Crypto Mining is Back and in a Big Way

For a couple of years now, cryptocurrency mining has been a bit of a dirty word. Not because it is particularly seedy, but because it has been reserved for the wealthy elite that have the money and hardware to continue mining. With Bitcoin mining being the most attractive mining prospect, most miners have grown bitter because Bitcoin has been practically un-minable for a long time.

Of course, seasoned miners knew this and transitioned to mining other currencies and reaping the rewards of that. The problem is, as soon as a coin became profitable it also became heavily mined. Soon many cryptocurrencies were relegated to the same group as Bitcoin.

Mining Syndicates and Clouds

Around two years ago the big boys of mining moved out, realising that it was a fool’s game and far too costly to continue making profit. One of those that left the mining world went on to found one of the largest crypto exchanges. It seemed for all intents and purposes that the big money was in trading crypto.

But in the background, a small minority continued mining away. Setting up new mining platforms and cloud communities that created collective mining power as a workaround to the problem of individual power not being profitable enough to mine. These cloud platforms and mining syndicates did reasonably well, except they were often set up to benefit the platform owners rather than the miners which many felt undermined the whole crypto ethos of being accessible to everyone.

Developers Decided to Change the Status Quo

Fairly on in the mining game people realised contrary to popular belief (because Bitcoin told everyone that they could mine using their ordinary PCs) that it wasn’t really PCs that held the key to mining success. In fact, it was graphics cards that were far better at mining Bitcoin and other cryptos.

This has given rise to specialist mining hardware being developed and it has now started to be sold quite widely. Mining hardware isn’t cheap but given that it is basically a very high spec graphics card bundle it is no surprise.

The key thing though, is that although it is costly to get set up, once set up, Bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency mining is once again possible with enough ease to last for a year or so more. All of this is great news for the mining community at large and demonstrates that through innovation there are still ways to make a profit from cryptocurrency without purchasing it.

Mining Hardware Isn’t Perfect – Yet

At the moment the current mining hardware isn’t going to make Bitcoin mining possible all the way to supply limit, although it will get miners closer. The hardware still requires a fair amount of power and you will need to ensure you’re on the cheapest energy tariff. You will also need to keep the hardware ventilated as it does get hot.

Soon though, there should be more sophisticated tech developed and mining hardware with built in cooling solutions are already trickling onto the market. Mining cryptocurrency is once again a very exciting prospect.