How to Start Mining and Using Cryptocurrency for the Complete Beginner
I learned a lot about blockchain technology by buying and using bitcoin: how to get it, track it, trade it, and make purchases with it. I also made some mistakes along the way (including forgetting my wallet PIN code and locking myself out of $30,000, which you can read about in an article I wrote for Wired). These mistakes helped me understand the technology even more.
In this short lesson, I’ll show you how to generate a cryptocurrency wallet, and how to mine cryptocurrency using your computer. I’ll also point you to instructions for setting up your wallet to send cryptocurrency to another person.
We’ll be using a new cryptocurrency called TurtleCoin. The reason I chose TurtleCoin is because the user community is friendly and helpful, and because TurtleCoins are currently very inexpensive so you can make lots of mistakes as you learn without worrying about it —as of mid-March 2018, a thousand TurtleCoins were worth about ten US cents (you can check the latest price here) — if you lose them all, I’ll give you more!
Once you generate your wallet from the instructions below (and if you are also a member of IFTF’s Future 50 Partnership) I’ll send you 1,000 TurtleCoins to experiment with.
Step 1: Setting Up a Wallet
The first thing you need to do is generate a wallet. In the world of cryptocurrencies, wallets don’t hold money. Instead, they hold the keys that you can use to make transactions. Go here and follow the instructions to make your wallet.
As you can from the instructions at the TurtleCoin website, making a wallet is easy. All you have to do is enter a bunch of random characters by mashing your keyboard for a while then clicking the “Generate Wallet” button. The generator will take these random characters and combine them with other random information to create the following pieces of important information (that you should print out and keep in a safe place):
- A public address. Think of this as your bank account number. You can give this address to anyone (even publish it to a website or your Facebook account) and other people can use it to transfer TurtleCoin to your account.
- A seed phrase. This is something you will want to keep private and safe. It is an alternate way to store and encode your private keys. Print it out and hide it. If you ever lose your wallet, you can regenerate everything by entering these words at this same web page you’ll use to create your wallet.
- A spend key and view key. These are your private keys. Think of the view key as your bank balance, and the spend key as the PIN code for your bank debit card. Keep these private and safe, too.
Once you get your keys, email me your public address (not your seed phrase or spend and view keys!) and I’ll send you 1,000 TurtleCoins.
Step 2: Start Mining TurtleCoin
A blockchain is a decentralized, open database that coordinates the activities of users without the need for a middleman to facilitate transactions. The interesting thing about blockchains is that they don’t have an owner whose job it is to prevent cheating. Instead, blockchains use math and encryption to make sure no one is trying to spend the same coin twice and to make sure people who spend coins actually own the coins. The people who supply the computers that perform the math and encryption processes are called “miners,” and they compete in a kind of computationally expensive lottery to win rewards in the form of TurtleCoin (TRTL). There’s a new block mined about once every 30 seconds and the reward averages 29,000 TRTL. (Coin Center has a very good, easy-to-understand article that explains what mining is and why it’s needed.)
The simplest way to mine TurtleCoin is by using a Web Miner like the Turtle Coin Web Miner or CPU Fan, which pools the computer resources of everyone using it and splits the rewards it earns based on the amount of processing power your computer contributes. Simply enter your public address in the “TRTL Wallet Address” field and click “Begin Mining.” (Make sure the fan on your computer works because it will put your microprocessor and graphics processor to work.) You can find out how much TRTL you can expect to make each day by clicking the small blue-colored hyperlink at the bottom of the page that reads, “Please check your wallet on turtlepool.space for hashrate.” My MacBook Pro, at a hashrate of 18 hashes/second, can be expected to mine about 225 TRTL a day, or about two cents. I live in California where electricity is expensive, so I’m certainly burning more money in power than I’m earning from mining TurtleCoin. But I do it because I enjoy supporting the project and I learn a lot about blockchain technology by keeping active and interested in the user community. Plus, one day TRTL could be worth more than it is today. (It could also be worth less, so don’t think of anything I’m telling you as investment advice. Remember, I’m the guy who lost his 8-digit PIN code for a small fortune in bitcoin.)
Step 3: Use Your Wallet to Send TurtleCoins
The above two steps will allow you to receive TurtleCoins, but if you want to spend them or exchange them for another currency, you’ll need to install wallet software. Installing wallet software requires you to enter a lot of commands in a terminal window on your computer, so it is a bit more complex than the first two steps. When you install a wallet on your computer, the program will download the entire TurtleCoin blockchain to your computer, which could take several hours. The TurtleCoin user community has made this process as simple as is currently possible in their Getting Started Guide. I don’t want to discourage you from trying to install wallet software on your computer. Give it a try! If you run into problems, visit TurtleCoin’s Discord server and ask the friendly folks in the help channel for assistance.
Now What?
Congratulations. You now know more about cryptocurrency than 99% of the people on the planet. I hope that holding, mining, and sending cryptocurrency will pique your interest to learn more about blockchain technology. Institute for the Future, where I work, has a website with links to interviews, research, and podcasts about the future of blockchains. If you’d like access to our deep research into blockchain technology, consider becoming an IFTF Future 50 Partner. Learn more about this program here.
