If you haven't heard about Monero it's the latest high anonymity coin gaining darknet adoption and subsequently a higher value. Earlier this month Monero reached it's all time high around 0.024BTC but has settled to a more modest 0.017BTC at the time of writing this article.
The sudden rise in value and usefulness for darknet purchases has made Monero quite the attractive coin to mine. Whether you are doing it for profit or just as a hobbyist, Monero can be easily mined using your CPU or GPU. To see how profitable mining Monero can be you can use a simple calculator like this one from CryptoCompare.com
Before you can mine Monero coins you'll need a Monero wallet address for those mined coins to go into. If you haven't already done so you can read my Monero wallet guide here How to Setup a Monero Wallet to Send and Receive Funds Anonymously - Windows Guide or just go to MyMonero.com to create a free web wallet address quickly and easily.
A Monero wallet address will look something like this:
485ATHcqcmFCq3azKmikf1Mb4hVm76aEaQ8Ci6y7qXDR3LUTWLW2rfL6tQ1Cc3GXmw2Tb2W4EWm1m1YQYkTF27XC7vTWJhz
Feel free to send Monero to that address, it's mine.
Opening a Command Prompt
No matter which program you download and use below you will need to open a command prompt window to use it. Just press the 'Start' button on your keyboard or click it on the bottom left corner of your screen then type 'cmd' (no quotes) and press enter.
CPU Mining
Depending on what kind of processor you have you'll need to download one of the following zip files and extract the files to a folder of your choosing.
With AES-NI (Intel Xeon & Core Series CPUs)
https://ottrbutt.com/cpuminer-multi/cpuminer-multi-wolf-05-30-2014.zip
Without AES-NI (AMD & Older Intel CPUs)
https://ottrbutt.com/cpuminer-multi/cpuminer-multi-wolf-06-12-2014.zip
Command:
minerd -a cryptonight -o stratum+tcp://mine.moneropool.com:3333 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS -p x
GPU Mining
NVidia GPUs
https://github.com/tsiv/ccminer-cryptonight/releases/download/v0.17/ccminer-cryptonight_20140926.zip
Command:
ccminer -o stratum+tcp://mine.moneropool.com:3333 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS -p x
AMD/ATI GPUs
For AMD/ATI Graphics cards you will have to use the proprietary Claymore's CryptoNote GPU Miner which can be downloaded from one of the following mirrors:
https://mega.co.nz/#F!e4JVEAIJ!l1iF4z10fMyJzY5-LnyC2A
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B69wv2iqszefdkVDNkxla3BCZHc&usp=sharing
Command:
NsGpuCNMiner -o stratum+tcp://mine.moneropool.com:3333 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS -p x
Dual Mine CPU & GPU
You can run both CPU and GPU at the same time just open up a new command prompt window and run them side by side.
Monitor Your Earnings and Collect Your Money
To watch how much you are earning head over to Moneropool.com scroll down to the bottom and paste your Monero address into the text box then press the 'Lookup' button. Once you've mined 0.4 Monero it will automatically be sent to the Monero address you used when running the miner command.
That's it now you can just sit back and let the Monero roll in. If you need somewhere to spend that uber anonymous money you might be interested in checking out my previous article How to Create an AlphaBay Account and Start Shopping on the Darknet
