What is Mining?
Cryptocurrency mining is the process of adding transaction records to a public ledger. The public ledger is called the block chain and includes all past transactions. Validating new blocks within the block chain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network. Essentially, mining is validating new blocks within the chain managed by mining pools. Mining is designed to be resource intensive so that the amount of blocks solved by miners remains balanced. As more miners competed in solving a limited supply of blocks, the more difficult it became to find a block. Mining pools were created so miners could share the rewards more evenly. The mining ecosystem consist of CPU, GPU, and ASIC mining.
What Does This All Mean?
Cryptocurrency is created by having computers solve complicated mathematical problems. Once a problem is solved, a coin is rewarded for the work. The more coins in existence, the more complicated these mathematical problems become and the more processing power needed to solve these problems. Since the mathematical problems involved are based on floating point numbers, graphic cards are especially efficient at solving them.
How Can I Start Mining?
Winminer offers an easy solution which uses your computer hardware to mine. Winminer is as simple as clicking on/off to start/stop the process. You can cashout whenever you want as long as you have $10 minimum account balance. They offer a variety of payment options including: Paypal, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Amazon gift card, and Itunes gift card. You can read more about winminer here.
Nicehash offers another easy solution which uses your computer hardware to mine. Nicehash requires you to create a BTC address which can be used to withdraw your earnings. Minimum payout to BTC wallet is .0105 BTC with .5% processing fee. Minimum payout to Coinbase account is .001 BTC with zero processing fee. It’s important to note that withdrawing to a Coinbase account is instant. You can read more about Nicehash here.