As the DeepOnion airdrops are soon coming to an end, people might look for other ways to get more $Onions.
In this article I will focus on the mining aspect of getting more $Onions, and mining crypto in general.
When it comes to mining PoW (Proof of work) or Hybrid (PoW + PoS) cryptocurrencies you have four main options to get rewarded for your contribution to the network.
One thing you must keep in mind before getting into any kind of mining, is that the profitability can change dramatically from hour to hour due to multiple factors, for example the difficulty of the coin you are mining or even the general crypto market trend, no matter what hardware you are using and what you are mining. One thing can be extremely profitable today that might be very unprofitable the next day.
1) CPU mining
Processor mining is the oldest crypto mining method of all, even Bitcoins were mined with CPUs before the first GPU mining software was released in 2010. Then ASICs (Application specific integrated circuit) took over the mining field in late 2012, early 2013.
Currently the most profitable "CPU mining" algorithm is cryptonight (and its other variants), but as GPUs get stronger and stronger every year it's clearly visible that even algorithms designed specially for CPUs are more profitable to mine with GPUs. Unfortunately this has dropped the expected profits with CPU mining a lot in the past 6-12 months.
You can check the expected performance of your hardware (both CPU and GPU) for cryptonight algorithm here:
And you can check the expected returns / most profitable coin to mine here:
My advice on CPU mining:
I would not recommend anyone to start building CPU mining rigs right now. You have to keep in mind that you will most likely not be able to put more than 2 CPUs into one motherboard, so one rig will only have 2 CPUs while GPU mining rigs can handle 6 to 8 GPUs at a time in a comfortable manner.
However if you have an already working modern computer that you are not using 24/7 and access to nearly free or very cheap electricity you could get a few bucks back.
The other case where CPU mining could be profitable is server hardware with server CPUs. For example blade servers, where one blade center can handle / host dozens of CPUs with hundreds of cores. Server hardware usually requires increased cooling and increased energy (KW) compared to desktops or workstations. Also their noise is unbearable in a living environment (or even close to it), they will need to be ran in a server room, which will most likely have access to way cheaper electricity than regular households.
Building up blade centers specificly for mining from the ground up would probably not make sense, but if you can get some cheap hardware second hand or get it very discounted from big companies (they tend to write them off after a few years, then it's just garbage to them) then you could accomplish profitable CPU mining.
In my experience CPU mining with server hardware seem to have little to nothing maintenance work and cost. Those machines were designed to operate under hard load 24/7 for years.
(I have a 216 CPU core server mining rig set up for more than 2 months now, and I didn't have to touch it once)
The "Onion" aspect of CPU mining:
Unfortunately mining onions with CPUs is not doable (technically it is possible but you would not get any reward even after years of mining due to low hashrate compared to the average network hashrate). So if you are mining with CPUs to get more $Onions, just mine whatever is most profitable, sell it and buy $Onions from an exchange.
2) GPU mining
Mining with graphics cards can be a bit trickier. It can be both very profitable and very unprofitable too.
There are many ways to build GPU mining rigs, from cheap cards to expensive ones. The price of GPUs change rapidly as more and more people start using them for mining, so the "most profitable" card with the best ROI can change from day to day.
Here you can check the expected hashrates from the different hardware:
https://www.miningbenchmark.net/
And you can check the expected returns / most profitable coin to mine here:
If you are willing to pay a little extra fee, you can use pools that will automatically switch coins and even algorithms for you, to make sure you are always mining the most profitable thing, and they will even pay you out in BTC right away.
For example https://miningpoolhub.com/ or https://www.nicehash.com/
My advice on GPU mining:
If you are willing to spend the time on research, building up and optimising the rig then GPU mining can bring you way more profits than CPU mining. Electricity and the initial hardware costs are key factors here too, always make sure to calculate your costs and expected returns correctly (and even then the whole mining "scheme" can turn upside down from one day to another)
GPU mining also seem to require the most maintenance cost / work compared to CPU or ASIC mining (at least as far as my experience goes)
However GPU mining rigs have the most resell value, so if you change your mind or it becomes unprofitable you can still sell the hardware (unlike server CPUs and unprofitable ASICs) and probably break even or make profit.
Also you don't have to worry about not being able to mine something with GPUs. There will almost certainly always be profitable coins to mine if you already have a running GPU rig.
The "Onion" aspect of GPU mining:
While you could again, technically mine $Onions with GPUs it would most likely not even make up for the cost of electricity due to the high average network hashrate and difficulty.
As GPU mining can be profitable my suggestion is, if you want to get more $Onions ,mine whatever is most profitable and use your profits to buy $Onions on an exchange.
3) ASIC mining
The general problem with ASICs is the following: When new ASICs are developed/released they are usually extremely better than previous versions or comparing it to CPUs and GPUs.
If the company who is able to make such new ASICs, basically printing them money at an insane rate, why would they sell it to the public? Even for thousands / tens of thousands of dollars, when they can make that daily or weekly with the new machines.
The sad answer is that they don't...they don't sell it, or even make it public that they have such machines until they see or feel the end of those machines' profitability. This has been proven many times with many ASIC manufacturer company, that their customers got heavily used devices, they usually can't even be bothered to clean them off to make them look new.
So if you are ever purchasing or pre-ordering an ASIC you are already taking a big risk of not even breaking even. Of course this is not always the case otherwise people would never buy it. Some ASICs end up being profitable for a lot more time than expected or some people get it way ahead of other people. This is basically the russian rulett of crypto mining.
Unfortunately the re-sell value of the ASICs are next to nothing because if they are making nice profits no one is selling them, if people are starting to sell them, then they are not making enough profit and you are taking an even bigger risk by buying it.
On the positive side ASICs usually don't require any additional cooling but that is because they are usually equipped with such high powered fans that they make even more noise than any server. (with some exception). They usually require no maintenance though.
My advice on ASIC mining:
Very risky investment BUT, if you can get a not so old and yet very profitable ASIC on a big discount for whatever reason (the person selling it might need instant cash or who knows) and you also have access to very cheap electricity then ASICs can bring the most profit compared to GPU and CPU mining.
The "Onion" aspect of ASIC mining:
DeepOnion uses the x13 PoW algorithm, and there are ASICs for that. The most profitable one is probably the Baikal Giant A900
https://asicminermarket.com/product/baikal-giant-a900-dash-miner/
(it's out of stock so I'm not even sure if you could get it or not)
However looking at the numbers, 900MHs at 255W, calculating with today's $Onion price and difficulty and an average electricity cost of 0.15$ / KW you are looking at earning 40$ profit per month.
That makes it almost 2 years before you even get your initial 800$ investment back. However it is not even guaranteed as of now that DeepOnion will stay PoW/PoS hybrid for 2 more years. My advice is that if you already have an X13 ASIC either sell it and use the money to buy $Onions or just mine with it while you can, then trash / sell it.
4) Rented mining
You can also rent mining power by either renting mining rigs / farm of rigs, for example from : https://www.miningrigrentals.com/ Or rent hashing power from https://www.nicehash.com/
What you have to look for, are 4 things:
- The price of the rig / hashing power
- The available hashing power or the amount you are willing to pay for
- The difficulty of the coin you will mine with it
- The price of the coin you will mine
The renting sites will always tell you how many hours or days you will get with your selected settings, then you can use https://whattomine.com/calculators to calculate your expected returns for the coin you wish to mine.
Make sure to always calculate with at least 10% less earnings, as hashrate can be partially rejected by mining pools due to imperfect connection, the difficulty can change (a lot) and also the provider can deliver slightly less than what you are paying for.
My advice on rented mining:
You can make some really nice profits if you are picking your coins / algorithms good. Sometimes mining coins this way can be up to 30-50% cheaper than actually buying them on exchanges.
However you have to be extremely cautions, as you are surely not the only one making these calculations and, if many people jump on the same coin at the same time, the difficulty can skyrocket and you can end up getting less coins, than what you could have bought on exchanges.
The "Onion" aspect of rented mining:
The X13 hashrate tend to be a lot cheaper on nicehash than miningrigrentals, but nicehash can be buggier, often resulting in disconnects and sometimes up to 20-25% rejected hashrate on the pool's side.
Regarding profitability... getting $Onions can sometimes be 20-30% cheaper via renting hashrate and mining them, than buying it. About equally it can also be 20-30% more expensive than simply buying . You have to pay attention to it, when you are mining or when you are just buying on exchanges.
As I have mined most of my onions using rented hashrate, I have some interesting findings and lots of experience, but I'll share that in a different article as this one is already very long :)
Thanks for reading!