Since I started mining, I had to do my research and learn how to setup miners, wallets, and Exchanges.
If your new to mining lets start out first by saying Congratulations, and Good Luck.
There is alot of Altcoin, but for the sake of this post I will be concentrating on Digibyte or DGB.
I would first go to this link https://coinmarketcap.com/ or http://coincap.io/ these are sites that will give you current information on cryptocurrency prices, earnings, and losses, as well as Graphs that show the journey a coin has taken in its life.
Lets visit the site of the coin we are going to mine https://digibyte.co/
Read and learn about the coin YOU are going to invest your time into, such as what is the coins purpose, what do the developers plan on doing with it in the future, how much interest are there in the coin, is the coin on exchanges.
Click Choose Wallet - select the wallet for the Operating System you are using such as (Windows64, Windows32, MacOSX etc).
Once your wallet is done downloading open it by clicking digibyte-qt.exe and let it sync with the blockchain this may take awhile but don't worry.
While its syncing go ahead and click hide, and then click Receive. In the Label box make a wallet with whatever name you see fit , then double click the new wallet to get your WALLET ADDRESS. This is important to RECEIVE the coins you mine later.
Click Settings and click ENCRYPT WALLET and set up your passcode and DO NOT FORGET OR LOSE IT.
Ok so now you have created a wallet and your letting it sync with the blockchain, a very large number of coins will use this exact same method for wallet creation.
NOW we can get on to pool mining, if you want to learn more about solo vs. pool mining a quick google search will set you right.
Lets go on over to https://dgbg.suprnova.cc/ I like and use this mining pool for DGB, you can find pools for ALOT of different coins and setting up the miner, workers, etc should be similar in many ways.
In the upper right hand corner of the screen it will say GUEST hover over that and it should say LOGIN , or SIGN UP.
CLICK SIGN UP ! and put in your information , keep this information in safe place and DO NOT LOSE IT , also bookmark this site, maybe make a Bookmarks folder called ALTCOIN MINING to find all your pools, exchanges, etc easy later on.
Once you have signed up and logged in, click on HELP, then GET STARTED.
This will show you this pools information to setup your miner.
If you are CPU mining download the CPUMINER, if you are GPU mining download the GPU miner.
I Personally prefer SGMINER instead of CGMINER so lets download SGMINER instead here
https://github.com/sgminer-dev/sgminer/releases for Source Code
OR
http://cryptomining-blog.com/wp-content/download/sgminer-5-1-1-windows.zip for Binary ready to go.
Click on MY ACCOUNT, then MY WORKERS under worker name input whatever you like, same for password then click ADD NEW WORKER. Now your worker is created.
Click on EDIT ACCOUNT, under ACCOUNT DETAILS where it says PAYMENTADDRESS, put the Digibyte Address we got from the wallet earlier, input your 4 Digit Pin code and click UPDATE ACCOUNT.
Now you have setup a worker for the pool, setup your address to collect payments later after you mine some coin.
Now that you have downloaded SGMINER lets set it up and get it ready to start mining you some coins !
Unzip the folder if its zipped and once inside the folder, Right Click and Create a New Text Document, name this Text Document Digibyteminer.bat make sure its not followed by txt it must be a BAT file. If that don't work simply open the text document and when you save Click File , Save AS, and change Save as type to ALL FILES.
now inside the new bat file copy and paste this information
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
sgminer.exe -I 20 -g 4 -w 128 -k myriadcoin-groestl --no-submit-stale -o stratum+tcp://dgbg.suprnova.cc:7978 -u Workerlogin.Workername -p Workerpassword
But change Workerlogin to your pool name you selected when signing up, and change Workername to the worker name we set up in the previous step, change worker password to the password you made in the previous step.
Save this information and close the file.
Thats it now lets start the miner, double click on our file we made digibyteminer.bat and a CMD windows should open and begin mining like this.
Now back on the page click DASHBOARD, this screen will show you all the information such as your HASH RATE, and how many COINS you have MINED etc. Remember the information might not start showing until you submit your first SHARE so be patient.
Once you have mined enough coins and want to send them to your wallet, click MY ACCOUNT, EDIT ACCOUNT, and where it says CASH OUT enter your 4 DIGIT PIN and click CASH OUT. This will send your mined coins to your wallet we created earlier, it might take some time so be patient also your wallet must be synced with the blockchain before it will show up usually.
If your miner fails to load double check all the information was entered correctly. If you have any further problems turn to google for more information.
OK So you have mined like 1000 Coins and you want to Trade or Sell them. Go over to https://bittrex.com/ and make an account there, you will be able to send your coins from the wallet we created to the Digibyte wallet on Bittrex under balances, Once the funds transfer over you can trade them, sell them , or whatever you want to do but only Transfer to an Exchange if you plan on Doing something as I do not like leaving my coins sitting around on an Exchange for long periods of time. It is best to keep you coins in your own personal wallets for long term holding.
Thank You, and I hope you have good luck, fun, and Awesome Future mining AltCoins.
Enjoy Mining ! and GOOD LUCK .