- Hey guys, this is Austin.
This computer is making
me money right now.
While that might sound
like some scummy pop-up ad,
in reality, it's all
thanks to Cryptomining.
You've probably heard of cryptocurrency,
such as Bitcoin and Litecoin.
These are digital
currencies that are worth
real world money.
For example, a single
bitcoin goes for about $2400
right now.
This has become a really big industry.
Not only has Bitcoin been
recognized as legal currency
in places like Japan,
but you can spend Bitcoin
at a lot of online
retailers, such as Microsoft,
buying games on Steam.
You could even purchase things with PayPal
using Bitcoin.
It is a big deal.
For example, if you
fire up a mining program
on your computer, it'll immediately start
crunching the numbers on
different transactions
that come it's way.
As a reward for doing all that hard work,
you'll gain tiny, tiny
amounts of cryptocurrency.
Typically, this doesn't really equal much.
However, as things like Bitcoin become
more and more valuable,
it can actually add up.
There are two different
ways of getting your hands
on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
The first is really straightforward.
You can buy and sell them
just like anything else.
So, the market will go up and
down and it does that a lot,
but the theory is, you buy
'em for cheap, sell 'em
for more and you make a profit
just like the stock market.
The other is by mining.
So, every transaction is public.
So what that means is that
some computer has to do
the work of deciding that
hey, someone has money,
it needs to go to the other person.
Make sure that's a legit transaction.
In the early days, you could
use an ordinary gaming PC
to mine Bitcoin, but as
it's gotten more popular
and more importantly, there's
more and more competition
for mining, it is pretty crazy to use
a standard gaming PC
to mine Bitcoin today.
There has been other
cryptocurrencies that have sprung up
over the years.
So, back in 2013, I had
a few different Litecoin
mining rigs set up and generally speaking,
if you have a PC with a solid
GPU, you can make that work.
However, the issue is, as things
get more and more popular,
people design what are called
ASICs, which are literally
custom-designed chips that are purely made
to destroy a PC at mining.
Today though, cryptomining
has seen a major resurgence
and a lot of that is thanks to
a new option called Ethereum.
Now, this is something that
actually does make sense
to mine on a standard gaming PC.
So, we've been using this
CyberPower PC that we did
a video on recently which
actually is now down to $650,
which is kind of funny because
thanks to cryptomining,
even the graphics card itself
sometimes will go for $650.
Generally speaking, higher end AMD cards
like the RX 580 that's
inside is going to be your
best bet for cryptomining.
NVIDIA options also do
work pretty well too.
If you have a lower end card
that's maybe a little bit
older that's gonna draw a lot of power,
you wanna try mining on
the CPU, it's generally not
going to be worth it.
Cryptomining really is all about the GPU.
The actual setup for mining is
surprisingly straightforward,
a lot better than it used to be.
So you just need three things,
a PC to do your mining,
a Bitcoin wallet and a mining program.
There are lots of options
for creating a wallet,
but I use Coinbase.
Not only is it fairly simple
as they do pretty much
all the work for you, but
not only can you buy Bitcoin,
but more importantly, you can
sell them or just spend them.
For the mining program,
a really easy option
is to use Nicehash.
So, this runs as a normal Windows app
and all you need to do is
let it do it's initial setup,
give it your Bitcoin wallet address
and it handles everything else from there.
Nicehash does take three percent
of everything that you mine
but in return, it's a
completely automatic setup,
so if you're not super
familiar with this stuff,
it works pretty well and
it's even smart enough
to automatically pick
between different algorithms
based on what's going
to be most profitable.
The cool thing is, since
this is just a normal
Windows program, you can
mine whenever you want.
So, say you wanna actually play
some games on your game PC,
just stop mining for a few minutes.
Once you're done, turn it back on.
So I'm about to throw
some numbers at you guys,
but please take all these
with a giant grain of salt.
This can go way up and way
down pretty much at any point.
So right now, with this
setup over the last few days,
it's averaged making about $2.10 a day.
So, of course, you do have
to keep the electricity bill
in mind.
So with this system and
the electricity rates here,
it's pulling about 25
cents worth of power a day.
That might not sound like
much, but when you add it up,
that's about $57 a month
or about $690 a year,
which is actually enough to
pay for the entire system.
But, and there's a giant but,
this changes all the time, seriously.
So, just today, as we've
been filming this video,
prices have changed a lot.
So, earlier this morning,
we were making about
$1.90 a day.
However, right now, we're
doing about $2.31 in mining.
It really does change on
an almost hourly basis.
All of this is just an example
with this single graphics
card inside this system.
So if you have a really beefy system
with say, a pair of 1080
Ti's, you can be making
a lot more money.
On the other hand, if you
have an older graphics card,
it might not even make sense
to mine in the first place.
So, there is a cool calculator.
I have that linked into the description
where you can plug in
what your hardware is.
It'll tell you roughly about how much
you would make per day.
What doesn't really make
sense is going out and buying
a bunch of hardware just to start mining.
So, this has actually made graphic cards
not only out of stock in a lot of places,
almost more important than
that, really, really expensive.
One things that makes
a little bit more sense
is if you already have a
gaming PC and you just wanna
give this a try.
It is kinda fun.
The thing you need to keep in mind though
is that this is going to
be essentially running
your GPU at 100% 24/7.
It's not necessarily
going to immediately break
or anything, but it
will definitely shorten
the lifespan of your card.
This definitely isn't for everyone,
but as a nerd, there's
actually something kind of fun
about this.
So, what do you guys think
about mining cryptocurrencies?
Let me know in the comments
below and I will catch you
in the next one.
