My approach to creating and earning cryptocurrencies (outside of Steemit of course) in 2018 has three parts:
- Cloud mining
- Mining locally
- Buying and holding
Cloud Mining
After some research, I made the decision of buying mining power via Hashflare. How much you want to earn depends on how much you want to invest. You can do a large single investment or add smaller amounts over time. You purchase your mining power for a year and their hardware mines your selected coin(BTX, ETH, Zcash) for you constantly during that time. Their minimum withdrawal right now is 0.05BTC around ~$700. Keep that in mind if you are looking for short-term returns, you may have to invest a larger amount. For a longer-term strategy, there’s a re-invest option that allows you to use the coins created daily to purchase more mining power automatically.
Method
I set out to get 2 Terahashes initially. After telling a few friends, the collective excitement led to me purchasing several times more than I planned. Along with a few referral bonuses from friends I ended with a sizeable amount. I used a portion of a paycheck, (almost) emptied several lesser performing investment and savings accounts to begin my cloud mining adventure. I plan to watch it for 2018 and make a decision on where to go somewhere around Christmas.
Returns
Based on the Hashflare Profits Calculator site, I am looking to at least double my returns this year on the initial investment. The break-even time sits close to 4 months. This is not even taking the rise of BTC into account yet. Hashflare Profit Calculator is a very nifty tool for estimating your profits over time. Cryptocompare also has another calculator that I used a lot. I use the former more because it allows you to adjust for different scenarios and I am aiming for maximum profitability.
Mining Locally
The next part of the strategy is mining cryptocurrencies at home, primarily using (Graphics Processing Units) GPUs. I am mainly considering Etherium, but I am not locked into any specific coin. The primary initial investment for your local mining rig is going to be for parts. My strategy is to buy all the parts used and preferably locally sourced. Craigslist is a great option, as well as thrift stores and garage sales. What I do plan to invest heavily into is the actual GPUs which are the workhorses of my mining operation. Cards can run from ~$120 USD used, up to infinity for the top end of graphics cards.
Method
I'm going to post a guide shortly on how I got my mining operation running, but I'll give a brief description here. Mainly because I still have a few bugs to work out. I went on Craigslist to find a used desktop computer, I ended up getting a two for one deal, from somebody who had just upgraded their mining rig. That’s two motherboards and two power supplies, pretty much to computers and two older graphics cards. The graphics cards were not suitable for mining difficulty came out so they might be useless as of now. They might be suitable for gaming on another computer. regardless I'm saving them. Future GPU additions will be found via Craigslist type sites, eBay and online stores such as Amazon. Supplies go out of stock very quickly, so I've listed a site that shows you all the best places where you can get for when high-end graphics cards when they become available at Now In Stock.
To start, my first two cards won't be the highest-end graphics cards, they will be the middle of the range graphics cards so bought two Nvidia GTX 1050TI’s. Some setup is involved and even if you are computer savvy, you might have some issues getting everything going. There are multiple guides out there that you can use to patch together a system to your liking.
I plan on constantly increasing my local mining output. Acquiring more parts and learning more efficient techniques. There is a benefit to having the first two prongs at once. I'm consistently producing income using my cloud mining setup; as soon as I pay for it, it's already ready it's already running. I don't have any downtime waiting for parts or dealing with any bugs.
UPDATE Since originally writing this I have read more about tri-mining. Using the CPU/GPU/HDD to mine different cryptocurrencies. I feel I don't have the necessary information on HDD mining via Burstcoin and similar currencies. I may add it to my strategy at a later date after more research.
Buy and Hold
The final part of my strategy is to buy-and-hold. I won't be generating all of my crypto earnings strictly through mining. I plan to dedicate a respectable amount of income per week, around 10% of my paychecks , spread into different currencies. Additionally, I plan to go the traditional regular route and purchase via Coinbase or similar exchange sites and hold them in a wallet. I'm going to split my weekly purchases down the middle between Ethereum and Bitcoin. I plan to hold all for roughly a year, to see how the market goes, steadily increasing my holdings.
Coinseed, which is an app that launched December 2017; I heard about it first on Steemit. Coinseed is similar to the Acorns app that allows you to use spare change to invest in cryptocurrencies a really solid and fun platform. If you use Acorns or any of the mobile investment apps you should feel right at home, Coinseed allows you to invest your spare change one-time or recurring amounts. They buy and hold cryptocurrencies for you which you sell and receive in USD. I set up Coinseed on the ‘Round-Up’ mode where it takes the remaining change to next the next dollar on my debit card purchases. A 'set and forget' way of incrementally adding to my crypto stockpile.
Conclusion
This is my basic three-prong strategy. Cloud mining, local mining and ‘buy-and-hold’ set up a good base for earning with cryptocurrencies, importantly it's where I feel most comfortable. I'm not overly invested in a method or a particular crypto-currency so the loss potential is at a minimum. The only reason why I recommend any of these methods is because I am doing them. If you know any other ways that are more efficient don't be afraid to share them. And of course the un-official 4th prong is Steemit :)
Thanks for reading Steemians. Please Upvote Resteem and Comment if-if you love the material.