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This article breaks down BTC home-mining nuances you can monetize today.

Any computer will work — desktop or laptop. The easiest operating system to use is Windows. Mining on Mac is almost impossible. If you are a happy Linux user, you probably know how to mine already. The type of Internet connection does not matter either. However, you need a stable internet connection. Any web connection method works just fine.

The only and most important requirement is that you need a good video card with at least 6GB of internal memory. The most budget-friendly GPUs that meet the mining requirements are Nvidia 1060 6GB or AMD RX 480 8 GB. The better the video card is, the more expensive it is and the more money it can bring. 

Some miners claim that home PC/laptops are not suitable for mining as they wear out, lose their warranty, and so on. There is no difference between a mining farm and a home PC — both use the same components: the motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard drive, and GPU. The only difference is that professional miners install more GPUs and put additional fans for better cooling. We’ll cover hardware later in the article.

A standard GPU usually has a two-year warranty, and the manufacturer can't do anything about your mining rather than playing AAA games.

Creating Your Personal Bitcoin Wallet is very important. If you lose your wallet, no one will help you. Losing a Bitcoin wallet is equal to losing cash, even worse. Cash is sometimes returned; no one can return Bitcoin.

Let's use a Coinomi wallet as it’s a time-tested solution. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. Let's assume that you have decided to install the wallet on Windows, as it’s still the most prominent OS globally. 

You can check other wallet options by taking the official quiz on Bitcoin.org

Visit the Coinomi website and create a new wallet using the "Create a new wallet" button. 

This set of words contains all your money. Take care of it and do not show it to anyone. You can delete Coinomi from your computer, but thanks to this phrase, your wallet can be recovered again.

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You will be asked to check whether you saved the phrase. This step can be skipped, although we recommend you to double-check the mnemonic phrase. 

Create a password for the wallet. Of course, you should choose a strong password, not a qwerty. 

Coinomi is a multi-currency wallet, which means that you can use it not only for storing Bitcoin. However, in this case, that's what we need. Check the box next to Bitcoin, and then click Next to continue.

To see the address of the wallet itself. Click on the Bitcoin inscription. Then click on the Receive button. Copy the address. You’ll need it in the future.

If you decide to install the wallet on your phone, the process is exactly the same. The big advantage of Coinomi is that you can use the same wallet on multiple devices. If you need to change your phone or delete everything from your PC — no problem. You can always restore your wallet on another device.

Once you have a wallet, you have to pick a BTC fork you are going to mine for. To put it simply, the fork is the already written base code of some project usea as a starting point for another “fork” project. Each branch can develop and exist independently. The main benchmark for choosing a fork is profitability. You should also pay attention to liquidity — the ability to transfer crypto to fiat money.

Bitcoin is based on SHA-256, and high profits come to large and expensive farms owners. For example, Scrypt uses a lot of RAM, making ASIC processors problematic, which puts PCs in favor. You can calculate the profitability on any online calculator. Rewards depend on your GPU and CPU: if your PC doesn’t have "durable" components, the average earnings may lack the scale.

Choose a pool by the commission — the percentage of the block’s amount divided between the miners. Also, look at the withdrawal features. Some pools provide additional options to view the statistics of the walkers and their monitoring. You can have a look at ViaBTC.

There is also a "Chinese four" — prevalent and trustworthy pools:

F2Pool. A massive hash rate is retained in the network. You pay 4% for each withdrawal. The biggest pool so far. 

BTC China. They are among top 5 in the overall pool rating.

BW pool. A bit smaller yet prominent pool.

AntPool. Number one pool in 2021 with about 15% of mining capacity. It works without commission. There is an option to degrade your fees down to 2.5%. Suitable for those who like mining solo.

To select it correctly, look at the three main characteristics:

Miner is a special program that solves complex mathematical problems and counts the rewards for users. Usually, the selected pool specifies which miner is best suited to perform all the functions and provides detailed instructions on how to set it up. 

Download bitcoin miner software to proceed. There are several suitable and time-tested options:

CGminer - popular GPU / FPGA / ASIC microprocessor Graphics open-source type is suitable for Windows, Linux, and macOS. The software has useful features, including overclocking, monitoring, fan control and remote interface capability.

BFGminer - created specifically for FPGA and ASIC but does not provide a central focus on graphics processes. There are dynamic clocking, monitoring and remote screen viewer functions.

BitMinter is the best software providing networking capabilities. You can connect with other users and potential clients. The interface is simple and straightforward, with an uncomplicated installation of the program itself.

You should also pay attention to BTCMiner, Poclbm, DiabloMiner. Starting instructions are included in the pool's documentation. The process is usually done through the command line. 

Enter your wallet on the official website of your pool. You can withdraw directly to the crypto exchanges. Don’t forget that you pay fees for each transaction. You might want to accumulate funds and withdraw once rather than splitting your rewards and spending each time.

Tip: If you don't understand how to set up your miner, special programs do all the steps for you. But you have to share your rewards. So, you deliver 1-1.5% to the pool and 30-40% to the software developers.

The best hardware for bitcoin mining at home

To mine crypto at home, you need powerful hardware. This includes a processor, graphic cards and additional equipment.

It should have enough memory and GPU frequency to allow the mining process without any complications. Suitable models include:

Radeon RX 470 and 480 and other modern models

Geforce GTX 1060, 1070,1080; 1080TI and later models

The average payback on such equipment ranges from 250 to 400 days. GPUs are the most important equipment when working with crypto. Only powerful modern computers with enough RAM and a good video card are suitable for mining. Consider I7 and I9 Intel processors with 1TB hard drive and 8GM DDR4 RAM. In some cases, it’s cheaper to buy parts separately rather than getting a whole PC. 

Instead of processors and graphics cards, you can buy special-purpose integrated circuits (ASIC) or fan arrays (FPGA) as well as separate USB devices. The best ASIC-miners are ANTMiner S7, S9, Avalon6, CoinTerra TerraMiner IV. If you choose from USB-miners for BTC, look at AntMiner U2, BPMC Red Fury USB, Avalon Nano 3.

Before you start home mining, we suggest you examine the prices of equipment profitability from the approach, compare alternative possibilities, and analyze the industry overall. As once you have a clear vision, it’s a good point to enter any market, including crypto.

Do you need a special bitcoin mining machine or crypto mining rig to make money on crypto? The answer is no, as many PCs and laptops can cope with the task. The power of your machine only affects your chances of winning the rewards.

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By controlling the majority of the network's hash rates, attackers can halt payments between users by preventing new transactions from gaining confirmations. Attackers can also use their majority to double-spend coins by reversing transactions that were completed while they are in control of the network.

Even with a 51% stake in computing power, it is unlikely that attackers would be able to create new coins or alter old blocks.

Before diving into the specifics of a 51% attack, it is important to understand what blockchain (the technology that makes cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin) is.

A blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across an entire network of computer systems on the blockchain. These digital files record all transactions made on a cryptocurrency's network and are available to all users—and the general public—to review. The decentralized database managed by multiple participants is known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Because of this level of transparency made possible by DLTs, no one can spend a coin twice.

For Bitcoin, a new block, a bundle of data in the blockchains, is generated about every 10 minutes. Once a block is finalized or mined, it cannot be altered since a fraudulent version of the public ledger would quickly be spotted and rejected by the network's users.

If hackers wanted to corrupt a blockchain system, they would have to change every block in the chain across all of the distributed versions of the chain. This prospect becomes more complex as blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum continually grow and add to their chains.

Mining coins involves the investment of vast amounts of electricity and computational resources. A miner's success usually equates to the amount of computational power (commonly called or hash rate) she has.

There are mining nodes in locations around the globe. These nodes compete to be the next to find a valid block hash and be rewarded with freshly generated coins. Competition and global distribution mean that the hash rate is not under the control of a single entity. At least it is not supposed to be.

If a miner or group of miners controls the majority of the computing power on a network, they can interfere with the process of recording new blocks. The attackers can prevent other miners from completing blocks, allowing them to monopolize the mining of new blocks and earn all of the rewards in a technique called a 51% attack.

A 51% attack refers to an attack on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain where a single entity or organization controls the majority of the hash rate, potentially causing a network disruption. In such a scenario, the attacker would have enough mining power to exclude or modify the ordering of transactions and reverse transactions they made while being in control.

In the mining process, miners use powerful computers to run complex calculations to compete to solve an equation generated by the system. The higher a miner's computing power, the more likely they are to solve the equation.

Whenever a transaction is carried out on a blockchain, be it by Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other cryptocurrency, it is put in a pool of unconfirmed transactions. Miners are allowed to select transactions from the pool to form a block of transactions.

Suppose attackers gain control of the majority of computing power on a blockchain. In that case, they’d be able to outcompete other miners, gain control over the chain and consequently would have the ability to reverse past transactions that need to be confirmed, double-spend the coins, and prevent new transactions from being confirmed.

After gaining control of the chain, corrupt miners don't broadcast solutions to the rest of the network. This practice results in the formation of two versions of a blockchain: a fork in which one, which is the original blockchain followed by legitimate miners, and a second blockchain used entirely by a corrupt miner who is not broadcasting the results of a puzzle to the network.

A corrupt miner will likely continue to work on his own unbroadcasted version of the blockchain. With the second blockchain now isolated from the network, the corrupt miner can spend her coins on the truthful version of the blockchain, the one that all the miners are following.

For example, an attacker can spend ten bitcoins to buy a sports car. If the attacker cancels this transaction before it is confirmed, the ten bitcoins revert back to their account, and the attacker would still get their sports car.

In addition to gains made from double-spending, attackers also earn a substantial amount from miner rewards to compensate them for their efforts in mining coins and updating the blockchain. Since the attackers create a monopoly on hash power on the network, they keep receiving miner rewards in terms of new coins issued.

51% attacks on blockchains can lead to loss of digital assets or cash by cryptocurrency users or exchanges. Additionally, users risk their transactions not being confirmed or reversed due to forks introduced by such attacks. But perhaps, even more, damaging is their ability to discredit a coin's reliability, security, and trustworthiness.

Since the attackers can tamper with unconfirmed transactions and blocks, innocent miners run the risk of confirming blocks that the fork created by the attacker later invalidates.

Moreover, this could also potentially lead to the delisting of specific cryptocurrencies with questionable security measures from crypto exchanges. For example, BTG was delisted from Bittrex after the BTG team refused to pay damages to the exchange caused by a May 2018 attack.

Since a distributed network of nodes maintains a blockchain, all participants cooperate to reach consensus. This is one reason they tend to be highly secure—the more extensive the network, the harder it is to corrupt its data.

When it comes to Proof of Work blockchains, the more hash rate a miner has, the better their chances of discovering the solution for the next block. This is true because mining involves many hashing attempts, and more computational power means more trials per second. Once a blockchain grows large enough, it becomes more and more unlikely that a single person or group will obtain enough computing power to overwhelm all the other participants.

For the reasons mentioned above, a 51% attack on Bitcoin is rather unlikely due to the magnitude of the network. Bitcoin's steady price increase has caused more miners to enter the system to compete for the block rewards. This competition adds to bitcoin's security because miners have no incentive to invest large amounts of resources if they do not act honestly and strive to receive the block reward.

The size of the system also makes it more challenging to change previously confirmed blocks because all blocks are linked through cryptographic proofs. For the same reason, the more confirmations a block has, the higher the costs for altering or reverting transactions. Hence, a successful attack would likely only modify the transactions of a few recent blocks for a short period.

If a malicious entity's goal wasn't monetary but instead was looking to destabilize Bitcoin by shaking trust in its system, even if the attacker manages to disrupt the network, the Bitcoin software and protocol could be quickly modified and adapted as a response to that attack.

Although it is quite difficult for an attacker to obtain more computational power than the rest of a large network like Bitcoin's, it is far more feasible to acquire the necessary computing power to overrun a smaller cryptocurrency network. Altcoins have a relatively low amount of hashing power securing their blockchain. Low enough to make it possible for 51% attacks to actually happen.

Two blockchains based on Ethereum, Krypton and Shift, fell victims to 51% attacks in August 2016.

In May of 2018, Bitcoin Gold, at the time, the 26th-largest cryptocurrency, suffered a 51% attack. The malicious miners controlled the majority of Bitcoin Gold's hash power and were able to double-spend for several days, eventually stealing more than $18 million worth of Bitcoin Gold.

The cost of attacking blockchains is going down due to the increasing and easy availability of computing power that can be rented from cloud-based hash power brokerage platforms like Nice Hash.

What is a 51% Attack? In 3Commas Academy you can learn all about this type of blockchain attack and how different blockchains prevent them from occurring.

What Is a 51% Attack? | 3Commas Academy

A 51% attack is an attack on a blockchain by a group of miners controlling more than 50% of the network's mining hash rate or computing power.

With the rapid rise in the popularity of the cryptocurrency space, we have a lot of newbies coming in and in one way or another, they would've come across the word “hodl” being used in place of “hold” - some might even think it's a writing error and try to correct it. Well, I guess that's because they're not yet accustomed to the culture of the cryptocurrency space and it's only fair that we help them understand the “hodl” meaning.

We know by definition, that the word “hold” simply means to have or to keep something in your hand, so let's go deeper into how “hodl” originated and why people are seen using it often in the world of cryptocurrency.

While most cryptocurrency enthusiasts have made HODL into an acronym that stands for “Hold On for Dear Life”, this doesn't dispute the fact that there's an origin of HODL.

If you go on Google and type in “hodl bitcointalk”, the first result you come across is the post created on Bitcointalk forum in 2013 by a user named “GameKyuubi”, who admitted he was intoxicated at the time of writing the post after taking Whiskey.

In his post heading, he made a spelling error where he wrote “I AM HODLING”, and went on about how he was a bad trader and how he wasn’t going to sell any of his Bitcoin irrespective of whether the market experiences ups and downs.

This misspelling became viral within hours and the ideology was adopted by many crypto investors. Some decided to yield his advice and bought Bitcoin when it was about $100 or so at the time.

Now going by that strategy, the Bitcoin those crypto investors bought about seven years ago should be worth more than 100 times its initial value if they didn't sell it earlier - and that's why more and more people hodl crypto for a long period.

Now that you understand what hodl means, another important thing to know is when to hold onto a certain amount of cryptocurrency. The crypto market is very volatile and there are periods when we experience a bull market (which means we experience coin pump) and a bear market (when coins experience massive dips).

Everyone wants a piece of the cake because it's believed that in the long run, Bitcoin has the potential to become higher in value like precious metals. It's strongly advised that you understand and do your research on the market first before buying cryptocurrency.

For people that do not feel confident enough about trading their cryptocurrency, they can just accumulate enough cryptocurrency during bear markets and take profits when their assets have pumped to a certain percentage in the bull markets.

However, most crypto traders who are interested in quick profits prefer trading their cryptocurrencies against each other. Although, trading bears a lot of risks so they can lose money as well as make more money.

While you've decided to hold on to your cryptocurrency, it's important to have a plan in place - know how long you are going to hold on for, decide whether you're going to take profits occasionally or just ride it till the end, and decide whether you'll keep your crypto asset in an online or offline wallet. 

Here are a few reasons why you should hodl your crypto:

Unlike trading that requires a lot of fundamental and technical analysis being carried out on the coins you want to buy and sell, hodling only requires that you register on any Centralized Exchange (CEX) or Decentralized Exchange (DEX) and buy the amount of coin you want to hold after doing your research.

After purchasing, you can just transfer the coin to your wallet whether online or offline. If your plan is to keep your crypto asset for years, you can just delete the exchange app on your phone (make sure to save the seed phrase so you don't lose your wallet) or if it's an offline wallet (also known as hardware wallet), make sure to keep it locked in a safe place.

Depending on the cryptocurrency you buy after carrying out your research, your asset should experience an exponential increase in value over a long period. It would be unwise to sell your asset in a bear market, so selling in a bull market is the best bet when the timeframe you planned has been exceeded.

We have a lot of promising projects in the cryptocurrency space, so it's left to you to carry out your research and determine which coins would be profitable for you to invest in the long run.

The cryptocurrency market is very volatile, which means more risks for traders going long and short on cryptocurrencies. Expert traders however conduct their fundamental and technical analysis to reduce the risk to a certain level for themselves when trading.

If you aren't confident enough in your trading ability, hodling is the best route to take as the risks are lesser. When the market experiences a massive dip, know that you’re only at loss when you sell your asset.

Like everything that has an advantage, there’s also a disadvantage to it. Although in hodling, the advantages far outweigh its disadvantages.

While there are over 4000 cryptocurrencies, not all are valuable and this type of coins are generally known as shitcoins. They are called shitcoins because they do not solve any particular problem, which means they have no use cases thereby making them a bad investment.

A lot of newbies coming into the cryptocurrency space who do not take time to research often fall for this type of coins and end up getting rekt and then label cryptocurrency “scam” because of their ignorance.

How these shitcoins operate is; they create a token and hold major percentages of the total market cap. They create a lot of buzz around the token and have the newbies apeing in to buy and hold onto the token when they see it doing 10x or more.

When the major holders decide they’ve earned enough profit, they rug-pull by selling off their major holdings of the token, which sends the token price crashing down, thereby leaving the newbies to hold the bag of a dead token - BAD INVESTMENT.

2. Not taking profit when you're supposed to

This isn’t really a disadvantage because it’s more or less the decision of the hodler. Hodlers often make use of two strategies when holding onto a coin for a long period.

The first strategy is that, they buy the coin at a low amount (say $2 per token for example), and when they discover that after a year the coin’s value has increased (to about $100 per token), they sell their whole investment or a percentage of their investment.

In the second strategy however, the hodler buys a coin during a bear market at a lower price (say $2 per token for example), then when the value of that coin increases (to about $100 per token), they sell off a percentage of their profit in a bull market and when the market experiences another dip (to about $50 per token), they buy more with the initial profit.

While both strategies guarantee the hodler would make profits in the long run, the hodler would have more profit using the second strategy should the value of the coin increase to about $200 per token.

Other Popular Slangs In The Cryptocurrency Space

Fear Of Missing Out. A situation where people rush to buy a coin when they see there's a lot of buzz around it and the price is pumping.

This is commonly used in the cryptocurrency world to say that the price of a coin would increase significantly.

What Does HODL Mean In Crypto? How “hodl” originated and why people are seen using it often in the world of cryptocurrency. Explore our 3Commas Academy!

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