Bitcoin mining is a trending topic as the price of bitcoin is soaring to new highs. A lot of people are not aware of the fact that you can make money by mining bitcoins. Bitcoin is a digital currency network which needs people to thrive. Mining is nothing but solving complex problems in order to validate transactions.
Bitcoin Mining on Laptop
But how do people make money through bitcoin mining? Well, bitcoin mining is “work” which machines put in. This work strengthens the bitcoin network and increases the supply of bitcoins. When you mine a bitcoin, that is, when a problem is solve by your bitcoin mining machine, you get a reward in the form of bitcoins. For example, last year, bitcoin miners used to get 12.5 bitcoins on mining a full block.
A lot of people are asking whether it is possible to mine bitcoins and make money on their laptops. Laptops, like any other computing machine, have chips and GPUs installed in them. But these chips don’t have a lot of capacity. Perhaps the most important thing in bitcoin mining is the requirement that the bitcoin mining machine should not go offline. This means that a lot of electricity is consumed in the process.
Bitcoin Mining on Laptop is Not Feasible
Bitcoin mining on laptops is possible, but not feasible. You will end up losing money instead of making it. Why? Because you will have to continuously keep your laptop on for days in order to make pennies. But these rewards will be lost paying for electricity bills.
Use ASICs Instead
The best machines for bitcoin mining use ASICs(application-specific-integrated circuits). These chips are specifically designed to mine bitcoins. If you invest in these kinds of chips, you can really make money mining bitcoins.
GPUs installed in laptops are not powerful. They weren’t designed to do the sort of processing used in bitcoin mining. For example, if you use ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 at a power of 56mhash/s, it will take at least two weeks to mine half/one coin. The reward you will get for this will be in pennies. In two weeks, you will spend a lot of money in electricity costs.
Therefore you should buy a good ASIC bitcoin mining device. Here is one of the best ones.
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Bitcoin Mining on Laptops Is Worth It If
Bitcoin mining on laptop is worth it only if you have free electricity or your laptop is really powerful. People who use laptops for bitcoin mining spend a lot of money “overclocking” their GPUs. Overclocking a GPU increases its power and optimizes its performance. For example, a user reports that he is using MSI GX660r with a 5870m chip, at a hash rate of 192 to 200 mhash a second. This hash rate is massive, and possible only due to overclocking.
250 Million Years to Mine a Full Block
Let’s do some math and see why it is not a good idea to try bitcoin mining on your laptop. Last year, network hash rate was 1 824 875 Th/s. Let’s suppose your laptop is a top-of-the-line performance master, having a rate of 0.14 Mh/s. Now calculate the total number of blocks:
1824875/1.4e-7 = 13034821428570 blocks
At 144 blocks a day, it will take at least 250 million years until you find a full block. That means you will make $0.01 USD in about 400 years.
So, forget about bitcoin mining on laptops and invest in some quality GPUs and ASICs if you really want to make money through bitcoin mining.
Featured Image Taken from: https://imgur.com/gallery/GaVXJ