Ethereum is quite difficult to mine on your standard PC as there are quite a few step to go through as can be seen in our comprehensive guide here.If you aren't tech savvy or willing to give a bit of time to getting it up and running yourself, there is another way.This is where you pay someone else to do it for you and get them to run the mining equipment on your behalf.You can compare all Bitcoin and Ethereum cloud mining contracts here.This is called cloud mining.It has been happening for a long time with Bitcoin and a number of reputable providers have come to the fore where you can trust their reputation for them not to run off with your money.This is especially true of Genesis Mining who are the first to set up a batch of Ethereum Mining contracts where all you do is pay them some cash and your up and running as an Ethereum miner - as simple as that - no hassle no playing around with downloading Geth and using command prompt - and most importantly you don't have to maintain it yourself which can be a big issue if you have to keep going to restart your computer.

So it saves your time!The reason Ethereum Cloud miners can get better deals is two fold.bitcoin ticker iosFirstly they buy in bulk, so they get a discount on all their graphics cards.dogecoin start dateSecondly they can put their mining machines in low cost locations such as Iceland.bitcoin techcrunchThis severely reduces the operating costs of running an ethereum mining contract which means they can pass on these savings to you.asic bitcoin calculatorIn fact Genesis mining run their contracts off green energy - so you can say your being green whilst being in the avant-garde of a financial and technological revolution.bitcoin ke paypal

They offer the contracts for a period of one year and during that year you have no extra fees its a one off up front payment.bitcoin kaufen per uberweisungYou might wonder how they can do this - the simple reason is that they hedge their profit and loss so there is no risk of everything going wrong - they hedge the ether price.elite dangerous bitcoinThey also guarantee 100% uptime - this means that if your miner goes offline - they will substitute their own machines immediately - kind of like getting replacement car if yours breaks down.bitcoin central suisseThe other advantage is that you don't have to listen to the noise that it creates.bitcoin mining with raspberry pi worth it

Adding all of this together it would seem pretty logical to opt for a mining contract unless the joy of mining was for the joy of mining itself.Although you might just get a smaller slice of profitability by doing it for yourself - would it be worth it - we don't think so... Here are three of the top mining contracts on offer.They are all priced the same on a cost per MH basis  - usually you get a discount the more you buy.However this is due to the demand with Ethereum as it is such a popular 2nd generation crypto currency.They generally offer daily payouts to the user which you can feed into your ethereum wallet on your phone or however you choose to store it.If you want to find out more about cloud contracts you can read about it here and if you want to find out some more about ethereum, how it is mined and issued, you can find more guides here.You can buy your first cloud mining contract with Genesis Mining here.If you’re new to mining Ethereum, this guide covers all the important facts in a simple, low-jargon way.

Let’s start with some short answers to common questions about Ethereum mining: Q: Why should I mine Ethereum tokens (aka ether or ETH)?doesn’t mining Ether take up a lot of electricity?A: If done properly, more money is earned by selling mined ETH than is spent on electricity.In other words, it’s profitable!You can check out the profitability with our Ethereum mining calculator.Q: Can I mine with my CPU (Personal computer’s processor) instead of an expensive graphics card (GPU)?A: GPUs are so much faster that CPU-mining is no longer profitable or worthwhile.Even entry-level GPUs are about 200 times faster than CPUs for mining purposes.Q: What’s the best GPU to use for getting the most ETH for the least electricity?A: AMD cards tend to edge out similarly-priced NVidia cards in terms of efficiency.We cover the best cards to get under the heading “GPU Hardware” further down in this post.Q: Why point your GPU towards a mining pool as opposed to solo-mining?A: Unless you throw a fortune into mining hardware, your odds of generating ETH on your own are low.

Pool-mining allow you to earn ETH in a regular and predictable way.Q: How do I get started with mining Ethereum?A: If you’ve got a suitable GPU, it’s a quick and painless matter of installing the Ethereum wallet and mining app then entering a few settings into your chosen pool’s website.Further details are available in the Getting Started with Mining section.Some of the above terms in bold probably require further clarification for cryptocurrency newcomers.Let’s start with the Ethereum blockchain; the distributed digital ledger which you actually mine.All transactions in Ethereum (and other cryptocurrencies) are encapsulated within discrete blocks.These blocks are comparable to the batches of transactions which banks send to each other, except in Ethereum they occur every 15 seconds (on average).Blocks are identified by their “height,” starting from 0 and incrementing sequentially until the current block.Here’s how the mining process serves to create, verify and record blocks: Ethereum uses a different hashing algorithm to Bitcoin, which makes it incompatible with the special hashing hardware (ASICs) developed for Bitcoin mining.

Ethereum’s algorithm is known as Ethash.It’s a memory-hard algorithm; meaning it’s designed to resist the development of Ethereum-mining ASICs.Instead, Ethash is deliberately best-suited to GPU-mining.Total network hashrate has been climbing rapidly since Q2 2016.A dip occurred on news of the DAO crisis but hashrate has since recovered.This chart from Etherscan tells the story: So if the amount of hardware dedicated to Ethereum mining is rising, why aren’t blocks being mined ever more rapidly, such that the average 15 second block time has decreased?The answer is Difficulty.By automatically adjusting the computational difficulty of solving a block, the Ethereum blockchain is able to maintain ~15 second intervals.You’ll notice Difficulty closely tracks hashrate: The next obvious question is why hashrate and difficulty have been rising in the first place?There’s a simple economic driver; price!Daily chart of Ethereum’s US Dollar value, courtesy of Trading View The takeaway here is that hashrate has followed (with some appreciable lag) the ETH price explosion, which began in late January 2016.

With a clearer understanding of the Ethereum blockchain and important concepts like Difficulty, it’s time to perform some economic calculations: First, head over to Etherscan’s Mining Calculator, which provides up-to-date figures for the current price, block time and network hashrate (as measured in Gigahash per second aka GH/s; denoting billions of calculations per second): Second, copy these figures into the Cryptowizzard Mining Calculator, a more sophisticated calculator which allows you to set your electricity costs, which are critical to determining profitability.Unfortunately, this calculator doesn’t automatically retrieve the current price, hashrate and block time.So, we copy those over: Third, select the Graphics card you intend to use for mining.The calculator automatically enters the correct hashrate and power consumption.If your card isn’t listed or you’ve modified its performance, select the Custom option and enter the relevant figures manually.Note that GPU hashrates are entered in (Megahash per second aka MH/s; denoting millions of calculations per second).

The fourth and final step is to enter your electricity price, as shown on your utility bill or this list for the USA or this list for elsewhere.The results will be displayed below: So, our example will net 109 ETH annually.If sold at the current price, $1537 will be earned from which we subtract the electricity cost of $493.This nets a respectable profit of $1045.From that $1045, several subtractions may be required: Difficulty is likely to continue its established rising trend (and could spike on the release of more efficient GPUs) and price is extremely unpredictable (and may crash if the market dislikes Ethereum’s solution to its on-going DAO crisis).Further, Ethereum is scheduled to switch to a Proof of Stake model at some unspecified date, meaning it will no longer be mineable.Before any serious outlay of capital, further research into Ethereum’s prospects is warranted.While GPUs may be set to mining other coins and their costs partially recouped through resale, GPUs depreciate rapidly.

This is especially true of cards put to the constant, intensive work of mining.Experimentation with various GPU selections in the calculator will reveal a card with the best price to performance to power consumption combination (expressed as MH/s per Currency Unit).Keep in mind that AMD cards outperform NVidia for cryptocurrency mining purposes.The card should have at least 2 gigs of RAM or it won’t be able to properly mine Ethereum.Pro-tips: check out the AMD R9 range, particularly the HD 7950 which is readily available as used (try to get it from a gamer instead of a miner, with a warranty if possible).For a solid budget card, the MSi 370 with 4 gigs of RAM is recommended.AMD are set to introduce their new 14 nanometer (nm) RX 480 card at a hard-to-resist $200 price.The smaller 14nm fabrication process gives this card impressive performance and low power consumption.If the RX 480 achieves high hashrates as expected, it’ll become the new standard in Ethereum mining.The good news is that AMD, anticipating high sales, are producing the card in considerable quantity so it should be readily available at a fair price upon its release.

Previously, the strong demand for high-end mining GPUs drove up the prices of cards like the R9 290(X) and led to supply shortages.It’s definitely worth waiting for this card’s performance to be benchmarked before investing in any other GPU.Check out r/AMD for the latest info and rumours!If you haven’t already done so, install Ethereum!If you’re familiar with the command line interface, get the latest Geth app for your system.Geth (abbreviation for “go-ethereum”) allows you and your miner to interact with the Ethereum network but requires some programming knowledge.If you’re not used to the command line, it’s recommended that you download Mist instead.This package contains a simple Ethereum wallet as well as a browser with various other uses, such as messaging.Download the Ethereum Wallet zip file, extract it and run the Ethereum app.This video should help if you get stuck!Whichever method you use, you will now have to wait while the blockchain is downloaded and synced.You are now ready to begin mining!

For a simple miner with a graphical user interface (GUI), download the Aleth One mining software for Windows, Mac or Linux.After installation, you’ll have to wait about 10 minutes as the miner sets about “building a DAG.” This is a 1 GB+ data file stored in your GPU’s RAM to make the algorithm memory-hard.The next step is to setup pool mining, as solo-mining is unlikely to make you any Ethereum unless you have a warehouse full of GPUs.This helpful video will guide you through the process of creating your Ethereum and pool accounts and starting to mine.If you’re reading a newbie’s guide to Ethereum mining and have a GPU powerful enough to make it worthwhile, we’re going to assume you’re running Windows so we’ll focus on mining Ethereum on that platform.If your intent is to purchase multiple GPUs and run them from a single controller, your best option is to use Linux from the command line.The availability of the latest and most essential apps for control, mining, monitoring, etc. is better in that environment than in any other OS.

First, you’ll have to download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ package.It’s available on Microsoft’s official download center.Choose either the “vcredist_x64” or “vcredist_x86” file depending on whether your system is 64 bit or 32 bit.To check which kind of system you have, visit this Microsoft page and read the info under the heading “Automatic version detection results.” Note: a 64 bit system is strongly recommended for this method.32 bit systems may experience errors when running the mining app.Click the red download button to get started.If you’re not used to the command line (aka “DOS mode,”) it’s recommended that you download Mist, with its friendly and familiar GUI (graphical user interface): The Mist package contains the Ethereum wallet which you’ll need to receive any mining profits.Mist also includes an Ethereum browser with various functions, such as messaging and a social network and tutorials.As a tip, these tutorials and the social network are helpful learning resources.

Don’t be scared to ask the Ethereals if you’re experience difficulty with any part of this process./ethereum/mist/releases and select the most recent release.In our case it’s 0.8.0: 1) Select the latest release, it’ll have the highest number.2) Scroll down to the Downloads.Choose Mist, not the standalone Ethereum Wallet.3) Choose a memorable download folder for the “Ethereum Wallet” zip file.Extract it with a suitable file extraction tool, navigate to the new folder the extractor creates and then locate and run the Ethereum app.The next step is to hurry up and wait, as the Ethereum blockchain downloads and syncs.It’s over 10 gigs so this process may take a while… When it completes, spend a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the Mist app; the interface is fairly self-explanatory.The Mist app isn’t yet fully polished so expect a few bugs.Next, open the Ethereum wallet and generate a new account and contract based wallet.This wallet will contain the payout address at which you’ll receive mining rewards from your pool or directly from the blockchain.

1) Add your new account, give it a memorable mining name.Store the password securely!2) After generating the Account, add a wallet and write down or copy to a text file the unique address.This address will start with the characters “0x”.It’s necessary for receiving ETH mining rewards!Mist also contains Geth, a popular command line interface.You may choose to get only the latest Geth app for your system, it’s able to perform all the functions of Mist (and more) from the command line.Geth (an abbreviation for “go-ethereum”) allows you and your miner to interact more directly with the Ethereum network but Geth definitely requires some programming knowledge.As you become more proficient in Ethereum mining and coding, Geth will become more useful to you.Head over to AMD or Nvidia, depending which kind of GPU hardware you have, and download the latest file there.A) Choose the latest AMD SDK for Windows, download and Install OR B) Choose the Windows version of Nvidia Cuda.Download and install that.

For a simple miner with a graphical user interface (GUI), download the AlethOne mining software for Windows (or Mac).AlethOne depends upon the Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 from Microsoft which we installed earlier.Note that 32 bit systems may experience problems running AlethOne.Download the Windows installation program for AlethOne and follow the install wizard.After installation, you’ll have to wait about 10 minutes as the miner sets about “building a DAG.” This DAG is a 1 GB+ data file stored in your GPU’s RAM to make the algorithm memory-hard and therefore ASIC-resistant.Once the DAG is complete, begin Solo Mining in AlethOne to ensure everything is working as expected!Your first step will be to choose an Ethereum mining pool.There are plenty to choose from but we recommend Nanopool.Nanopool displays the addresses and hashrate of its fastest 15 miners.Nanopool’s Help section will be of great benefit to you.You’ll need to copy some of those settings into your AlephOne mining settings, along with your address… And that should be it, good luck with mining Ethereum!