To mine, or not to mine, that is the question

I started crytpo currency mining for a handful of reasons.  A little nudge from my friends over at Cryptopros.com , a interest in putting together a Linux based computer, a little room on a credit card, and of course a opportunity to make some cash on the side.  Sounds like a easy and good decision, worst case is I end up with a decent computer that with a few minor upgrades could be a great gaming computer. 

After spending about $700 dollars I had a week to investigate and decide what to due with all the cool new stuff I was getting.   At the time I didn't realize how many different options were available, I just new there were two systems/types of protocol.  SHA256 and Scrypt based currencies.   During my comparisons it became clear that the SHA256 based currencies would not provide a lot of bang for my meagerly equipped system.  Bitcoin is obviously the  big dog in the crytpo world and has a very high valuation attached to it justifying a high amount of computing power, or miners supporting the system.   I was initially confused, as I understood that Bitcoin had a high value and high hash rate, but looking at the secondary currencies (ie mining targets) their hash rates were also very high, but the valuations in some cases were little or nothing.  It took awhile before I understood what was happening and figured out merged mining when I joined CEX.IO (future Blog).

So Scrpyt mining  here I come, and it looks like it will be Litecoin as it has value and my little system theoretically should gain 2 Litecoins per week after electricity.  Not bad, system payed off in a few months, and then I am rolling in the dough!

So I receive my final box from UPS on a late Friday afternoon and begin my work.  I won't go into the gory details here, but lets just say that 4 days later, and several serious considerations of throwing the whole lot in the swimming pool I am mining! WOOT!  This is easy, the pool I signed up with can see my hash and within a hour of getting my rig running I get my first payout!  Just call me easy money! Ok, till the mother board goes up in a puff of smoke.   A power supply and another mother board later that first rig is up an running and has been now steady for 3 weeks with no issues.

The Pool seems to be good though I have nothing to compare it to.  Our average to find a block is about 5 hours, though we have had a few found in minutes, and then the dreaded 36 hour spans, where everyone gets grumpy, but over all it averages out. The pool runs about 97% of the expected time to find a block, so I guess that is good.

So, I have my Linux based rig and I can claim the novelty of being a miner of something that is very similar to air. My family is perplexed as regardless of how I explain it they cannot get past the "you can never touch, see or feel it" aspect of crypto currency.

In the next installment I hope delve into some of the justifications for and against crytpo currency mining. At least those that exist in my mind!