mining is the process of extracting cryptocurrencies. Everything is quite simple: you download and run the program, it starts its work, solving cryptographic problems and opening new blocks of transactions. For each open block, a reward is issued in the form of a cryptocurrency.

But before an inexperienced "miner" there are quite a few questions: what program to install for which cryptocurrency? Is mining difficult? How much can you really earn and what else is needed for this? We will try to answer all these questions.

Installing any software for mining does not involve any difficulties. You just need to choose the right version that matches the power of your PC and the equipment you use. In order to efficiently and efficiently engage in mining, you should install an additional application for monitoring the state of the computer. This will help protect your PC from overheating and excessive processor wear. Keep in mind that mining any cryptocurrency takes a very long time, so it is very important to choose a CPU for the required parameters.

1.50Miner
A fairly common software, which is a specific interface for several leading miners. To get started, you need to specify user data in the program, no complicated authorization. It is very compact, can be used without installation and carried directly on the Flash media. In this case, all your settings and operating parameters will be valid on any device. The software works with 4 miners: Cgminer, Phoenix, Diablo, Poclbm.

2. BFGMiner
Console mining software that supports mining on video adapters, FPGA, PC airflow control. Of the advantages, there is also the possibility of additional computer settings, setting pool parameters, as well as support for Scrypt.

3. Ufasoft Miner
Another console client that is quickly installed on a computer. Can be installed maximum temperature, at which mining stops; change the number of threads and cores, change the address of the pool, configure almost any element of the system.

4. CGMiner
Intended for use by experienced users with high performance computers. Among the options - improving the parameters of the video card, setting up pools, reaching the limit value of Mhash / sec, convenient system settings without overloads.

5. DiabloMiner
Another option for experienced enthusiasts with a high performance graphics card. Versions available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS. 79 series.. and Nvidia 8 series... and above video adapters are supported. There is an option to change operating modes and actual pools.

Ethereum Mining Software - Ethminer

The best and most widely used client for . It allows you to extract ether using a video card. To do this, you will need a graphics processor with at least 2 GB of memory (experts recommend AMD cards), at least a 2-core processor with a frequency of more than 2.4 GHz, at least 4 GB of RAM, of which 2 must be free, and installed Visual C++ Redistributable libraries.

The increase in the complexity of ether mining has certain features. Even at the very beginning of the existence of cryptocurrency, the mining difficulty indicator was 1.3 Thesh. On the further development events will be affected by the new Ethash crypto algorithm and a large number of distributed coins in 2014.

Fundamentally new technology work for a long time allowed to engage in efficient mining only in solo mode on a wallet, which was quite difficult to install, and this scared away a large number of miners. But when the price of ETH began to critically rise to 9,000% of its original value in 2016, miners turned their attention back to Ethereum.

If you don’t have time to figure it out, then pay attention to these reliable cloud companies:

Service	Crypt	Discount
hashflare		Cheaper by 3%. The code: HF17TOPBTC3 Reliable payouts since 2014!
Genesis Mining		You save 3%. The code: 7VA5Uw Service pays since 2013!

Among the advantages of this official miner is the management of CPU power consumption and random access memory. The program independently determines new blocks, maximum efficiency and minimum costs. The software supports work simultaneously in several pools and has a convenient customizable menu. For the most efficient mining of LTC, you need a graphics adapter with a 5850 series chip or more.

A feature of the mining of lightcoins is the fact that when mining, the CPU is used more, but working with the help of the GPU is much less efficient. In addition, the formation frequency of Litecoins is much higher than that of BTC - only 150 seconds. Therefore, the execution of transactions is faster.

Dash is the new name for XCoin and Darkcoin cryptocurrencies. Dash is a decentralized payment system that uses Darksend technology for anonymous transactions. In 2015, the system was in fifth place in the cryptocurrency capitalization rating. The main differences between Dash and BTC:

In Dash, transactions are completely anonymous, while bitcoin still has a digital footprint.
Dash uses several cryptographic algorithms at once in a special combination
Dash mining is less energy intensive.

The latest version of SGMiner is 5.1 with updated Neoscrypt support. The update doubles Dash mining performance on AMD GPUs. However, version 5.1 is categorically not suitable for NVidia cards, so if you own such a GPU, you will have to look for and download an older version of the miner. SGMiner 5.1 supports AMD video card drivers 14.6-14.7. On Radeon R9 280X cards, the power is about 250-280 kHash / s, on R9 270X - 120-130 kHash / s, on Radeon R9 290-290X - 300-320 kHash.

Namecoin is one of the first forks of Bitcoin. Transactions within the system are related to keeping the DNS-domain name binding up to date. This is the main difference between this cryptocurrency and bitcoin. Namecoins can be mined together with BTC on the same miners, which is very convenient and does not reduce work productivity. The mined coins are used to pay for domains and services for their registration, or the owner can exchange them for Bitcoin.

There is only one official miner for Namecoin mining - you can download it on the official cryptocurrency website - namecoin.info. There you need to go to the Download tab and select the version that matches your OS. Download and install the program, and then create a bitcoin.conf file in the C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Namecoin folder with the following parameters:

rpcuser=your_user
rpcpassword=your_pass
rpcport=8336
daemon=1
If you plan to mine cryptocurrency in solo mode, change the fourth parameter to server=1.

Before you download and run the miner, you must first figure out what equipment you will use for mining. Mining on modern processors is not efficient, since they give no more than a couple of tens of Khash / sec. If you still want to “play around” with dogecoins on the processor, the Cpuminer client is suitable for you, the setup of which is quite simple and fast.

When choosing among video cards, you should pay attention to the fact that ATI graphics processors in the case of dogecoins work more efficiently than Nvidia due to shader units. For ATI video adapters, you need to download sgminer or cgminer 3.72 (this is the option, since later versions lack Scrypt support). Cudaminer is used to receive cryptocurrency with NVidia products.

Surely, almost everyone who is just starting to get acquainted with bitcoin wants to mine it on their own computer, and not on a cryptocurrency exchange or something else. We hasten to disappoint you: today it is already unrealistic. Even two or three years ago it was possible, but then large investors saw the huge potential for profit from bitcoin mining and invested heavily in the development of specialized chips.

This led to the emergence of specialized devices called ASICs (an abbreviation for the English application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit for special purposes), designed exclusively for cryptocurrency mining. The speed of bitcoin mining using ASICs has increased hundreds of times compared to ordinary home computers. Due to the growth in the power of the bitcoin network, the complexity of mining cryptocurrency increased, after which it became impossible to do this on a stationary computer.

Bitcoin mining plant

Don't get upset!

Due to the fact that Bitcoin is open source, independent developers have started to launch many alternative cryptocurrencies for a variety of purposes. Such cryptocurrencies are usually called forks or altcoins. The developers, creating their own cryptocurrencies, pursued different goals, so the forks with altcoins came out different. Some, for example, allow you to get more coins or provide a faster transfer rate. So, the third most popular cryptocurrency - litecoin (litecoin) - is also a fork of bitcoin.

So what's the point of this? It's simple: due to the fact that ASIC chips are released only for a specialized cryptocurrency mining encryption algorithm, such as SHA-256 (Bitcoin) and SCRYPT (Litecoin), some independent developers have released their cryptocurrencies with a different algorithm, under which ASIC devices does not exist. This is done so that the power of the network, and consequently, the complexity of mining altcoin, does not grow to huge values. Such crypto-currencies can be mined on ordinary computers, and we will figure out how to do this and how many coins can be mined further.

Bitcoin mining is not for us, but there are other cryptocurrencies!

So, what is needed for cryptocurrency mining and what, in fact, will we mine? Instructions in several stages:

Choosing a cryptocurrency for mining
Choosing a mining pool
Choosing programs for mining
Setting up and running mining programs
Withdraw the mined coins to your wallet or to the wallet of the exchange

The mining speed of any cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, is measured in hashes per second. At the time of this writing, the actual unit of measurement for mining speed is kh/s (kilohash per second). You and I need to find out how many kh / s our computer can give out. Mining speed depends on the characteristics of your video card. For example, let's take NVIDIA GTX 580, the average mining speed on which will be 220 kh/s. You can see what speed your video card will give out at this link.

How to understand which cryptocurrency is best to mine today? Two popular sites will help us with this: coinwarz and whattomine, where we will see summary tables of all existing cryptocurrencies that can be mined, as well as their mining algorithms.

For us, important indicators are Revenue / Profit (per day), which means “remuneration / profit (per day)”, and the Exchange Volume column, which means the volume of coins that we can sell on the exchange at such a price in order to get exactly that the profit that we see in the Revenue/Profit (per day) column. We advise you to exchange mined coins for bitcoins once a day so as not to lose profit if the altcoin price suddenly goes down (and this happens quite often).

Choosing a Cryptocurrency for Mining

So, we have chosen the most profitable cryptocurrency for us, at the time of writing this article it is Feathercoin (FTC) with the NeoScrypt mining algorithm. We enter our mining speed in the table and we get that we will be able to mine cryptocurrency for 96 cents per day, or $28 per month (excluding electricity costs).

Choosing a pool for mining

After choosing a cryptocurrency for mining, we need to find a pool in which we will mine it. Of course, you can mine “solo”, that is, alone, but it’s more efficient to join forces with other miners and mine in a pool.

A pool is a site where many small miners unite and work together to mine cryptocurrencies. The more power of the pool, the more chances to find the right block and get more coins. Pool sites are usually listed on the official cryptocurrency websites in the Pool section or in thematic forums such as Bitcoin Talk. The main criteria for choosing a pool are the total mining power of your cryptocurrency and the commission.

Choosing a mining program

The most relevant mining programs today are sgminer and ccMiner.

You can download sgminer for Windows.
You can download ccMiner for Windows here.

Launching the mining program

Setting up and running a mining program deserves a separate article, which will soon appear on our website.

Installing a wallet or registering on an exchange

The last step remains. You will need a wallet into which you will transfer the mined coins. The official wallet can always be downloaded from the official website of the cryptocurrency, but there is another, simpler option. You find your cryptocurrency on the coinmarketcap website, look at which exchanges it is traded on, and choose the one with the largest Volume, that is, the trading volume. Register on this exchange, open a personal account, find your cryptocurrency, click “Deposit” to deposit funds, and get an address for your coins. When you mine the first coins in the pool, you can easily transfer them to your wallet on the exchange. After that, the choice is yours: either you immediately exchange them for a more stable cryptocurrency - bitcoin, or keep it for yourself in the hope that their price will grow. It is also important not to forget about the commission for withdrawing funds: the more often you withdraw cryptocurrency from the balance of the pool, the more often you pay this commission.

Want more news?

Cryptocurrency is taking over the world. Instant transaction, anonymous transfers, maximum security - this is all that is only on the surface. Further, a list is available to users: any program for Bitcoin mining can be taken from it, download for free for Windows which is available in one click. Of course, you should figure out how to work with this software - complete instructions for each option are quite easy to find on the web. Pay special attention to this!

So, the blockchain is based on mining - the extraction of "electronic coins", in which a certain combination is selected that opens access to data blocks. This process would not exist if the interaction of thousands of users was removed. Here, mining can be compared to distribution on torrents: everyone participates in the distribution of data and receives a reward for this.

Of course, and here there is a ceiling - 21 million Bitcoins. Interest in cryptocurrency has reached such heights that only this year 2/3 of this amount was mined. But due to the fact that the algorithm becomes more and more complex, it is predicted that the "stock" will be distributed only by 2033. That is why the value of Bitcoin is increasing every month. If the very first price was $1 or even less, now the figure is several thousand dollars.

What is mining?

The essence of any work in the cryptocurrency receiving system is the continuous transfer of transaction records to a single database. That is, each miner not only works for himself, but is also part of an open process. A certain set of tasks goes to each individual participant, and he also transfers the data further.

Each chain of transactions receives a generated hash that protects the entire system from different kind substitution It is the “key” of the hash that is the key to closing the block, that is, to the reward. Of course, a lot depends on luck here - suddenly it will be possible to get a block in a few days, or maybe in a couple of hours. You can blindly believe that everything will turn out easy, but it's still better to choose the right program and have a strong, productive computer.

The result of the miner's work directly depends on the power of his equipment. When Bitcoin first appeared, the “miners” had enough of a computer with CPU power. But the higher Bitcoin climbed, the more effort it required. Then video cards came to the rescue, which significantly increased the level of users and the workflow in general, however, they also lost their effectiveness over time. Now the market has come to the point where even the purchase of the most expensive parts cannot promise stable income– the turnover is increasing, and ordinary miners are required to constantly upgrade their equipment in order for the performance to keep them competitive. In a word, as soon as the price of the cryptocurrency began to rise, it became clear that the funds received do not always recoup the resources spent.

Time has shown that it is not practical to work from one PC when mining Bitcoins. And then pools began to spread. In the pool, the work is distributed among the mining participants, since a single network is formed, the contribution of each in which, in the event of block closure, is rewarded proportionally. Of course, there are also solo miners, but it will take a single person, and especially a beginner, much more time to earn money than a group member.

For greater performance, miners began to create so-called farms: a collection of devices. This is a group of graphics cards and computers that work on the same system to increase speed. However, this is a very expensive and energy-intensive option. The Chinese are successful in this regard with their approach to globally look at things. Chinese farms are huge hangars filled with machinery, where each "point" brings about a million dollars a month. Ordinary users are increasingly turning to the so-called "cloud farms", the owners of which sell the power of their equipment.

This experience has become unique - almost nowhere you can earn Bitcoins so easily. Those who want to get their own in the race for money will not need to customize their equipment to the standard of powerful home farms, spend time looking for a suitable pool and be online every minute.

All that is required to start is to study the capabilities of the system and choose the right program. Yes, even with the simplest laptop, you can start working in cloud mining, but you need to understand that the question of power still arises here: with low performance, the wealth will be very small. That is, to get 0.00000010 BTC, you will have to spend several hours at work.

The processor will still heat up due to the heavy load, and the temperature will rise higher. Therefore, it is better to install programs that will monitor the system, which will allow you to realistically assess the chances of success. But it is always necessary to realistically take into account the available opportunities. If the PC does not have a hardware graphics adapter, all profits will be spent on covering electricity bills. It is also not recommended to run the process on machines with integrated Intel/AMD video cards due to low performance.

Mining software

50Miner

This is one of the most popular bitcoin mining software. Laconic, user-friendly interface, no unnecessary details that can scare away a beginner. All that is required from the user is to enter their data. 50Miner itself scans the computer and sets the appropriate settings. More advanced users can change them to control the graphics card settings themselves. The settings are immediately saved in the configuration file, which ensures data protection. There is also the possibility of interaction with other miners.