Cloud mining or mining at home?
I will try to explain both of mining methods and discuss advantages and disatvantages. For some people cloud mining would be better for another gpu mining or asic mining but both can give you profits.
You should be aware that every investments into cryptocurrencies is associated with high risk. So you should invest only money you are afford to lose.I'm not finance advisor and you invest money on your own risk.
Cloud mining
Probably everyone whos in cryptocurrency world heard about cloud mining. There is many services where you can invest money and get profits by cloud mining. The most popular are genesis mining and hashflare.
I will talk about hashflare because I invested some money there and actually you cant buy any transfer on genesis mining at this moment.
On hashflare you can pick what cryptocurrency you want to mine, how much mining power you want to buy and you can start mining right after youre payment is confirmed. You dont need to buy any hardware or pay electricity bills. All contract are for 1 year and some of them have maintenance fees and other not.
Advantages:
- You dont need any hardware or software knowledge
- You can just invest money and earn passive income
- No electricity bills
Disadvantages:
- Almost every contracts are limited for specific period of time
- You never know when cloud mining company will disapear from market
- You cant swap your hashpower to mine other coins
Home mining
Our second topic is home mining rigs. There is two ways to obtain one of them.First you can build one if you have some pc knowledge or just buy from someone who can do it for you. Of course if you build it alone it will be cheaper. You also need to setup software overclock graphic cards sometimes upgrade bios, run some tests etc. For example I'm pc enthusiast anf for me doing things like that are just fun.Afterwards you have very powerful pc which you can use for gaming, video rendering and many other things.
In other hand we have ASIC miners mostly used for mining BTC and LTC. This miners are even more specific cause you use them only for mining and you control them only via web connection. Asic miners are realy loud and need good power suply (1000-1500W). Life cycle of this miners are significant shorter because if new model come on market the older one is actually worthless but if you buy one at good moment you can earn a lot of money casue they are very efficient.
The most popular ASIC miners at the moment are:
antminer s9 for BTC mining
antminer l3+ for LTC mining
If you're looking the most powerful gpu mining rigs you should look gtx 1080 Ti or Vega 64 even if you buy only 1 card you can earn around 7-8$ per day. Of course boith are good for other cryptocurrencies.
If you're looking more budget mining rigs I would recommend gtx 1060/1070 or radeon rx 570/580.
Advantages:
- You are owner of the hardware so can always sell it out if you want to
- You can switch between coins your want to mine
- You can sell your hashpower if you want
Disadvantages:
- You have to pay electricity bills
- You need to setup rigs and control it ( it can be actually advanage aswell)
- You need a space for the rigs and ensure the safety of it
Conclusions:
As you can see both methods of mining can be profitable but you always have to be aware of the risk. I mixed cloud mining and gpu home ming. On hashflare I have contract fot bitcoin mining because asic miners are too loud for me and I invested only a few dollars to check if its legit. And I'm also using my gaming pc for mining altcoins. If I would have more savings I will probably invest into another gpu and a few more dollars in cloud ming to diversify the risk.
I hope this article will be helpful for some people. I know its not perfect but its my first so long post here and I could forget something. Sorry for my grammar but english is not my native language.