Introduction to Cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency can be considered as a virtual currency or a digital currency that is far more secure than the traditional form of bank money. Moreover, in certain cases, the transactions in cryptocurrency are also anonymous. These currencies are directly linked to the internet and make use of cryptography. In this process, information is converted into an unbreakable complex code for tracking the transactions.
The history of cryptography’s origin extends well back to World War 2. It was formed as secure communication, the greatest need of the time. Since then, researchers have combined various aspects of computer sciences and mathematics with cryptography, so as to give way to secure information and money transactions on the internet.
Which cryptocurrency is popular right now?
Bitcoin was the first known cryptocurrency. It debuted in 2009 and is still one of the most popular cryptocurrencies to this day. Due to the sudden rise in the popularity of cryptocurrencies, there are quite a few that have emerged over the last ten years. Today, the number of cryptocurrencies available on the internet is 900+. Currently, bitcoin stands at a rate of $11,789.91 as of 20th January 2018. Earlier before Christmas, bitcoin had a fall of nearly 30%, before which it was constantly on the rise. Nevertheless, the number of bitcoin transactions that were done in the year 2017 was almost close to 10 million. The number of transactions made per year itself has a generally increasing trend.
What is mining and what hardware do you need?
Mining is perhaps the most important aspect of any cryptocurrency. Mining is an investment of energy to gain a reward in return. Simply put, miners invest their computer’s power to solve complex cryptographic challenges. These challenges are important to provide confirmation to a transaction. When these transactions are confirmed they become part of a public ledger known as a blockchain.
The difficulty of the cryptographic problems that miners have to solve, is constantly increasing in correlation to the huge number of people that are trying to solve them. Hence, the greater the popularity of a cryptocurrency, the greater the number of miners, and hence, the greater is the difficulty of the mining process.
Back in the time when cryptocurrencies, one could simply make use of a powerful laptop to solve these codes and receive 50 bitcoins in return. This is what the reward for successful mining was. Currently, the reward set at 12.5 bitcoins which varies with time, and requires industrial-grade hardware set-up which comes along with the power usage costs.
Nowadays, one can only make a profit from cryptocurrencies by investing in some serious GPU hardware. Currently, quite a few currencies such as Feathercoins, and Dogecoins are some of the most cost-effective for beginner miners. Nevertheless, in order to make the entire process profitable, you need to let go of the consumer-grade computers.
Here are two of the best GPUs that you can use for mining:
The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 is a good choice for mining. It has a 1.61 GHz GPU clock and an 8GB GDDR5 memory. This makes it one of the most powerful graphics cards out there.
Where it does work seamlessly for the most advanced computer graphics out there, it can also be used for mining purposes due to its powerful architecture. Its 1.61 GHz processing unit is powerful enough to mine most of the intermediate-end cryptocurrencies out there except the most popular ones such as Bitcoins.
With regard to performance, the PNY GeForce GTX 1070 8GB stands out as one of the higher-end graphics cards with advanced architecture. It contains 1920 NVIDIA® CUDA® Cores with a core clock of 1506 MHz and a boost clock of 1683 MHz. Along with that, it comes with a memory size of 8 GB GDDR5.
Considering the specifications of this graphics card, the mining process of most of the cryptocurrencies out there can actually be made profitable. This, however, does not apply to the most in-demand cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Bitcoin or other popular currencies like Ethereum/Litecoin will require you to have an industrial-scale setup.
Conclusion
The cryptocurrency market is quite a fast one, with new currencies appearing nearly every day. We hope to have provided you all the information that you were looking for. In case you would like to share anything with us, feel free to comment below.