Dear community,
I decided to share my experience with mining Monero.
After researching few pools, I went with MinerGate because it was the only one I found allowing withdrawals from as little as 0.005 XMR
This initially sounded OK too me, so I downloaded a MinerGate GUI miner for windows, started it up and.... the hashrate was around half of what my CPU should produce (according to benchmarks. I quit the MinerGate miner and tried xmr-stak command line tool instead. My hashrate immediatelly doubled - good stuff.
I reached the first 0.005 XMR after few days and I kept mining until I earned myself 0.02 XMR. At this point I decided to withdraw the hard earned Monero (not much of it, but still some reward for all the hassle).
And here to my surprised it appeared that amounts below 0.1 XMR can only be withdrawn into an online wallet called Freewallet.org.
Quick google search shows lots of bad press about them, however having no other option I decided to give it a go.
I withdrawn the full 0.02 MNR into a new Freewallet.org account. Coins successfully arrived into my new Freewallet account. Happy days!
The next obvious step was to move the coins to my own wallet, The UI makes it easy, click on the 'Send' tab, fill in the 'Receipient' address and ....
And here I am. Withdrawal cost is the same as my account balance !!
After mining for nearly 2 weeks and earning 0.02 XMR I only earned for the withdrawal costs. It's just sad.
MinerGate also have a mining app in app store. You can do 10-30 H/s depending on the smartphone model. Don't even try to use it. It will take years to earn enough coins to only cover the withdrawal fees.
Fee for exchange to another currency with Freewallet.org is also 0.02 XMR.
Observation two:
I now switched my miners to another pool, I picked the minexmr.com this time and to my surprise the reported rewards earned is higher then they were with minergate. It's not a proof of anything however my suspicion is that MinerGate did not report all my mined hashes to my account.
Please add a comment if you have any idea what to do with 0.02 XMR held in the Freewallet. I read the internal transfers between Freewallet accounts are free.
Fell free to share your thoughts on Monero or other CPU mined coins, mining pools, software, best practices or anything really.