Despite all the negative news around bitcoin, I believe cryptocurrencies[1] are the future. Bitcoin may not be the one to take off, but one of them will eventually.
Here’s how I started earning bitcoins.
- Create a Wallet: I setup a digital “wallet” with Coinbase[2] where you can save the bitcoins you’ve mined, or just buy and sell bitcoins directly with Coinbase. You’ll need the wallet “address” to spend your bitcoins elsewhere and receive bitcoins from others. You’ll also need that address to get into mining bitcoins, which is what steps 2 & 3 are about.
- Join a Mining Pool and setup a Worker: I joined the BTCGuild (no longer a thing) to increase my chances of earning bitcoins. Otherwise you’ll mine for months and may not ever receive bitcoins. In a pool you’re joining forces with lots of other miners and are rewarded based on how much processing power your computer contributes to the pool’s efforts. You get smaller increments of coins, but you get compensated more consistently. These days I’d try something like the Bitcoin.com Pool[3] or Slush Pool[4]
- Setup a Miner: I installed Asteroid (no longer a thing, try this instead Mac Miner[5]) on my Mac Pro to start mining bitcoins. Asteroid will ask you or the name of the Worker you setup in step 2. After following a few more instructions your mining bitcoins. My computer is a beast, but its easily brought to its knees when I have the miner running. Asteroid let’s you throttle the mining intensity so you don’t crash your computer, but be careful. If you choose to allow Asteroid to use your graphics card for mining, it may appear to freeze your computer. There are lots of devices you can buy specifically for mining that are faster than your desktop or laptop.
Each of those 3 steps takes about 5 minutes or so, but may take longer to really understand what each step is about.
*Website Developer Bonus
- TidBit – Earn bitcoins by letting your visitor’s computer mine bitcoins for you while they visit your site. This will be the end of website display ads when the finish beta testing. [No longer a thing[6]]
Results
After about a week worth of letting my computer mine for hours everyday if earned about 0.00001497 BTC, which converts to about 0.01293 USD (2014) according to this bitcoin to USD converter[7]. So… with my current hardware setup it would take months to earn enough to buy anything. However, if I bought some fancy but inexpensive bitcoin mining hardware I mentioned earlier, I’d be earning at a much faster rate. Either way I’ll probably keep mining. I may even convert a few dollars into BTC.
Given the state of the world, a multi-currency strategy couldn’t hurt.
Like the saying goes, “Don’t throw all your babies in the egg water.” Or whatever. Let me know if you try it out.
Happy mining.
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