Is Home Mining Still Possible and Profitable in 2022 ?

Over a decade ago, it used to be incredibly easy to mine bitcoin from home. You could simply cobble together a few gaming computers, or silently tap into your school or office’s infrastructure, and mine so much bitcoin that you would be set for life — provided you had diamond hands (never sold), sold at the right times or didn’t throw your hard drive away.

With the exception of one in a million people, such as the one who succeeded in mining alone in February 2022, such an era has become a distant past.

Bitcoin networks have become extremely large, powerful, and only miners with dedicated mining equipment in their warehouses have the opportunity to make a profit.

However, there are ways to make mining of crypto assets (virtual currency) such as Bitcoin profitable for ordinary people. Let’s look at the tools for calculating the chances of making a profit, and which coin is the best.

Is Bitcoin Mining at Home Profitable?

Bitcoin is the world’s first crypto asset and has spread mining to the world. Mining is the process of using computing power to generate code (called a hash) before anyone else to add a new block to the blockchain.

The earliest hash generator receives a newly created crypto asset in return for that effort. This type of blockchain verification system is called “Proof of Work (PoW)”.

When mining crypto assets, it is necessary to pay attention to the negative part that eats up profits. In other words, the market price of Bitcoin, electricity charges, maintenance costs, the cost of mining equipment, and how long your mining equipment will be effective as powerful mining equipment appears one after another. Equipment that was once powerful becomes obsolete with the advent of new mining equipment.

Profitability calculation tools like Nicehash can help you determine if your mining is in the red or in the black. For example, assume the average US electricity rate of $ 0.1411 per kilowatt hour.

Nicehash calculates that if you use a new NVIDIA graphics card (GPU) such as the RTX 3080, you can generate $ 139 a month. As of February 2022, the RTX 3080 is priced at about $ 1,400.

If you are using the AntMiner S19 Pro, a dedicated mining device, you can earn $ 17.79 a day . But one S19 Pro costs $ 10,000 and can only be used for mining. In addition, about half of the revenue generated by the S19 Pro goes to the electricity bill.

Bitcoin prices are so volatile that there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover the cost of the RTX 3080 in 10 months and the cost of the S19 Pro in 25 months.

The “network difficulty”, which indicates how difficult it is (in terms of computation) to mine a new Bitcoin, is also variable. Due to mining regulations in China in July 2021, network difficulty has dropped by 28%. Mining has become much easier for the remaining miners. However, it was also temporary and is now almost back to the high levels of the past.

Mining has economies of scale, and home miners are generally less profitable per mining device than mining companies. To cover costs, miners often travel between low-cost areas, sign special contracts with local utilities, generate their own electricity, and surprisingly often use outdated mining equipment.

What are the profitable crypto assets for home mining?

Still, there are plenty of other options for weekend miners doing crypto asset mining at home. Unfortunately, there are too many choices and variables to make an accurate comparison.

There are some things that are clear. In general, if you use a computer instead of a graphics card (GPU), it is more efficient to mine Bitcoin than Ethereum ( ETH ). This is because Ethereum is suitable for mining on GPU.

In addition, Ethereum is moving to the “Proof of Stake (PoS)” and will eventually be unable to mine. Procurement of GPU is also a big problem. During the bull market in 2021, the GPU market became super booming, making it almost impossible to buy high-performance GPUs at market prices.

To complicate matters, some people blame China mining for the lack of hard disk drives in 2021 because mining on some blockchains such as China relies on hard disk drives rather than graphics cards and computer chips. board.

Still, if you use a profitability calculation tool such as CoinWarz, it will show you profitability. For example, assuming a hardware cost of $ 1000, a profitable crypto asset would be:

1. Ethereum (ETH)

2. Peer coin (PPC)

3. Bitcoin Cash ( BCH )

4. Bitcoin (BTC)

5. Ethereum Classic ( ETC )

With an electricity rate of $ 0.411 / kW, CoinWarz can generate $ 20.94 worth of Ethereum a day. The Ethereum Classic is worth $ 9.63, so it’s more than doubled in profitability.

Cryptocurrency assets with a small market capitalization that are less competitive with other miners may also be profitable. However, the price of crypto assets with a small market capitalization is generally more volatile than that of major crypto assets, making it much more difficult to predict earnings.

According to Whattomine, if you use three Radeon RX 480s, your daily mining revenue will be $ 1.21 for FIRO, $ 1.07 for Ravencoin (RVN), and $ 0.9 for SERO.

An alternative to Home Mining

If you want to increase your chances of receiving mining rewards, you can also join the Bitcoin mining pool. It’s an effort to work with other miners to increase their potential for revenue. However, it also divides the rewards.

Finally, if you don’t have the computing power at home, you can consider cloud mining. In that case, compare the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing the hardware to make a decision.