Cryptocurrency Mining Strategies

So I've officially completed a month of mining 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Market is still down, profitabilities are at an all time low, and I'm still alive. The SEC wants in on the action, all cryptocurrency exchanges now probably need to register with the SEC. That however is going to take some time. The sky may be falling, but that doesn't mean you can't make the best out of this situation. In this post I'm going to focus on the various strategies one can use to maximize profits from mining. I'm no expert and I would love to hear your thoughts on what has worked for you.

For those who haven't read my first article, I have a mining rig of 12x1080 TIs and I've been mining Verge, Vertcoin, and some new coins too - OnexCash, MktCoin and Bulwark. I found a new site crypto-coinz.net, which is an alternative to whattomine.com, and it lists a lot of other coins that are not on whattomine.com. Here's what I earned in a month:

• Verge: 16000
• Vertcoin: 70
• Bulwark: 100
• MktCoin: 1900
• OnexCash: 1800

Strategies To Maximize Mining Profits
There are several options when it comes to mining, different strategies, different coins, different algorithms, use NiceHash or another pool or mine the most profitable coin per day, etc. I have been dabbling with many of these options myself. The strategies can be broadly categorized into 2 groups:

1. The DIY Approach: This is probably what most people start with - choose one of the top 5 most profitable coins to mine consistently for your GPUs, using sites like whattomine.com or crypto-coinz.net, then select the best pool (out of many) for that coin, hoping that the coin will grow in value some day and then sell it off. Or you could switch the top 5 coins around and exchange those coins earned for BTC/ETH/LTC weekly/bi-weekly/monthly depending on what you prefer. This is a good option if you have the time to research on coins, the best algorithm for those coins based on your GPU, their hashrates, and their difficulty on a regular basis. Try not to choose the topmost coin on whattomine.com, because that is what most people choose to mine and the difficulty shoots up in no time bringing down the overall profits.

2. The Automated Profit Switching Approach: Let the mining software do all the work for you. Pools like NiceHash automatically switch to the most profitable algorithm for your GPU in real time, and pay you in BTC, essentially doing all the work for you. This is a simple hassle free approach, just start the miner and forget. A more or less fixed payment amount is guaranteed daily in BTC, you can transfer BTC from your NiceHash BTC address to your Coinbase BTC address and there's no need to visit any exchange. Based on my experience, I've made ~15% more mining Verge directly on suprnova pool than using NiceHash.

   Alternatively, there is another approach, profit switching with auto exchange. MiningPoolHub allows you to choose the coin you want to be paid in, while doing automatic profit switching, you can choose Ethereum, Vertcoin or whatever you believe has good potential in the long run. So if you're mining Zcash (the most profitable coin), you can choose to be paid out in Vertcoin, that way you get more Vertcoin daily instead of mining Vertcoin directly. MiningPoolHub does a swap for the earned coins on one of the following exchanges - Bittrex, Yobit, Poloniex. You can either mine a single coin, or do a multi algorithm switch mining. There are miner helper programs available for the latter - MultiPoolMiner, Awesome Miner and NemosMiner. All of these programs are really good, they monitor pools in real-time and choose the most the profitable algorithm. Awesome Miner is probably the easiest one to use, there's a free version and a paid version, which has additional features like cloud services, GPU overclocking, etc. NemosMiner and MultiPoolMiner work in a similar way but NemosMiner is specifically for NVIDIA GPUs. Setting both these up isn't that straightforward and takes some time to get it right. I've heard a lot of good things about NemosMiner and I'm going to try that next.

I've used Awesome Miner, NiceHash and I've mined coins directly. From my experience, DIY mining > Awesome Miner > NiceHash. I believe the DIY approach is better if you have the time, it eliminates the additional fees and the profit switcher doesn't always work correctly, as experienced by many users. All of the options mentioned above have their own pros and cons, it all comes down to what works best for you, given your setup, and the time you have on hand. I don't have a lot of time to spend on mining, maybe 15 min a day after work and on the weekends. Regardless of what option you choose, it is still not the best time to be a miner but hopefully things will improve soon.

I would love to hear from you on what your strategies are and how they've worked out for you. Feel free to leave a comment. Happy mining!