Bitcoin mining as a hobby would be a waste of time and money. There’s simply no way to keep up with the ever-developing new hardware and the hashing power of the big players. However, there are still some alternative cryptocurrencies out there that require less sophisticated equipment. For cryptocoin enthusiasts, it might be fun to mine altcoins on a laptop. It is by no means going to make you rich. However, it does not require any extra expenses either. Plus it is kind of cool to see a zero balance turn in a more-than-zero balance simply by running some software.
This is what Minergate has to offer: user-friendly software that runs on any computer (or even Android phones!) and mines for alternative cryptocurrencies.
The super-easy beginner's guide to getting started:
- Got to Minergate and create an account. This is very easy and requires only a valid email and a password.
- Click on Downloads. The site detects the suitable miner version for your computer automatically. Click on the green Get it button to start the download.
- Double click to open the downloaded file and install it on your system.
- Login with the account credentials you created in step 1.
- Congratulations! You are mining cryptocurrencies. Minergate automatically detects what kind of hardware you have and starts mining the most profitable cryptocurrency for that set-up straight away. This is called Smart Miner, and that is all there is to it.
You can install the software on as many computers or Android devices you have access to. As long as you log in everywhere with the same account, you can quickly accumulate the profits from running the software on multiple devices simultaneously.
Minergate is also one of the largest muli-currency mining pools. It was created in 2014 by a group of cryptocoin enthusiasts which main ideas were ease of use and approachability for amateur miners, without any associated drawbacks for professionals. Variable difficulty, a defining feature of the pool, adapts the difficulty to the power of a user’s CPU/GPU, which allows for efficient mining even on some weaker equipment. Today Minergate has more than 100,000 active users mining a number of cryptocurrencies – Monero, Bytecoin, Bitcoin, and now even Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
Minergate also offers an exchange service at Changelly where you can easily convert all these alternative cryptocurrencies into Bitcoin.
With Minergate you could literally be mining in a couple of minutes from now on any ordinary computer.