How to start mining Bitcoin in 2018? Step by Step guide

Many people jump into investments without thinking much. They look at the most lucrative options and choose the one which appeals to them the most. Not just with investments in digital currencies, people make reckless decisions regarding their traditional investments too. However, focusing on Bitcoin investments, the first thing that one could go wrong is with the mining of your Bitcoin coins. Mining Bitcoins is a very energy and resource consuming process and owing to this, one would definitely wish to not to incur any loses here. Given below is the right mining checklist for you which you should go through and make sure that you make all the right Bitcoin mining decisions in 2018.

Step 1. ASIC based Mining hardware

Mining hardware is extremely expensive and one should not make any mistakes when making an investment here. With Bitcoin mining getting tougher and tougher with every passing moment because of the enormous number of Bitcoins already mined and the increasing user base of the Bitcoin mining hour, optimised hardware was the need of the hour and in 2018, we have sophisticated ASIC (Application Specific Integrated System) based custom built mining hardware which is sophisticated and power efficient. These miners mine coins at incredible new speeds as compared to their previous competitors like CPU, GPU and FPGA based miners. Not just this, they save you a lot of electricity too, thus bringing down your electricity bill a couple of notches. The best thing about these miners are that they are easily available for purchase on Amazon.

AntMiner U2 has a capacity of 2 Gh/s and with a power efficiency of 1.0 W/Gh it weighs only 0.8 ounces. The BPMC Red Fury USB has a capacity of 2.5 Gh/s and with a power efficiency of 0.96 W/Gh it weighs only 1.6 ounces. Another great option in the category of ASIC miners is the GekkoScience which has a capacity of 9.5 Gh/s, a power efficiency of 0.33 W/Gh and weighs only 0.8 ounces.

Step 2. Graphic Cards

Mining Bitcoin was way easier in the initial years of its inception. There were still way too many coins to be mined and the mining hardware was not that sophisticated. With almost 12 million Bitcoins already mined, and sophisticated custom built ASIC mining hardware in the market now, one cannot use their normal consumer graphic cards anymore. They would simply not be able to handle the pressure or be configured to mine Bitcoins. However, these ASIC mining hardware are the need of the hour since they are more power efficient.

Most commonly used for gaming, the Nvidia GTX 1070 is a great graphic card to be used for mining hardwares too. With a high hash rate of 30mh/s, it offers a Core Clock of 1,506MHz, a memory of 8GB GDDR5, a memory clock of 8Gbps and a power draw of 150W. If you are into the mining sphere for a longer haul, this is one of the best options to go for.

AMD Radeon RX 580, sometimes difficult to find because of its high demand, this trumps Nvidia GTX 1070 because it is not as pricey. With a core clock of 1,257MHz, memory of 8GB GDDR5, memory clock of 8Gbps and power draw of 185W, it has a great cooling effect and helps you consume lesser electricity.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is another very popular option when one is looking for a high performance graphic card offering high hashing rates. With a core clock of 1,156MHz and memory of 8GB HBM2, memory clock of 800MHzand power draw of 210W, it is cheaper to boot but runs a little hot.

Step 3. Choose a mining software

A mining software is something you integrate with your hardware so that you can start minting coins. Of course you would not be minting hard cash but digital currencies. There are several options to choose however there is not a very wide range of software available. They more or less do the same thing and work the same way as others. One option for tech savvy miners is a terminal based mining software. CGMiner and BFGMiner are simple command line programs and can be run via the terminal of your computer.

However, if you have no technical background and wish to user a much more friendly and user interactive software, EasyMiner is a good option since it has a very easy to use graphical user interface (GUI), and is therefore one of the more popular options.

Step 4. Make sure to enter a mining pool

Mining alone can be quite a tedious process. One has to wait long hours to get a block of transactions confirmed and receive their Bitcoins. If you bundle together your computing power with other miners over a network, you share rewards and save time. All members of the pool receive a fraction of the payment every time a block is solved. Bitminter, Kano Pool, Eligius, Slushpool are a few of the most popular sites for this purpose. This way, you can help other miners mine their Bitcoins and you can make use of this nobility to make profits for yourself in a comparatively lesser time.

Step 5: Secure a digital wallet

Last but not the least, get yourself a digital wallet. This wallet would hold all your coins that you have mined through the highly energy consuming mining process. Choosing a reliable and safe option is very important. You would of course would not want anything to happen to your Bitcoins. There are a wide variety of options available in this matter from mobile apps to web based platforms. Airbitz, Blockchain, Freewallet, Jaxx, My Celium Wallet are a few of the most popular and reliable mobile apps to create your digital wallets on. However, if you wish to use a web based platform for this purpose Coinbase, Circle, Blockchain, Strongcoin, Xapo are a few of your best options.

Step 6: Two factor authentication

In addition to securing a wallet, one must learn to secure them furthermore. Adding layers of security to your wallet would only keep you in a secure position so as to not get duped and lose all your hard earned Bitcoins. The one step to take in this direction is to enable two factor authentication. This was, in addition to entering your credentials to access you account, you would also be required to enter and additional code which is sent that very moment to your mobile number. This is similar to the when one enters an OTP to make online credit and debit transactions.