ViaBTC | Mining Know-how: What to Consider & How to Pick Mining Rigs
Compared with traditional financial markets, the emerging crypto space is never short of opportunities — Web 3.0, DeFi, blockchain games, and NFT have all achieved economy of scale and captured the spotlight on social media networks. Watched by institutional investors and endorsed by celebrities, these new categories have gone viral. In light of the sustained popularity of the crypto space on social media, mining, which is another crypto segment, seems out of place.
Miners are less market-sensitive than short-term investors. They have always been more rational and are more focused on long-term returns. After several rounds of bulls and bears, a growing number of investors are shifting their focus to mining. That said, what factors should we consider before mining? How should we pick a mining rig and PoW coin? Today, we will dive into all these questions one by one.
PoW mining comes with a high threshold, regardless of the type of crypto involved, and the cost primarily covers mining rigs, electricity fees, and daily O&M expenses.
To begin with, miners should choose the right mining farm because a site is needed to host their mining rigs. In this regard, the primary considerations include the electricity price and O&M expenses. Moreover, miners should also account for the local policy of the region where the mining farm is located to make sure that policy-related uncertainties will not lead to extreme circumstances during the subsequent mining process.
Secondly, miners should pick suitable mining rigs. Different minable coins require different mining machines, and the mining profit and payback period also differ from coin to coin. For instance, mainstream BTC mining rigs include such models as Antminer S19 XP (hashrate: 140 TH/s), KOI Miner C16 Max (hashrate: 113 TH/s), Whatsminer M30S++ (hashrate: 112 TH/s), Antminer S19 Pro (hashrate: 110 TH/s), Whatsminer M30S+ (hashrate: 100 TH/s), etc.
The mining capacity of a mining rig is largely determined by its hashrate and power. Since the daily electricity fee and O&M expenses costs of running a mining rig are basically fixed, the payback period is significantly correlated with the cost of the mining rig (excluding other variables). Here is a rough inference:
The daily yield of a mining rig is subject to its hashrate and power, while the daily net profit is related to the daily yield, the crypto price, electricity fees, and O&M expenses. Additionally, the payback period = mining rig cost/daily net profit. It can be inferred that miners should focus on two factors when picking a mining rig: hashrate and power.
With [Mining Profit Rankings], which is available under [Tool] on the ViaBTC website (https://www.viabtc.com), both beginners and veterans can check the latest mining information about mainstream cryptos that concerns most miners, covering the miner model, hashrate, unit power, daily yield, break-even price, etc.
The last consideration is the selection of minable coins. When analyzing the above information, miners may choose the cryptos that suit themselves. For whale investors, coins like BTC, LTC, and ETH that come with a strong consensus, a high price, and sound stability are more suitable. Although the mining profit of these mainstream coins is not as large as that of some less-recognized coins, when the market declines, less-recognized coins with a weak consensus are often the first ones that suffer the greatest price drop. Meanwhile, backed by a strong consensus and a large market cap, mainstream coins tend to be less affected. As such, investors who are after long-term returns should focus on mainstream coins.
On the other hand, if you are planning to earn mining returns in the short or medium term with a small budget, then coins with a certain level of consensus and a short payback period should be first considered. At the moment, ETH and ETC are both great choices. As for the mining rig, you can pick a model that best suits you according to the indicators and methods introduced above.
