Mining more than just Bitcoin

Notaek · June 5, 2013

I am not sure how much of you are aware, but Bitcoin is quickly becoming unprofitable for people with GPUs. That is not to say that all coin mining is unprofitable. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, but there are many other coins out there. You may have heard of Litecoin. That was the best coin to mine for a while but that is starting to become unprofitable to mine as well due to its downward sloping value.

Fortunately, there are other coins (alternate coins, or altcoins) that have more features than Bitcoin and Litecoin that are starting to take off.

You can view a list of the all relevant altcoins, and which ones are the most profitable coins to mine here: http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency/?sha256HashRate=1400&sha256Power=500.00&sha256PowerCost=0.1000&scryptHashRate=1400&scryptPower=500.00&scryptPowerCost=0.1000

As you can see, right now DGC or digitalcoin is at the top. The value is very unstable though, so I wouldn't recommend it. I personally recommend mining Worldcoin which is only a little less profitable than DGC, but much more profitable than Bitcoin or Litecoin.

One thing I will say is that you should research these coins before you start to mine them. Some of them offer nothing innovative and will die in a few days. One thing that could happen is you mine all of these coins, and next thing you know they are worth nothing.

I cannot vouch for all altcoins, but I can tell you that a lot is in store for the future of Worldcoin. If not mining Worldcoin, the next most stable would be LTC. You can learn more here at http://worldcoinforum.org/

Hopefully you guys found this useful.

RuecanOnRails · June 6, 2013

The one thing they don't tell you about WDC and DGC. They have a very high orphan rate because their solve time and difficulty is so low.

Basically the network speed can't keep people on opposite sides of the world synced fast enough causing the same block to be solved multiple times. It also allows people with very high hash power to solve several blocks in a row before the network can sync, creating a fork in the blockchain which depending on which chain is longer will result in a bunch more orphaned blocks.

*An orphan blockchain is when multiple people solve the block before it has a chance to fully sync with the global network. It will then create a parallel fork in the chain at which point both chains will receive support until one is longer than the other and becomes dominant. The smaller chain then gets removed entirely and if you had solved any blocks from the dead chain, those coins will simply disappear.

The chains do correct themselves very quickly with finding the longer dominant chain so you won't lose an entire day of mining or anything. However you could still end up wasting about 30% of your hash power. Or more if you're unlucky.

Be careful when deciding to mine "scam coins"

Notaek · June 6, 2013

The one thing they don't tell you about WDC and DGC. They have a very high orphan rate because their solve time and difficulty is so low.

Basically the network speed can't keep people on opposite sides of the world synced fast enough causing the same block to be solved multiple times. It also allows people with very high hash power to solve several blocks in a row before the network can sync, creating a fork in the blockchain which depending on which chain is longer will result in a bunch more orphaned blocks.

*An orphan blockchain is when multiple people solve the block before it has a chance to fully sync with the global network. It will then create a parallel fork in the chain at which point both chains will receive support until one is longer than the other and becomes dominant. The smaller chain then gets removed entirely and if you had solved any blocks from the dead chain, those coins will simply disappear.

The chains do correct themselves very quickly with finding the longer dominant chain so you won't lose an entire day of mining or anything. However you could still end up wasting about 30% of your hash power. Or more if you're unlucky.

Be careful when deciding to mine "scam coins"

Yes. The thing is the main feature of WDC and DGC are their very fast block times, making for instant transactions. It takes 20 seconds to send money somewhere with DGC, and 15 seconds to send money somewhere with WDC. At the beginning this resulted in a very high orphan rate as you described. Now, I know that with WDC you should expect at least 90% of projected earnings depending on your stale rate. Not sure what it's like now with DGC but I'm pretty sure they figured over there as well.

The only reason I advised against DGC in the beginning is because right now the price is being pumped right now, so the value could easily fall in a few days once whoever is propping the price up with a ridiculous amount of BTC decides to back down.