Author: Ether

Monero or XMR, the cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy, has gained a lot of popularity since its launch in 2014.

Check out our previous article on “what is monero” for more background on this topic.

Monero is an easy coin to mine for, as XMR mining can be profitable using a basic home computer with CPU’s or GPU’s or a combination of the two and low electricity consumption compared to some of the other coins. This article however will focus on XMR cloud mining, where you don’t need to build your own hardware.

Once you have decided that mining for XMR is a viable option for you, you can look at mining solo, where you have to supply all the power and resources to solve the blocks and then reap the entire reward yourself, or join one of the many xmr mining pools where you combine resources with other miners and share the rewards with them. Mining pools are generally more popular than solo-mining and achieve better rewards for miners.

Monero Cloud Mining

Al alternative to building your own rig and supplying your own electricity is to look at cloud mining.  Cloud mining is not the same as pool mining. Pool mining combines the resources of individual miners, while cloud mining is where an organisation hosts and supplies the hardware, software and other resources needed for mining at a monthly cost and the pools the resources to maximise the effect of mining.

In other words, leasing your mining power instead of owning it and having it housed at a remote location. The advantages of cloud mining over owning your own rig is that your costs are managed and predictable, in particular when it comes to electricity consumption costs, the risk of hardware failure is smaller and if the hardware fails, the company hosting the rig is responsible for the repairs.

The chances of an interruption of service is reduced as there will be greater redundancy built in than what you will have at home and you are up and running as soon as you sign your contact, there are no delays as there would be when you build your own rig.

As with all decisions around mining, it is important to look at the return on your investment before choosing your mining option.

If Monero cloud mining is a viable option for you, here are some of cloud providers that offer Monero Hardware:

• Mining Rig Rentals (https://www.miningrigrentals.com). In existence since 2014 and based in the USA, Mining Rig offers a hardware for a vast range of mining rigs. Registration and sign up can be done online and pools can be selected for free. Compared to other providers their costs are slightly high but the chances of fraud are low.
• Genesis Mining (https://www.genesis-mining.com) is based in Hong Kong with a presence in Iceland and has been operational since 2013. You can switch from one currency to another immediately and mine what is most profitable at that moment.  Online signup is also available. The risk of fraud is low and the stability high , but they have been criticised for slow customer support.
• EOBOT (https://www.eobot.com), based in Los Angeles since 2013 has very high maintenance fees but has more than 1.8 million users of their services and offers rigs for almost any kind of cryptocurrency mining. Sign up online and if owning a full “cloud” is too expensive for you, fractions of clouds can be purchased.

Cloud mining is a simple and predictable way to manage your mining, without you needing the knowledge of building rigs and maintaining them. The cost of cloud mining, while predictable, is slightly higher than when you solo-mine or join a mining pool using your own resources, as you pay for the convenience and expertise of the service provider.

Mining for the cryptocoin Monero (XMR) is profitable and easy and can be done with your standard CPU or GPU and on a laptop or computer with almost any operating system. For this reason, XMR mining has become increasingly popular over the last few months.

To learn more about Monero the cryptocurrency, please refer to our previous article, “What is Monero?”.

One the ways to increase your profitability when mining for Monero, or any cryptocurrency is to join a mining pool. By joining a mining pool you will combine your Monero mining hardware resources with other miners and increase the solve rate of blocks.  In this article, we are going to look at the various Monero mining pools available and what they have to offer.

XMR Mining Pools

Mining pools can focus on a single currency or give miners the option to choose from various currencies in a single pool.

Some of the more popular mining pools for XMR include:

• Support XMR (https://supportxmr.com/#/home). This pool mines for Monero only. Payments are based on the PPLNS reward system and payments are made every two hours. More than 10 000 miners are currently connected to the pool and there is constant development to improve the statistics and dashboards.
• XMR Pool.net (https://xmrpool.net/#/home) is another mining pool that focuses on XMR mining only.  Smaller than Support XMR, the pool has just over 800 active miners. Payments are also calculated on the PPLNS reward system and the servers are distributed globally ensuring high uptime of the pool.
• Nanopool (https://xmr.nanopool.org) is one of the bigger mining pools currently available and offers miners the ability to mine for a wide variety of different coins, Monero being one of them. There are about 6500 XMR miners active on Nanopool and the fee charge is 1% for belonging to the pool. PPLNS reward system is also used and coins earned can be exchanged for other crypto-coins in the pool. Nanopool is a well established pool with more than 100 000 miners across the different currencies, have good statistics and offer useful tools to help new and experienced miners.
• Monero Hash is a US based mining pool focused on the mining of XMR coins only. (https://monerohash.com). With about 2500 miners active in the pool, a block is found on average every four hours. The fee for the pool is 1.6% (quite high compared to the other Monero mining pools) and also offers coin exchange options (to Bitcoin and US Dollars)
• Mine XMR (https://minexmr.com) is the most popular XMR mining pool with more than 25 000 active miners. A block is found on average every 45 minutes and servers are also located across the globe to ensure stability and uptime. MineXMR also calculates rewards on the PPLNS reward system and charges miners a 1% fee.

The use of mining pools to increase profitability has grown considerably amongst miners, as the rate of return on your investment is far better. Solo miners find it hard to compete for blocks against the combined hashrate power of the mining pools and building and operating a rig that can compete on this level is not economically viable for most.

The pools listed here are just some of those available to XMR miners, for a more complete list, visit http://moneropools.com.

Monero (XMR) is one of the more recent cryptocurrencies that has gained popularity due to its focus on maintaining the privacy of the parties involved in the transaction as well as the true value of the transaction.

If you still find yourself asking “what is Monero” check out the previous articles in this series.

XMR Mining is very popular as it requires a standard PC with CPU or Graphics cards (or a combination of the two) and does not require massive amounts of electricity consumption to be successful. This article will focus on the monero mining hardware you’ll need to get started.

Monero Mining Hardware

XMR Mining is a favourite amongst miners because of the simplicity of the rig needed to get started. The mining algorithm is compatible with both CPU and GPU’s which makes Monero mining extremely profitable and it can be mined on laptops as well as standard desktop computers and can be run on almost any operating system. The more CPU’s or GPU’s you have the more coins you will mine.

Although XMR can be mined using CPU’s or GPU’s, the profitability of mining will be based on the upfront cost of the hardware as well as the ongoing cost of energy consumption while mining. Energy costs differ depending on the location of the rig, so it is advisable to compare the profitability between the two before deciding which to use (or various combinations of the two). Monero mining calculators can be found at  http://www.mycryptobuddy.com/MoneroMiningCalculator.

Best Monero GPU

As mentioned, the profitability of mining for Monero is based on the quality and hash rate of the GPU that you have purchased and the electricity consumption. According to https://www.easypc.io/crypto-mining/monero-hardware/, the best GPU for XMR mining is the XFX Core Edition Raedon R9 295×2. Considered to be the fasted Graphics card available, with eight gigabytes of memory and more than 11.5 teraflops of computing power. Predicted profit ratios of up to 267% are mentioned.

Best Monero CPU

As with GPU’s, the hashrate versus the electricity consumption determines the best CPU to use. Steemit.com rates Intel XEON CPU’s as the most efficient and profitable for mining Monero. Top of the Xeon list is the INTEL XEON CPU E5-2699 V4 2.20Ghz, which has a hashrate of 1910 per second and uses 145 Watts of electricity.

Cryptonight ASIC miner

The hashing algorithm used for Monero mining ,Cryptonight,runs so efficiently on CPU’s and GPU’s that the benefits of an ASIC would not add sufficient value to justify the cost.  Monero mining is not ASIC resistant, it is just impractical and to date no ASIC’s have been developed for XMR.

 XMR mining: Final thoughts

If you want to increase your mining profitability, think about joining a Monero mining pool where you join your resources with other miners and increase the number of block solved.

Another option is to look at Monero Cloud mining instead of building and buying your own rig.  Please link here to learn more about cloud mining.

Monero Exchange and simply purchasing some.

Monero is a cryptocurrency that was launched in 2014 that focuses on keeping the information of the transaction hidden, ensuring the buyer and seller remain anonymous and the true value of the transaction remains undisclosed.

To achieve this Monero uses a different algorithm to majority of cryptocoins, known as CryptoNight proof-of-work hash algorithm.  Based on Market capitalisation value, Monero is one of the top ten cryptocurrencies currently in circulation. Monero, however, has attracted a more underworld and illicit type of clientele due to its privacy.

This article will explore some of the themes around XMR mining, but if you’re still asking yourself “what is Monero?” check out the first article in this series.

Alternatively, if you’re simply looking for ways to purchase this currency, you could go straight to a Monero exchange.

XMR Mining

XMR mining, mining for the cryptocurrency Monero, requires a different setup than that needed for mining Bitcoin, Litecoin or other altcoins. Read on for more info on the hardware and software you’ll need, as well as options for joining pools.

XMR Mining Hardware

Monero mining hardware is similar to other currencies. Mining rigs are predominantly made up of graphics cards, which do the majority of the work.  Effective Monero mining requires a GPU (Graphics processing Unit) with at least eight graphics cards in addition to the normal PC requirements of CPU’s etc.

Ensure the graphics cards used to build the rig have as high a hashrate as possible.  The higher the hashrate the more power the rig will use so it is important to find a balance between the hashrate and the cost of running the rig to remain profitable. Raedon RX 580 8GB and RX 480’s are recommended.

XMR Mining Software

The easiest way to mine Monero if you are a solo miner is to download the User Interface (GUI) suitable for your operating system, which can be found on the official Monero site, https://getmonero.org/downloads/. Once you have synchronised with the network and connected, choose the “Start Mining” button on the mining tab and you are in business. When you want to stop, just choose the stop mining button.

XMR Mining Pools

An alternative to mining solo is to combine your resources with other Monero miners and join a mining pool. As with other currencies there is a wide variety of XMR mining pools and you evaluate a few before deciding which best suits your needs. You can decide if you prefer to join a mining pool that focuses on Monero mining only, such as XMR Pool or Monero Ocean or you can join one of the larger multi-pools that offer Monero as an option, such as nanopool (https://nanopool.org).

Monero Cloud Mining

Cloud mining is an option for miners who do not want to invest in the set up costs of purchasing hardware and wish to avoid the uncertainty of the running costs of mining, but would prefer a set cost every month to rent a a rig that is based in the cloud.

Monero cloud mining differs from pool mining in that the miners are still individual miners (who can choose to mine solo or join a pool), but the costs of running and owning a mining rig are centralised by a cloud company and leased to miners.

Cloud mining results in lower set up costs and a predictable monthly fee for mining, but the miner does not own any of the rig. Upgrades are often included in the packages and the redundancy is better than a home-owned rig.

The Monero mining algorithm was created to be effective when run on home PC ‘s and rigs, unlike some cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin where owners of mining chips have an advantage. This means mining for Monero is possible and profitable at a lower cost than many of the other cryptocoins.

XMR Mining: Final Thoughts

Monero is considered to be one of the more profitable coins to mine, to calculate the rewards in comparison to other coins make use of an online calculator such as the one found at https://www.cryptoground.com/monero-mining-calculator or https://whattomine.com/coins/101-xmr-cryptonight.