Introduction

Imagine yourself being a cypherpunk— a man who has a fascination with cryptography and cryptology and is advocating for data privacy through encryption. Then, in 2008, one of your fellow cypherpunks in a community you follow talked about a new thing called Bitcoin, and it was Satoshi Nakamoto's response to certain problems in sending money and the ever-lasting inflation. After the new year, you were then invited to try out to test out its performance.

At first, you probably might be skeptical, as you have no idea how it works, after all. After reading the white paper, you were interested and began to help Satoshi in how to implement the program the white paper had introduced. With the first block, Satoshi explained to you where cryptography comes in:

Your computer is to calculate for a specific SHA256 hash that complements the network's Proof-of-Work.

Now, if you had a computer that can run Crysis, you accept the offer, getting yourself 50 BTC. If you didn't accept the offer, you would instead be given amounts of BTC by other high-end cypherpunks you know to test if sending outputs can work, and it did.

Time passed by, and with Gavin Andresen taking the helm of the development, you advocate for the security of the program beyond the growing PoW you had contributed until you had noticed that GPU runs better at finding these hashes. Other block finders, or miners, follow, and then technology strikes. Someone has realized the potential for Field-programmable gate arrays as a faster way to solve the increasing difficulty! Wait, someone had programmed an application-specific integrated circuit to just mine Bitcoin! The difficulty rose significantly.

Frustrated, you find other cryptocurrencies arrive with compatibility for CPU and GPU mining.

And now here we are.

Remember that mining is not for those who can't physically do it.

Welcome to Cryptocurrency Mining. We are going to explain, as close as I can explain, on how things were, and what the introduction was all about.

Choosing the Right Startup

When you want to mine a cryptocurrency, the greatest asset you have right now is your fiat currency. You need to be able to pay for the electricity, pay for the cooling, pay for the location, and pay to make sure you don't die waiting for USD, which also meant your food, water, entertainment, and even the living space.

For electricity measures, Cryptocurrency mining can be a use case for eco-friendly energy consumption.

For cooling measures, you can find a naturally cool place and use your systems as a heater, or find cooling units for expenses.

For the location, it depends on how cheap you can pay for electricity.

Now, for your equipment...

Choosing the Right Equipment

You should first look and which Cryptocurrency you want to mine with. This is because mining depends on the algorithm used to generate new blocks in their blockchains

Monero and most of its forks are primarily mined with CPU. You can use GPU but in a limited fashion.

Ravencoin and some other coins primarily mines using GPU power.

SHA256 coins (BTC, BCH, BSV) are mined with ASICs. An ASIC or application-specific integrated circuit is a piece of machine that specifically dedicates all its power to do one specific thing, or in this case, mining SHA256 coins under the Bitcoin name.

These ASICs can be bought from Bitmain and other large cryptocurrency mining companies.

Now that you have your location and equipment set up, you need to get the right software.

Choosing the Right Software

You can't mine any cryptocurrency without the proper mining application that's suitable for the algorithm of the coin you want to mine with. If you were able to get a suitable program, that is, as Anti-virus software flags Mining software due to hackers and malicious users attaching miners as virus programs.

What is a Hash?

Hashes are a function which groups data into a single file. In Cryptocurrency mining, this is a unit of measurement on how many hashes your hardware can make. The higher the hashrate, the more powerful your computer is. You can know what your specification's hashrate through a lot of sites, such as this site:

https://whattomine.com/

You'll also be able to see which coins are profitable based on your chosen software and hardware.

What's Mining Difficulty? I can't mine!

Mining difficulty is a safeguard to ensure that all miners have the same chance of payment. The higher the mining difficulty, the harder it is to mine a single block.

Outro - I just want to mine!

As much as I want to explore more the world of Cryptocurrency mining, there is one thing holding me back and this is the most important one at all: There are a lot of miners around the world. Those miners have most of the hashes already in each blockchain, and some of them are well-known. Of course, if you were a miner too, you will be directly affected by the development of the cryptocurrency itself, like the current Bitcoin Cash Network Upgrade where ABC has decided to take 8% of your 6.25 BCH + Miners Fee, which is against the white paper where this is all should be yours, that is if you manage to get it.

Anyhow, if you still want to continue, do make sure to have enough hashrate to ensure you can get enough coins to pay for electricity.