The growing complexity of mining has seemingly nullified the ability to mine cryptocurrency using a PC or laptop. However, there are still coins left that can be obtained using the processing power of a regular computer.
How to choose the best cryptocurrency for mining?
Since the choice of cryptocurrencies for mining using a home computer is quite extensive, it can be difficult to choose the best asset. Therefore, before you start mining coins, you should consider three key parameters:
- Cost of mining. This includes all the costs of mining coins: the price of electricity, the commission of pools or the cost of slots in the pool, mining algorithms, the current exchange rate of the extracted cryptocurrency, the time of mining a block, etc.
- Cryptocurrency potential. It is calculated taking into account the prospects of the project (for example, the availability of a roadmap, the fulfillment of its stages), the popularity of the asset in the cryptocommunity, news about the coin, etc.
- Mining complexity. This parameter shows the number of calculations that are required to find the next block. If there are many miners in the network, the complexity of mining an asset increases. In addition, the parameter can change due to the network settings. For example, the complexity of bitcoin mining increases or decreases every two weeks.
When mining cryptocurrencies on a regular computer, you should also take into account the rapid wear and tear of the equipment. Therefore, single miners are increasingly joining pools, which can be found also on centralized crypto exchanges such as Binance and OKX.
Cryptocurrencies to mine using a computer
In fact, there are quite a few cryptocurrencies that can be mined using a regular computer. Here are the most popular assets that can be mined at home in 2023.
Monero (XMR)
Monero is considered one of the easiest and therefore popular cryptocurrencies to mine with a home computer. There is a good reason for this – the coin has an unlimited supply, which means that the complexity of mining it does not grow as much as bitcoin. In addition, the asset has a high price and is among the top 30 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization.
XMR is privacy-oriented. The cryptocurrency is based on the CryptoNote protocol and uses the RandomX hash function to create increasingly complex mathematical equations. You can mine Monero on your own using a CPU or GPU, with the latter being more efficient. Or you can join a mining pool. Then your computer resources will be used together with other pool members to mine XMR.
RavenCoin (RVN)
Ravencoin is another easy to mine cryptocurrency. It was launched in 2018 as a fork of bitcoin, but with improved reward time per block. The cryptocurrency was designed to quickly transfer assets between users. Over time, developers added features such as messaging, voting, etc.
The volume of RVN is 21 billion coins, so anyone can mine the asset with just a GPU, a cryptocurrency wallet and any mining program that can run the KAWPOW script.
Ethereum Classic (ETC)
Ethereum Classic is a slightly modified and modernized version of the original ether, which came about as a result of the Ethereum hardfork in 2016.
Despite the popularity of ETH, it can no longer be mined as the network switched to Proof-of-Stake in September 2022. This was good news for Ethereum Classic, as the resources used to mine ETH are now utilized to mine ETC.
ETC is an open-source cryptocurrency, so it can be mined using a home computer. The asset uses the EtcHash mining algorithm, which supports smart contracts and decentralized applications and has many practical applications.
Vertcoin (VTC)
Vertcoin is an open-source cryptocurrency that is structurally identical to Litecoin and bitcoin, but it is much easier to mine, also from a home computer. The reward offered is 25 VTC per block. However, this amount is halved after every 840,000 blocks mined.
The original goal of Vertcoin was to make mining affordable and break the monopoly of mining companies and pools, which became especially relevant as the cost of mining rose. In addition, the asset is ASIC-resistant, which makes it easier to mine the coin. The creators of the project took care that the mining of cryptocurrency was more simple and released the One-Click Miner (“Mining in One Click”) program. To get VTC, you just need to have a graphics processor.
Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
Bitcoin Gold is a fork of bitcoin, meaning you could say it is a byproduct of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. BTC is mined using specialized mining equipment, whereas BTG was designed specifically for mining using a regular computer.
Bitcoin Gold uses the Equihash algorithm, which is ASIC resistant but requires a sufficiently powerful GPU to get started. There are also many different pools for mining BTG that you can join for faster rewards.