How to Mine Ethereum? 

There has been much hype on the increase in the value of cryptos these days, so I thought let me share my point of view about it and also clarify the question arising in your mind about why aren’t we mining Bitcoins, which on the contradictory has more value as compared to Ethereum. Bitcoin indeed has a very high associated value compared to Ethereum. Having that in your wallet is what we can flaunt. Let us see why we are not focusing on mining them or saying that it is not preferable to mine Bitcoin these days. This blog mainly focuses on the audience trying to mine from home and does not have an exhaustive/large setup. Mining is considered even more profitable by those who work from their laptops and mine in the background. This does not imply that it is not profitable for the ones who do not meet similar conditions. Before talking about why we are not going through with Bitcoin mining, let us talk about the future of Ethereum considering recent events with regards to EIP1559 which may lead people to act impulsively and give rise to skepticism for dumping all of their Ethereum at trash rates with a thought process that it might bring down the prices but I ‘think’ that over the years the Crypto is and has always been going up undoubtedly. We think that with EIP1559, the prices are likely to go up with no questions asked; hence we need to be pretty much optimistic about its growth no matter what. An interesting piece of advice is that frequently the Crypto usually does the opposite of what is logically going to make sense. It is obligatory to deal with it without having our eyes clouded/persuaded by emotional instincts. 

Let us talk about Why Bitcoin mining is less profitable? 

If we observe, Bitcoin has gained much popularity as compared to other cryptocurrencies. Earlier, you would have needed only a basic PC setup; you could have that pc solve complex math puzzles for you, so it is a no-brainer, and you would be rewarded for solving those puzzles in your wallet. Over time, by the year 2019, users have setup huge rigs in-house and escalated the competition for mining among the other users who used to mine with small specifications PC, along with that mining reward is cut to half every four years. You can join mining pools, but that comes with its perks, reduced profits. You can buy graphic card/s to set up your rig to enter the competition, do keep in mind that graphic cards are expensive also apart from all that, with an increase in hardware you are going to use up a lot of juice(electricity), the cost depends a lot on what is the price of electricity in your region. Keeping in mind the fact about competition in mining, hardware cost, electricity cost, and the rewards getting halved every four years for Bitcoin, most ordinary miners cannot cover up the overhead cost from the rewards gained; moreover, it all becomes non-profitable. It is time to move on to a different and second most popular cryptocurrency - Ethereum. Ethereum, because of its comparatively less hype (but it is increasing day by day; hence we need to move fast), can be mined profitably but just taking into consideration the fact that we need to have a good GPU on the system to make the mining worth it, also do calculate per unit electricity cost in your region so that you can track if at all the mining is profitable. Better the GPU, more excellent the mining advantages associated as we are not alone on the job of mining, users are setting up bigger rigs in their houses/garage day by day, in turn, increasing competition. 

Let’s Get to the Point. 

How to mine Ethereum? 

1. First of all, you will need a web browser Google Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or Microsoft Edge is also acceptable.
2. Now you will need a wallet because every miner needs a wallet to store the currency. I would recommend MetaMask. Once you get the payout, you would wish to utilize Ethereum to make even more money.
3. Get the MetaMask plugin from the Chrome Web Store. 

• Install to Chrome/Add to Chrome whatever option is available 
• Once installed, it will get you to the ‘Get Started Page’ click on get started. 
• Since it is your first time, click on ‘New Wallet.’ 
• Create Password, then click create 
• You will find a private key for the recovery of your wallet, you can share all your secrets with your BFFs, but there is no need to share this with anyone. I recommend that you write it on a piece of paper and keep it in your locker or a safe as this is also like your dear currency. 
• Try not to be lazy; the next page will demand you to enter the private key in order, so do note it down. Voila! Your wallet has been created. 
• Click on ‘Account’ at the top and copy it to clipboard > Paste it to notepad or write it on a piece of paper that is your public key or a public wallet address, and it is OK to share this. This address as this key is through which you can accept or send payments.

   4. We now need to download miner. Consider this, most of the miners on the internet are malicious, or at least the antivirus on your system or your Browser may consider it malicious, so you need to check that before downloading anyway. Here we are downloading lolminer v1.17 zip for Windows from Github (https://github.com/Lolliedieb/lolMiner-releases/releases/tag/1.17) 

I. Click on lolMiner_v1.17_Win64.zip, and it will get downloaded to your folders. 

II. Save the folder where it will be easily accessible. 

III. Right-click on the folder and click on extract all if you want to go through it in a standard way, or else if you are using 7-Zip or Win RAR, then I assume you already know your way around for this one. 

IV. In the folder, you can see the files, and they are used for mining. 

V. There are some pre-configured .bat files. Keep that in mind, as this will be helpful for us later. 

VI. Now that you have your .bat files, we need to obtain the rest of the information to configure the files. 

VII. Go to Etheremine (www.ethermine.org). This mining pool has an international presence. 

VIII. On the top, you will find the ‘Start Mining’ button. If not the on the top left, you can see a hamburger button, click on it and find the ‘Start Mining’ button. 

IX. Select your server from Asia, Europe, US East, US West, and so on. Also, on scrolling down, you will find all the ports (Stratum Port, SSL Port, etc.) 

X. Now we will be modifying our pre-configured .bat file from the miner that we downloaded. 

XI. Find the file mine_eth.bat from your miner folder. Let’s talk about it. Your performance is going to be better on the cards over 4 GB of video memory when using typically this standard mine_eth.bat if you have a card with only 4 GB of video memory, then you have to play around with the mine_eth_4G.bat file. 

XII. Since most users have over 4 GB of video memory, we will play around with the mine_eth.bat file. We will do ‘how to’ on the rest of the file later. 

XIII. Right-click on the mine_eth.bat file and click on edit. There is a high possibility that your Windows will come to protect your PC, so click on more info and run that anyway (we are going to add an exception to windows for this one) 

XIV. Notepad will open up there you will find ‘POOL=’ replace the address prefilled with your server address as found in point IX. After the colon ‘:’ you need to add the Stratum Port address (replace the numbers/alphabets present there with port and address) 

XV. Following the line, you will find ‘WALLET=’ There, you need to enter your wallet public address by replacing the prefilled alphanumeric before .lol and then save the notepad file. 

XVI. Go back to the folder and double click on the .bat file, which we have edited to start the mining (command prompt screen appears) 

5. Let’s learn how to read what is going on the mining screen. 

I. On GPU= Found share – you have found a share. Below that, you can see GPU= Accept share – here is where the GPU has started working 

II. Average Speed is calculated on Ethereum as mega hash per second(mh/s). The number before mh/s will provide you with a potential idea of your estimated profits. 

6. To calculate an estimate of profit, go to What To Mine (www.whattomine.com)  

I. Under Ethash, type the number you see on your mining screen before mh/s. You can also scroll down to enter the electricity rate that is $/kWh or €/kWh and so on.

II. For now, let’s keep it simple and enter mh/s. If you ask me, my hashing rate is average 63 mh/s currently (it may change consistently) 

III. Click on calculate and then scroll down to see that on an estimate how much $ Revenue Profit you are obtaining on a per-day rate.